i like the way this blogger uses Bill Frisell as a segue from Lucinda Williams review to Mike Disfarmer, with Birney Imes as a step. We got to this buy viewing a 90-minute video of William Least heat Moon, “Blue highways” the same bloger also wrote of
Lucinda Williams: Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone
Today’s post celebrates a career masterpiece from Lucinda Williams, purveyor of country-soul, rock’n’roll blues – call it what you will – who for the past thirty years has been writing passionate and fiercely confessional songs rich in flawed and broken characters and rooted in the landscape of the American South. I’ll also trace connections between the album and two photographers whose images also portray in intimate detail the landscapes and people of the South.
Lucinda Williams first came to my attention in 1988 when Rough Trade released her eponymous second album of original songs (actually, her third collection, but the first to get any attention over here). Mixing country, blues, and folk and with a voice all heartache, Lucinda Williams defiantly proclaimed – in the words of one of its stand-out songs – ‘Am I too blue for you?’ Another album highlight was ‘Passionate Kisses’ in which Williams sang that she ‘shouted out to the…
I heard Taylor Eigsti on the radio yesterday morning, with Alisa Clancy of KCSM and was moved to call in and purchase a pair of tickets for his show Sunday at Filoli in Woodside, featuring Gretchen Parlato, the vocalist. Filoli is not too far from where Tay grew up, in Menlo Park, and he graduated from the Woodside Priory. He lives in New York these days, and is 30.
When Taylor played The Cubberley Sessions, in fall 2000, he had just turned 16. He said in the interview that Smith Dobson had him help teach a class in San Jose when Tay was only 13 or so. He taught at Stanford Jazz workshop as of age 15 or so and is returning, he says, later this summer, to teach, perform, learn (?!) and jam for the 19th time.
The interviewer name-checked Joey Alexander, a 11-year old with a new set on Motema. I would be curious to hear Tay’s impressions of Joey. He would say nice and polite things, I’m sure.
John Shiflett told me that he could sense Tay’s development between the first and second sets at their free show at the Mountain View performing arts center.
Taylor’s mom, Nancy Eigsti told me once that when Taylor was in the crib he would cry if she didn’t put on a Fattburger record which he like to listen to before falling asleep. As in, he had already developed a certain amount of taste, or the ability to distinguish what he knew from something new — we can argue about the merits of that thing. Tay said in the interview that he remembers listening to Marian McPartland show on the radio, imagining someday being on the show, then worrying that she might call out a tune that he didn’t know. He eventually appeared on the show several times, and in fact filled in for Marian at a Filoli gig she had to cancel, purported on his 16th birthday, which would have been September 24, 2000 if we can believe what we read on the internet.
Taylor said that he tours with the Chris Botti band and that Chris jokingly introduces him as “Brad Cooper on piano”. Here are the two photographs, let’s compare.
When Taylor was 16, he looked more like Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, shown here with Gretchen Parlato.
This is the poster from five shows at Cubberley in 2000, including a Taylor Eigsti hit, but I am joking that it looks like Tay and Gretchen. I met her in Philly, once.
edit to add: I wonder if Paolo Alderighi appearing at Filoli this summer knows “Palo Alto” by Lee Konitz?
Stephen Curry, 2014-2015 NBA champion Game 5 left hand lay up, off left foot
Steph Curry Hebrew tattoo “love never fails” based on First Corinthians
Curry’s tattoo reminded me of the phrase “if I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its cunning.” For a while you would meet Jews wearing necklaces with this inscription, some in the shape of hands. My mom had one. Its from Psalm 139, the same text that says “by the rivers of Babylon” Jews were asked to sing, in a strange land. Rastafarians also found meaning here.
I almost said “if I forget bubbles Hawkins may my Mikan drill lose its cunning”
Bubbles was a little used rookie in 1975, the last time the Warriors won it all. I was 10.
He died quite young. He lives on playing Horse with Pistol Pete.
I wrote previously about a woman with a similar Hebrew tattoo which she said means “lamed Yahweh” but I wondered if she meant or reads “l’adonai” go with god versus to god.
My Hebrew scholar in residence neighbor confirmed that Curry’s tat reads as he thinks it does.
The Torah actually forbids tattoes.
The harder they come movie features the song version of same psalm. It skips or omits the violent last lines.
This line also led me to a desire to read Damascus Gate by Robert Stone, about Jerusalem syndrome.
Somehow I also flash to the recent movie about Beach Boys and the song Let me go home (sloop).
This is a very early Hopper, from the 3,000 works at The Whitney, you can access online
and1: as is the nature of the internet, checking “edward hopper” and “native americans” sent me to this Robert Henri painting of a Santa Clara pueblo subject and a black bowl, 1917, at Ulrich Museum in Wichita, Kansas.
In my research about the good news about Stanford’s Cantor Museum acquiring an early Edward Hopper piece, I found myself investing a couple hours to scanning through the website of the Whitney Museum which has more than 3,0000 Hoppers, most of which are drawings, many from his early and formative years, and non collectible. Of these I downloaded — as information wants to be free and some of it wants to be Plasty — a subset of 50, the bulk of the Indian material plus a couple other topics — athletes, blacks, maybe one or two for prurient reasons.
I don’t know if anyone has written about “Hopper” and “Indians”. It was not something he put much energy into during the heart of his career. I did find a couple drawings