Having seen the NOFX documentary 40 Years of F***in' Up, my music doc watching buddy and I retired to the Weary Traveler for a post mortem and to BS in general.
During the course of the conversation my interlocutor revealed that, as he has gotten older, it has become harder to get into new music and finds himself enjoying the familiar comforts of music tried & true.
I feel his pain. The struggle is real. Ha!
But I endeavor to seek out the new to fight that impulse.
This morning I checked my email and was reminded that Son Volt's new album is out today as is the long-awaited collaboration between the Steve prog heroes Hackett and Rothery. What a wonderful day to have 2 new albums now available for my aural delectation. Bobby Hussy at MadCity Music is no doubt expecting me today.
Last weekend I bought a couple CDs at a thrift shop that were both choral music from locals.
I never even knew there was a Philharmonic Chorus of Madison. The other album will be in season soon. It's by the UW-Madison Concert Choir.
Our teens and 20s may be romanticized for all of the music and the central role it played in our lives, but, arguably, it's never been better for music fans.
Especially if you love reel-to-reel. I see that Jethro Tull's Aqualung is getting a R2R release.
But they're not alone. Rhino also has reels of Grateful Dead, Black Sabbath, and probably others too. How long before the day's biggest acts start putting new albums out on R2R?
Jay Farrar is in full Woody Guthrie mode these days.
"Raw power at the root and heart of evil"
"Skeleton at the Feast" is vaguely Rolling Stones flavored with that slide guitar.
The latest came out only today and sees the band musically doing a tribute to Neil Young with a very -"Cortez the Killer" kind of tempo and feel. Plus more Guthrie-esque lyrics about life under Trump.
A few months ago the headphone jack on my phone started to act wonky. The merest twist of the cord or slightest shift of the device would cause my headphones to fall silent. Since I could still call my mother, text people, and MFA for work, I decided to just buy a cheap MP3 player instead of replacing my phone which hopefully has a couple to a few more years of life left in it.
Sadly SanDisk doesn't make them anymore which is a shame because I'd bought their MP3 players in the past and they were solid, if no frills, devices. So I get my new one and load it up with music, audio dramas, and podcasts. It was nice to be able to listen to something and not be tempted to look at texts or check my email or just find something online to distract me from giving my ears a good time. I know too many people who stare at screens for way too long, who can sometimes barely concentrate on what is before them without looking at their phone.
For these people, the briefest downtime must be spent looking at social media, conversations must come to a grinding halt so that the status of an Amazon order can be checked, the people next to them must be briefly ignored so that the texts of someone not there can be addressed, and so on.
I soon relearned the eternal verity "You get what you pay for." First I noticed that the thing doesn't read the Title metadata and instead uses the file name which meant I had a lot of "Track #"'s.
Then one day I put on Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. "Moonchild" played and I rocked out as one does to Iron Maiden. Expecting the wash of synth, melodic guitar, and gentle rim shots of "Infinite Dreams" next I instead got "Capital Letters (In Surgical Spirit Land)" by IQ. I had discovered that it only parses the first three characters of the album title. And so the songs from Seventh Son of a Seventh Son were intermingled with those of Seven Stories Into Eight. Trying to find songs from albums that begin with "The" was nigh impossible.
Navigating by artist proved to be a bit better but that list was clogged as I had the Intrigue compilation on there which meant 4 CDs worth of artist names who had but one song apiece on the album.
Despite the poorly designed menu navigation system, I got my fix of tunes and whatnot. Then it occurred to me one day that I have all these albums on there along with multiple audio dramas and I usually couldn't listen to an entire album nor finish an audio drama because I was always finding something else to listen to with such a large array of choices.
I was reminded of the days of yore when I had access to Netflix and a couple other streaming services. I'd become trapped in the indecision of all those menus consisting of seemingly endless lists of movies and programs. It was almost like being paralyzed by the enormous number of choices laid before me. Most of the time I'd scroll and scroll and just turn the TV off after a while because I didn't want to spend anymore time parsing potential viewing options. A waste of the time I have left on this planet.
It makes me sad that I have such difficulty listening to an entire album from start to finish since I used to do so effortlessly and frequently; that I am usually seeking something else even before whatever it is that has my what I thought was rapt attention is complete. I'd jump to another album even though I'd only gotten 2 songs in on the one I was listening to. Days would go by between listening sessions of an audio drama and, when I'd return to it, I'd find that I couldn't quite recall everything that had transpired up until that point.
As Thoreau implored, "Simplify! Simplify!" and so I have put a stop to it.
I deleted 18+ GB from my MP3 player just a day or 2 ago. I have but one audio drama on it that I shall listen to until completion before starting another. There are several podcasts on there and just a few albums of music. I thought that it would be fun to write about the Jon Davison era of Yes and so the 4 albums the band has made with him are on there and just another song or 2.
So far I can say that I definitely look at my phone less and often leave it in another room when unneeded. This means more time playing with Willow and giving my attention to more important things such as the people sitting right next to me. We'll see how the MP3 player saga pans out. Hopefully with a lengthy, erudite look at latter day Yes. Ha!
*******
Some new music of note. Some old stuff too.
Rhiannon Giddens has a new album out in September called Hope Is the Thing with Feathers and the first single, "Carolina Rain" is out now. A lovely tune. Sadly her tour plans don't call for her to get any closer than Minneapolis at this point.
The Hu also have a new album out soon - in July - called Hun. "Grey Hun" is on the Youtubes. Unfortunately their tour plans are on mega bills with a few other artists. Hopefully they'll come this way for a solo show soon.
The Two Steves, Hackett and Rothery - the progressive rock dream team - have done an album together called The Roaring Waves which comes out in August. Our first taste is "The Black Sea".
Deep Purple are not only still around, but they're still creating new music instead of resting on their laurels and simply playing "Smoke On the Water" over and over for aging boomers. The new album, Splat!, comes out next week. It's their second with guitarist Simon McBride who joined a couple years or so back. He seems to have given the venerable band an injection of energy as the singles that have been released thus far are just plain good hard rock. The songs are kinetic and don't betray that most of the band are in their 70s or 80s.
Another band of old codgers that won't put their instruments down are The Rolling Stones. Their latest, Foreign Tongues, is to be released in a couple weeks. I chatted with a pal of mine about newer Stones just a week or so ago when he and I went to see the Gregg Allman documentary. His experience with them ends with Steel Wheels and so I talked up Voodoo Lounge. It's a great album and the b-sides are wonderful and it's just a really fun rock album with catchy riffs and Mick Jagger being Mick Jagger.
They put out Hackney Diamonds in 2023 and I enjoyed the singles from that album and the ones from the new LP are a blast too. While these guys may not be breaking any new ground, they keep doing their thing and it sounds great still.
Jethro Tull release J-Tull Dot Com: Another Cast Of The Net in August. The box set features a remixed version of the 1999 album along with some outtakes and live tracks. "Spiral" has been remixed and it sounds very nice. I think the drums are up a bit in the mix and that there's more stereo separation - it sounds "wider".
Speaking of Tull, I've been listening to the alternate mixes of RökFlöte lately and really enjoying them. Everything is more up front in the mix it seems and there is more room between the instruments. The guitar and keyboards are no longer this mushy, soft rock amalgamate; the electric guitar is grittier, ballsier and the keyboards are allowed to step up and lead the charge too. I mean, these are songs about gods like Thor who brings down the thunder with his hammer, not Ratatosk, the messenger squirrel.
Thick as a Brick 2 and Homo Erraticus both deserve this treatment. Their restrained mixing aesthetic works fine for The Secret Language of Birds where the whole affair is turned down and acoustic instruments need to be at the fore. However, these later IA efforts deserve to be let loose.
I heard this fine stoner-doom-sludge-Sabbathy tune just today on All Songs Considered. Great riffing with some fine complementary synth work. Old school analogue Moog? Sure sounds like it.
Although released 20 years ago, I just heard music from this album yesterday. Accordion rulez!
Originally destined for Smile, "Cabinessence" eventually emerged on 20/20 with some overdubs, apparently. What a fantastic song. Late 60s/early 70s Beach Boys is great stuff. This was another subject of conversation with my music movie pal on the drive to see that Gregg Allman doc.
Son Volt has a new song out called "If I Could". It's Jay Farrar in Woody Guthrie mode.
A friend who is also a big SV fan poked at it by saying that the lyrics are too on the nose instead of having a more oblique critique of our times. The young man of the 90s in me has some sympathy for that position but I don't feel Woody Guthrie should lose points because his lyrics directly reference the Great Depression. Being open and direct has its virtues.
I wonder if there's something odd about my generation in that we enjoy direct, unopaque lyrics of the past but not of our own time. Does "Ohio" suffer today from directly referencing the Kent State Shootings? Did it in 1970?
Steve Hackett gets two mentions here because A) he's Steve Hackett and B) Mike and Tom from Tabletop Genesis just did a show about his third solo album, Spectral Mornings, which makes me want to listen to it.
This tune was apparently left off Dominion. Will it be on the next IQ album? Will they play new material when I see them later this summer?
Jay Farrar continues channeling Woody Guthrie in a new song called "These Days Have No Shame". Also, Son Volt will be on tour later this year.
Tomeka Reid has a new album out on the 13th called dance! skip! hop!. The 2nd single from it, "oo long", is previewed on Youtube and can be found in full on her Bandcamp page. Both it and the title track are available there and they both are fantastic. Hopefully she and her band will return to Madison this year.
Son Volt has a new tune out called "Kaleidosphere". Since I am not a member of their Electro Melodier Society (not yet, anyway), I am not able to hear the whole 9 yards. Sounds like their recent stuff and quite good to boot. The video seems to feature scenes from St. Louis, the band's home. The Arch, anyway.
While Jay Farrar will forever be primarily known for Son Volt, his brief solo career has been interesting in its own right.
Son Volt's third album, Wide Swing Tremelo, tacked a course away from the alt-country of their first two efforts. Farrar then put the band on hiatus and released Sebasotol, his first solo effort, in 2001. While "Barstow" from that album mines the same alt-country vein as early Son Volt, the album is notable for the prevalence of keyboards and a sound that hearkens back to late-60s rock. To my ears, anyway.
2003 brought his second solo album, Terroir Blues. Acoustic guitar plays a larger role here as the songs are often sparser while Farrar hits a sombre tone through most of the album. Every couple of songs he throws us for a loop with a piece of "Space Junk", which are short, psychedelic bits featuring instruments played backwards that reek of the Woodstock era. Whether or not these little interludes do anything for you, there is plenty of classic Farrar on this album. My favorite is probably "Out On the Road".
I find it to be a plaintive song, with its delicate guitar strumming that seems to struggle to keep the melody afloat. Lew Winer III adds some gorgeous flute on top which challenges Farrar's singing to keep up. I've always thought the song was simply about life and moving forward in the face of adversity. ("You're gonna find pain when you're out on the road") Perhaps this is because Terroir Blues was released shortly after my father's death. It has that same fragile sadness makes "Tear Stained Eye" so poignant. Just achingly beautiful.
There's also an alternate version featuring cello that I prefer. I adore how the cello fills in the sound without being obtrusive. It adds some low end and a nice droning quality to counterpoint the rickety guitar and fluttering flute. A little something extra but it never makes things too busy or distracts you from wistful feel. Check it out if you can find it.
Last winter
I discovered that Madison is home to a Victorian-era garden. There's nothing
surprising about some folks maintaining such a thing in town but I was
confounded when I learned that it is just a stone's throw from the
Capitol. And so, like the Schoenstatt Shrine from a couple entries ago,
investigating this garden was added to my to-do list for warmer weather. I
finally got around to it on a nice morning back in August.
I didn't know what to expect of a Victorian-era garden but, since I tend to filter life through movies, I had visions of Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract. Would it be a well-appointed greenscape dotted with mini-obelisks and privet hedges trimmed and shaped to the highest topiary standards?
It's located
in the Mansion Hill district which is so named because it features many mid-19th
century homes that were built by Madison's early elite. The old governor's
mansion is there and dates to roughly 1855 so it's hardly surprising that such a garden is to be found in this area. I suppose it's a bit like the SafeHouse in Milwaukee - hidden in plain sight.
Back in the days of yore as a college student, I lived a couple blocks
away for a year which makes my ignorance of it even more shameful. While I've been by it
many times in the decades that I have lived here, it's rarely been on foot. When I lived nearby, my perambulations usually took me away from it and towards campus. Perhaps I simply never stopped to read the sign or had simply forgotten about its existence somewhere along the way. For as long as I can recall, I've just assumed that this little patch of green belonged to a law firm or other such organization that made of one of the old mansions its home and was keen on showing off with a luscious and verdant yard.
As I have
conceded previously, I am awful when it comes to identifying plants and
wandering the garden I saw all kinds of wonderful flowers and shrubs but
recognized only 1 or 2 varieties. Because my Frau had pointed them out to me a
couple weeks before on one of our walks, I felt a small sense of pride at being able to ID the Tiger lilies.
I walked
around the fountain and ran into one of the many volunteers that cares for the
gardens on the opposite side. She was seated on a bench and enjoying a moment of Arcadian bliss amidst the fruits of her labors. After noticing me, we struck up a brief conversation wherein she answered my questions about a couple varieties of flowers but I think I forgot their
names 5 minutes later.
You can see
just how close to the Capitol Square the park is in this photo. Lake Mendota is
just a couple blocks in the opposite direction.
The garden was an oasis of peace and calm as the Dane County Farmers Market raged in the distance and people were going about their day enjoying the weather and the company of others, something largely denied them at this time last year.
I had been
out on my bike for a few hours at this point and was not only enchanted by all
of the lovely flora, but thankful to be able to take a breather and bask
in some shade.
********
The weekend
after my stroll through Period Garden Park, my Frau and I headed up to
Manitowoc on the shores of Lake Michigan. The occasion was a concert by Son Volt, the St. Louis band I have mentioned previously in these diaries.
It was a free show that was part of the town's summer music festival. Plus it would be nice to simply get out of town and be somewhere else. Joining
us was our friend Arch. He was going through a spot of personal turmoil so I tried to get
him out and about instead of moping at home. Plus he too is a big Son Volt fan. Thankfully,
he took me up on my offer.
We rolled into town in the afternoon and
immediately set out to find a late lunch. Walking towards a local brewpub, we
stumbled upon an exhibit of large format prints in an alley near the hotel.
It was put
on by the local branch of the University of Wisconsin System and a nearby
private college.
It
had been a few years since I'd last seen Son Volt perform. Plus, I think this was the
first concert I'd been to since the pandemic began. The band were in fine form
out touring in support of a new album that I was growing to like more and more with each listen. We were able to get up close to the
stage.
The band has
been around since 1994 and they played a nice set with songs from most parts of their career, although I did lament the absence of any songs from Wide Swing Tremelo. Singer/guitarist/band leader Jay Farrar – he's on the left clad
in black – is generally all business live. He normally doesn't talk a whole lot
to the audience beyond a "Hello" and the occasional "Thanks" but this night he was more verbose than usual and he even made a joke
about bratwurst.
After the
show when we were chatting about it, Arch noted a couple songs that brought
tears to his eyes. Not surprising considering some of the lyrics and events that were playing out in his life.
Tears welled
in my eyes when they played "Tear Stained Eye". They always do. It's
from their 1st album, Trace, released in 1995 and so I have
had a 25ish year relationship with those four minutes and 21 seconds. For most of
the that time, the song is a rather plaintive country shuffle. Then towards the end,
Farrar sings:
Like the man said, rode hard and put away wet
Throw away the bad news, and put it to rest
If learning is living, and the truth is a state of mind
You'll find it's better at the end of the line
And a hint of hopefulness springs forth from the sadness. (But just a hint.) It's a great song that I have listened to countless times and it has seen me through a few rough patches in my life when relationships have ended. It was also part of the soundtrack of my drive home up from Louisiana after my father had died as I sped north on I55 towards St. Louis with his ashes in the back seat.
Son Volt's first album was written and recorded during a time when Farrar drove between New Orleans and Minneapolis on Highway 61 frequently. (See my entry on Dubuque.) Several of his songs reference the St. Louis area and "Tear Stained Eye" has the line "Ste. Genevieve can hold back the water". Ste. Genevieve is a town south of St. Louis (on Hwy 61!) that faced a serious threat of flooding in 1993. My understanding is that the residents were basically plugging holes in the town's dikes with their fingers as the Mississippi threatened to wash the town away.
After the more melancholy song, they followed it up with the lovely, upbeat "Windfall" with its refrain of "May the wind take your troubles away."
On a recent episode of the Political Beats podcast, one of the hosts opined that "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac had entered the Great American Songbook. Honestly, I am not qualified to debate the merits of that claim. But it was a good reminder that the Songbook isn't set in stone and that additions didn't stop in the 1950s. While, for me, "Great American Songbook" conjures up the likes of Gershwin, Ellington, and Guthrie, it should include tunes from my lifetime. I would offer that "Windfall" and "Tear Stained Eye" should be included as well, if they are not already considered a part of it by the Songbook's gatekeepers.
Many diary
entries ago I recounted my trip to Manitowoc in October of last year. Not long
after I got home, I realized that I had forgotten to check out the landing site
of a chunk of Korabl-Sputnik 1.
Launched on
15 May 1960, Korabl-Sputnik 1 was an unmanned spacecraft that allowed the Soviets
to research space flight or whatever it was they were keen on learning about.
When it came time to get the part that was supposed to return to Earth on a
course to terra firma, there was a malfunction and it instead went into
a higher orbit. It eventually decayed and the module fell Earthwards on 6
September 1962 with the vast majority of the craft burning up in the
atmosphere. However, a chunk survived reentry and landed in the middle of 8th
Street.
That piece
was eventually returned to the Soviets but a couple replicas were made and
here's one of them:
This
momentous occasion is marked by a ring in the middle of the street just north
of the intersection with Park Street.
In addition
to missing the Sputnik ring last fall, I also neglected to get a photo of a
silo with the Chief Oshkosh Beer logo painted on it. The silo is just north of
Fond du Lac, which is about 20 miles south of Oshkosh, but across Lake
Winnebago from the beer's hometown. I've read somewhere that the logo had been
painted on it decades ago and that the new paint job simply replicated the old
one.
Chief Oshkosh was first brewed as a non-alcoholic "near-beer" during Prohibition. When that fiasco ended, it was transformed into a real beer. It survived until the early 1970s and hasn't been brewed since but I am sure someone owns the brand copyright which means it may return someday.
********
Bonus photo time. I found a Twitter feed from Chicago a few months ago
that posts photographs of turrets around the city on Turret Tuesdays. I thought
it was neat idea and have started taking pictures of the turrets of Madison.
Here is the only pink one in town. This building is home to a Cajun restaurant
and, as far as I know, it has been a restaurant or supper club since it as long
as anyone can remember.
For
the Frau's birthday we had dinner at the Tornado Room, a downtown steakhouse. It
was quite tasty. We were there last year and I had a wedge salad. This year
she took the plunge and enjoyed it so much that we ended up buying a head of
iceberg lettuce and French dressing on our next trip to the grocery store so
she could make it at home.
The plan
originally was to have dinner one last time at The Wonder Bar but I found out,
much to my chagrin, that it was permanently closed when I called to make a
reservation. While I was aware that the owner is selling the property to a developer who has an 18-story apartment building planned for that block, I thought that it was to remain open for a while yet as
designs were being finalized and approvals sought from various city commissions.
This is a
shame as The Wonder Bar has been around since 1929 and was built for Eddie
Touhy, brother of Chicago mafia kingpin Roger "The Terrible" Touhy.
There are supposedly tunnels underneath it that were used for bootlegging operations during its early years. And
there is also tell of openings in the walls that were like arrowslits - but for
guns. There is some hope left as a group is trying to find a spot to move the
building to instead of seeing it succumb to the wrecking ball.
********
The next day
the Frau and I hit the road for Dubuque. I'd been there previously but that was
in the mid-90s. At that time I was dating a young lady from Dubuque and I went
to meet her family one Thanksgiving.
My memories
of that trip are limited to meeting her kin and eating too much. While I
remember her father being standoffish in a not totally unfriendly way, I was
warmly welcomed by multiple families, you might say. My girlfriend's mother
died when she was quite young – an infant, I believe. Her father remarried and
her stepmother became "mom". (I hope I am getting this right.) They divorced and he later remarried
again. And so we ended up spending time with and eating meals at the homes of
her father, her mom, and her birth mother. I think my stomach nearly
ruptured by the end of the day. At the last stop, I was offered my fourth or fifth slice of pie of that day and, because A) I wanted to make a good impression and B) I love pumpkin pie, I accepted. Upon completion I immediately felt like Mr. Creosote from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life and desperately hoped that my darling girlfriend would not offer me a mint.
Since we
were doing the family thing, we didn't sightsee. This meant that our trip this
year might as well have been my first visit although I did get a sense of vague familiarity as we crossed the Mississippi River and headed towards downtown.
Our first
stop was at 7 Hills Brewing Company for lunch. It was in an old industrial
building in the Millwork District which was largely given over to slick new apartments and trendy eating
and entertainment venues. Other buildings had similarly been brought back to
life while I saw some that were still being used for industrial purposes. I saw a few that still sat empty as they awaited their turn to be gentried.
We ordered some
fried Brussels sprouts to start which seems to be a trendy appetizer these
days. I did some research before we left on the indigenous foods of Dubuque and
didn't find anything**. No equivalent of Chicago's Italian beef or deep dish
pizza. It could have been my poor Googling skills, though. Brewpub fare is generally a rather monotonous assembly of burgers, wings, and sandwiches these days so I really had no right to expect some uniquely Iowan food there.
Tangentially, I
recently learned that it was only in the 1990s that the bitterness was mostly bred out
of Brussels sprouts by Dutch botanists. This makes me wonder what my parents were thinking as they ate them back when I was a kid.
To drink we
opted for variety in the form of a four beer flight. And, since we were in
Iowa, one of our choices was a glass of Town Clock, a pilsner made with the food item I most closely associate with Iowa - corn.
The
consensus was that the green tea ale was the best of the bunch (although I also
really liked the cherry wheat ale) and we ended up bringing some home with us.
I found this
next to the men's room:
After lunch
it was off to the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium. We started
in the Mississippi River/freshwater building. Walking in, we were confronted by a large
pool full of fish and turtles. A pair of wood ducks sat on a log preening themselves.
The ducks were
there sometime later when we left and I was surprised that they didn't seem to have moved and I wondered just how they were made to
stay on the log or near the water since the pool was not enclosed.
Personally,
I could have watched the turtles all day.
Another tank
held snakes and we were glad that they were behind glass and not on a log pile
free to attack us.
We stepped
outside to make our way to the other building and were pleased to not only see that the William M. Black, an old
steam-powered dredge from the 1930s that was used by the Army Corp of Engineers
was docked nearby, but also that touring it didn't involve an additional fee.
While walking on the dock out to it, we passed by a section of the shore that
was a pond/wetland area replete with docks that allowed you to walk out into
the water and feed the fish and see more turtles.
On the way
to the ship, we were attacked by a red-winged blackbird! I guess its nest was
close by. While there was a sign warning folks about this behavior, you had to pass through the gauntlet first before you came to it. Thankfully we came out unscathed.
It was neat
to walk around the ship imagining the crew running around performing their assigned
tasks as the ginormous pistons turned the wheels on the sides of the ship and
propelled it down the river.
The other
building of the museum had exhibits about salt water marine biology as well as
a social history of the Mississippi. We learned about how Native Americans used
the river as well as the vast trade routes that were served by the river. E.g.
– pipestone mined in Minnesota made its way south on the river while German
silver crossed the Atlantic and ended up in New Orleans before being shipped north.
We saw more
creatures of the deep there and I thought this sight had some H.P.
Lovecraftian/Cthulhu vibes.
The Frau and I were
extremely impressed by the museum. It was really neat to see all of the marine
life, learn a bit about the vessels that sailed the Mississippi, and get some of Dubuque's
river history as well. It's a huge and very important river but doesn't seem to
get the attention it deserves. Popular culture doesn't seem to do as much to
acknowledge its importance, celebrate it, and mythologize it as it used to. Or
perhaps I am just not paying attention to the right bits of pop culture.
On the way down, we caught Highway 61 just outside of Dickeyville where it joined Highway 151 heading southwest. Thinking about all of the legend and lore surrounding the Mississippi River, I also thought about the history of Highway 61. It is storied in its own right. Witness it in the title of one of Bob Dylan's seminal mid-60s albums, Highway 61 Revisited. The highway's northern terminus used to be in the far northeast reaches of Minnesota, near his birthplace. (Today it's closer to the Twin Cities.) It winds south 1,400 miles or so to New Orleans, largely following the river.
Following Highway 61 you encounter a lot of the history of the middle of the country. Some highlights were included in Son Volt's "Afterglow 61" which references Bob Dylan up north, Mark Twain in the middle, and Leadbelly down south.
US highway from north to south.
It's history breathing.
I think one of the attractions for me of the Mississippi River and Highway 61 is that they speak to the history of not only the Midwest, from which I hail, but the middle of the United States generally as opposed to the coasts.
The museum
complex is part of the Port of Dubuque which seems to have largely been
transformed from an industrial area into an entertainment/tourist one. My only
gripe is that the riverfront area is cut off from downtown by railroad tracks
and an expressway. That's too bad but I'm sure it has been that way for ages
and is what you get for having so much industry on the river.
While
the Frau took a short nap, I went out for a stroll around downtown to see the
sights. Just a couple blocks from the hotel I spied the namesake of the
corn-laced beer that I had with lunch.
A few blocks
away is the county courthouse that was built in the 1890s.
Dubuque has
retained a lot of old buildings which means there were quite a few ghost signs
to be found.
********
The bonus
photo this time features Piper and Grabby back when Piper was just a couple months old.
** I did a poor job of searching the Internet and have since discovered that Dubuque's indigenous dish is the turkey and dressing sandwich. You take cooked turkey and combine it with dressing. To this you add gravy and this admixture goes on a bun. I do not recall seeing this on any menus.
While not a Dubuque specialty, the maid-rite sandwich is an Iowa staple. It's a loose meat sandwich - ground beef - but I am unsure of the exact nature of the seasoning. I do not recall seeing this on any menus either.
Hopefully the trendy joints in the Millwork District aren't all turning their backs on their Iowa heritage. Every brewpub in this country has wings and burgers and flatbread pizzas. So dear trendy Dubuque establishments: deviate from the norm by adding some local color with a maid-rite or turkey and dressing sandwich. Or both.
It was a sold out audience last Thursday at the High Noon Saloon for Son Volt’s first Madison appearance in a while. They were in town in support of the new Honky Tonk album which takes the band’s established acoustic side and throws in some George Jones and Buck Owens.
But first came the openers Colonel Ford which mostly seems to be a rotating cast of St. Louis-area musicians performing country classics. Last week the band consisted of Son Volt minus Jay Farrar, although Farrar has been playing pedal steel with them lately. They got the crowd warmed up with a treasure trove of great country tunes including George Jones’ “White Lightning” and “I’ve Got a Tiger By the Tail” by Buck Owens.
These days Son Volt is, besides Farrar, his long-time cohort Mark Spencer on keyboards and pedal steel, bassist Andrew Duplantis, who’s been with the band since it reformed in 2005, newbie Gary Hunt on guitar and fiddle, and drummer Jay Edwards who filled in for Dave Bryson. They played a set that concentrated on the less rocking side of the band with an emphasis on Honky Tonk and 2009’s American Central Dust.
“Down to the Wire”, a favorite of mine from American Central Dust, kicked things off and the mid-tempo numbers led by Farrar’s acoustic guitar kept on coming. Also from ACD were the beautiful “Dynamite” and the country-inflected “Dust of Daylight” which would have sounded at home on Honky Tonk. The shiny new “Wild Side” is a delicate shuffle in the studio but lost a bit of the maudlin and gained a little heft on stage. Going back a bit further, “Highways and Cigarettes” from The Search and Sebastopol’s “Barstow” fit in well despite their darker lyrics sprinkled with social commentary.
There were a few times when Farrar dispensed with the acoustic guitar and strapped on his Epiphone. “Hoping Machine” from New Multitudes, an album of new music with Woody Guthrie lyrics, provided a nice change of pace. It was a moody slow-burner that gradually built up to climaxes with some of the most beautiful singing of the night. The band pulled out “Drown”, the closest thing to a hit for them, to get the set moving to a close. It was followed by “Afterglow 61″, one of Farrar’s best rock songs.
The encore started with “Hearts and Minds”, the lead track from Honky Tonk. It gave way to two of Trace’s most beloved songs, “Tear Stained Eye” and “Windfall”. It finished with Waylon Jennings’ “Stop the World (And Let Me Off)”. The crowd was enthusiastic all night beginning with Colonel Ford. I figured that a set heavy with new songs would leave many disappointed and yearning for “Loose String” or “Live Free” but people seemed happy with steady honky tonk beats and country shuffles. Perhaps as a reward for the sustained enthusiasm, the band returned for a second encore and did “Medication” from Okemah and the Melody of Riot. I adored this song with its raga-like guitar melodies and dissonant jamming when I saw Son Volt in 2007 and it proved no less powerful this night.
There is perhaps no better way that doesn't involve alcohol to begin your pre-concert experience than with pierogi and a cute Polish girl. Such was the case last night in Chicago where The Dulcinea and I went to see Son Volt at the Vic Theatre.
We made good time getting into the Big City and stopped at The Pierogi Factory a block from the theatre. With 15 flavors of pierogi, kielbasa, cabbage rolls, and blintzes, methinks Madison needs one of these. Nothing like Polish fast food. If you get the chance, get the spinach-meat variety as they were great. After shoveling a super-sampler platter into our gullets, we headed over to the theatre.
It had been almost 2 years since we were at the Vic. The last time was for the final show of Wilco's multi-night stand where they filmed the performances for a DVD release that never materialized. Last night the joint was full and the Miller Lite flowed steadily for many a concertgoer. Opening the performance was Jason Isbell. I discovered 2 or 3 songs in that he had been in the Drive By Truckers, a band I'd heard of but never heard. Unfortunately, I probably won't check them out in the near future as I was not impressed with Isbell. His voice sounded too much like that of a turbo tonker out of Nashville and the music was unremarkable. During their set, Son Volt keyboardist Derry deBorja wandered around in front of us.
Son Volt took to the stage a bit after 9 and opened with "Automatic Society" from their latest, The Search. It got things off to a rockin' start and they proceeded to play a large chunk of new material. "Satellite" and "The Search" followed immediately. New guitarist Chris Masterson fit in well and added some well-crafted slide work. For "The Picture", a live horn section was added. "Underground Dream" and "Circadian Rhythm" came off well as did the two tunes from the album that can claim alt-country heritage, "Methamphetamine" and "Highways and Cigarettes". I missed the vocals of Shannon McNally who appears on the studio version of the latter. Andrew Duplantis' mic needs to be turned up a bit for his backing vocals. The former is an unlikely sing-a-long but I found myself singing it anyway as the chorus is amongst Farrar's catchiest.
My main complaint here was the two guys standing in front of me who, at about 6'5" each, were obstacles to be reckoned with. But it's not their height that irked me, but rather the fact that they just had to carry on a conversation with each other for most of the time.
After this initial blast from The Search, the band stepped back in time, if only to 2005's Okemah and the Melody of Riot. It soon became apparent that Son Volt Mk II would be the emphasis this night. "Bandages & Scars", "Jet Pilot", and "Who" were all trotted out. A guy to our right got really excited by hearing "Jet Pilot" and starting getting down. Well, as much as we white guys can. He began shouting for "Endless War" which didn't bother me a bit. It was good to see someone there who enjoyed the newer tunes and wasn't there purely to hear "Windfall" and "Tear-Stained Eye". His request was not fulfilled but the boys did do a killer version of the Eastern-tinged "Medication". This part of the set served as a reminder as to just what a great album Okemah is and how much power the songs gain in the live context.
A couple Farrar solo tunes got thrown into the mix as well – "Damn Shame" and "Barstow". After this diversion, the crowd got an unexpected treat in the form of "Exurbia". It's a song left off The Search but available on iTunes and the vinyl version of the album as well. It found Farrar with his acoustic guitar strapped on and is a mid-tempo number. Think along the lines of "Gramophone". Somewhere around this time they played "Tear-Stained Eye" and, well, my eyes teared up. They always do when they play this song. Too many memories of ex-girlfriends and of driving home along the Mississippi from Louisiana after my father's death. "Action" brought back the raga rock of "Medication" for a bit and heavy "Route" got the crowd ready for more older songs and they got "Drown". "Afterglow 61", another new classic, ended the set on a (very) high note.
It wasn't long before the guys returned to the stage and launched into "Windfall". Farrar then started cranking out the reggae riff of "Armagideon Time" but the lyrics were wrong, yet oddly familiar. They turned out to be "Life Worth Livin'". A blazing "Chickamauga" – now with even more feedback – finished the night off.
On their last tour, Son Volt, played a heady mix of old and new songs along with a hefty dose of Jay Farrar's solo material. Perhaps this was calculated to reintroduce themselves to fans after a lengthy absence. And with that being done, the band is concentrating on newer songs. While I think Wide Swing Tremelo is a vastly underrated album and missed hearing anything from it, I respect the band's decision. The past two albums have been strong and so there's plenty of great material to showcase. My main quarrel is with the order of the setlist. I wish they hadn't segregated songs from different albums as much as they did as the material from Okemah would have fit very well along side the newest crop of tunes.
Despite my quibbles, Son Volt put on a great show. It was nice'n'loud as my ringing ears proved last night. Most importantly, the new material stood up well. Given time, songs like "Methamphetamine" and "Action" will become classics.
Son Volt's The Search was released a couple weeks ago and I've been meaning to write something about it but haven't really been in the frame of mind to do so until now.
The album sees this, the second incarnation of the band, move further away from the ragged alt-country strains that Farrar pioneered with Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt Mk I. This line-up debuted in 2005 with Okemah and the Melody of Riot. With Brad Rice's lead guitar work and the more propulsive rhythm section of Andrew Duplantis and Dave Bryson, the album was a heavier affair than anything produced by the previous incarnation of the band. For The Search, Derry deBorja was brought in from the touring band to contribute keys. This, along with Farrar's continued exploration of the piano, stretches the band's sound and helps make it fuller. The new sounds and textures tweak the Son Volt formula but never overshadow the guitar.
For too many folks, the band's first album, Trace, serves as a formula they'd like to see repeated. Long gone are the uplifting fiddle of "Windfall" and the lilting banjo on "Tear-Stained Eye". Today the band has a more muscular sound with washes of keyboards and Farrar's lyrics have become more opaque, a trend started on the band's third album, Wide Swing Tremelo. Still, the pedal steel of long-time Son Volt collaborator Eric Heywood is present on two tracks and these songs hark back to the band's first three albums.
I've read recent criticism of Jay Farrar's voice and it's quite true that he has a limited vocal range. But his plaintive baritone can emote much more than countless others with a much broader palette of octaves. Farrar has a rather simple style of singing that's always had more than a hint of resignation to it which suits his songs perfectly. It's difficult to imagine what someone with the voice of an opera star could lend to Farrar's songs which peer out through a windshield on Highway 61 and look at Middle America. Bob Dylan's limited vocal range never stopped him from revolutionizing rock music. Plus Alan Lomax's field recordings contain countless performances by folks who don't have the most adroit voices. It's not how many notes you can hit, it's what you do with the notes that counts.
While former bandmate Jeff Tweedy has become a darling of the indie rock crowd since the collapse of Uncle Tupelo for Wilco's constantly evolving style (and battle with the evil record companies), Jay Farrar hasn't stood still. Although both have moved further afield from their alt-country roots, Farrar alone seems eager to build upon those roots and twist them by experimenting in a solo context and then returning to the band to really mix things up. However, this may not be readily apparent with The Search's lead track, "Slow Hearse". A lilting piano melody, light brush work, and bass keep things rather muted at first but the song builds as Farrar repeats "Feels like driving around in slow hearse". Mellotron strings bubble in the background as a 12-string guitar joins in as well as some backwards guitar parts which could have come from "Tomorrow Never Knows". The keys and backwards guitar loops are far-removed from alt-country but the 12-string is a reminder of The Byrds. And, quite frankly, I love how the song marches forward with sounds piling on sounds until it slowly winds down to a stop. It might be easy to dismiss the song as throwaway but it's the overture of the album, in a way. It gives us a taste of the new sounds being introduced and that piano march returns as well. And, presumably, the rest of the album will tell how what it feels like to be driving around in a slow hearse.
The album's lead single, "The Picture", follows. With a sprightly horn arrangement, it's a million miles away from the preceding song. It's a catchy tune that's "Medicine Hat" 9 years later. The upbeat demeanor of the music stands in contrast to lyrics such as "When war is profit and profit is war" and "We'll know when we get there/If we'll find mercy". "Action" reminded me of "Right On Through" from Wide Swing Tremelo but with more balls and a guitar sound lifted from Led Zeppelin's "Ten Years Gone". This latest version of Son Volt adds more punch to their songs both with Dave Bryson's drumming and Brad Rice's guitar but, unlike a reviewer recently opined, the band does not try to emulate grunge.
Derry deBorja is now a full-time member of the group and his keyboards come to the fore in "Underground Dream". The string sound of "Slow Hearse" returns here in a prominent role as does the 12-string guitar. "Circadian Rhythm" opens with acoustic guitar but organ and some electric guitar ala Neil Young in "Like a Hurricane" soon join in. Oh, and there's more backwards guitar. The song weighs in at just over 5-minutes and, while Bryson opens his hi-hat and gets down a bit towards the end, it's a slow burn with surreal lines like "Thoughts for the plane with brown eyes waiting/Guitar callous whirlwind belief gets made".
"Beacon Soul" is a weak spot here. Not a bad song, by any means, but Farrar's singing always seems to be trying to catch up during the verses and it's only when Bryson slows the pace with rim shots does he get there. The title track makes up for this in spades. It chugs along in classic Son Volt style with a melodic guitar riff. Farrar's phrasing here is more concise and the fantastic chorus is bolstered by minimal but effective organ work. The song closes with a rousing guitar solo that is perhaps less melodic than one would expect but the straining notes keep pace with Bryson's frantic beating of his floor toms.
"Adrenaline and Heresy" slows things down with just some piano and Farrar's forlorn words dragging back the narrator of "Steal the Crumbs" from Farrar's days with Uncle Tupelo. The lyrics turn from oblique social observation to a love story: "She said I still love you/I don't know if I want to spend the/rest of my time with you". A martial drum beat takes the song away from Anodyne territory towards what is probably the first thing remotely resembling a happy ending in Farrar's catalogue. I find myself unsure what to make of the tempo change and Farrar intoning: "High on adrenaline/It's a new day". Did it turn out OK or was she out the door? With the pounding drums and repetitive piano & guitar flourishes, the ending sounds like Krautrock. The first time I heard it, I immediately thought of Faust's "It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl".
"Satellite" is another rocker like "Action", and they both sound like they would have fit nicely on Wide Swing Tremelo. But they exemplify the new Son Volt sound with the more muscular rhythm section and the addition of organ which adds to the sonic palette. "Automatic Society", which follows, fits into the vein as well, but is a bit, well, grungier, with some good slide work. "Methamphetamine" is the first song to feature Eric Heywood and his pedal steel. It sort of lumbers along like "Left a Slide" or "Barstow" and tells covers familiar lyrical ground for Farrar with its images of working class life and broken dreams. The chorus is bursting with rueful longing and stands among Farrar's best. Every Son Volt album has had one song which stands out immediately on first listen as being just blatantly catchy. Trace had "Windfall" and Okemah had "Afterglow 61". The Search has "Methamphetamine".
The piano breaks in "L Train" are all-too short to lift it above being an average mid-tempo rocker. "Highways and Cigarettes" sees Heywood return and features Shannon McNally in close harmony which makes this a companion to "Barstow".
"Phosphate Skin" closes out the album and begins with another backwards guitar loop which gives way to Farrar's acoustic guitar and voice. If you don't listen to the vocals, one might swear it's a dirge. But the lyrics tell you that "It can only get better".
Having read several other reviews of The Search, it seems that response to the album largely fall along the lines of age. Reviewers writing for an older audience, say, The New York Times, praise the album and commonly refer to it as a "mature" work. The music is an expansion of Farrar's previous efforts both within the confines of Son Volt and solo while the lyrics are a treat to decode. On the flipside, websites and publications directed at a generally younger audience find Farrar's lyrics embarrassing and the music lacking. Many of these reviewers note the failure of Farrar to live up to the promise of Trace and essentially say it's been all downhill since 1995. It is the lyrics that come in for a real drudging here, even to the point of all but ignoring the music and this is a real shame. Farrar has always had the keenest ear for melody and nothing has changed in that department. No matter how many washes of keyboards or backwards guitar loops there are, there's always a good, if not great, melody underneath that is being colored and to ignore this is irresponsible. Here the band combine Farrar's tunefulness with his inclination towards a diversity of sounds in a way that allows the two to meld perfectly rather than leaving the latter to be short sonic experiments as was the case on his solo albums.
On the lyric side, the third shift barstool fatalism of Farrar's lyrics with Uncle Tupelo was replaced by a more impressionistic view of Middle America in the first version of Son Volt. Starting with his first solo effort, Sebastopol, in 2001 and continuing up to the album at hand, he's taken a larger view of things. Instead of portraying restless youth at a dead-end job assuaging the pain with the bottle, he documents an automatic society with "planned obsolescence manufactured senselessness" where "special offer only facelift society's soul". Farrar has always had one foot in the past and one in the present. Uncle Tupelo's first album had the punk energy of "Before I Break" right next to a Carter Family cover. When I first listened to "Automatic Society" and thought about it, the traditional song "Peg and Awl" came to mind. It's not that the two songs have much of anything in common musically and the lyrics are very different. However, they both address a change in the winds, so to speak. One is about the effects of the Industrial Revolution while the other is about modern consumerism but each has someone looking at the world around himself and not liking what he sees. The lyrics here are certainly less-direct than in the past but this also makes them more evocative. Perhaps Farrar is just taking a page from the Jon Anderson book of lyric writing. There are times when I listened to the album and felt like a word or phrase was inserted because it fit the melody and/or evoked the right image as opposed to being the most direct way to express something. But for every verse with a line like "Wordsmiths and paintgangs 21st century/All mixed up in modern cacophony", there's a chorus with a simpler message such as "Always dreaming it's the search not the find/The door is open to change your mind". If this style of filtering Herbert Marcuse through Bob Dylan in a less than mercurial way doesn't suit you, so be it.
I take it as a good sign that, at the age of 40, Jay Farrar isn't content to merely tread old ground and try to recreate Trace. His acoustic leanings are still very much alive in Gob Iron, a project with Anders Parker which finds Farrar in Woody Guthrie mode. This, along with his solo albums, means that he is no longer defined by Son Volt. The band is now another place for him to stretch out and do something different. The folksy, alt-country core is still in there but it's now a springboard for investigating other paths. People who lament the fictional notion that the band has never been able to build upon Trace need to get over it.
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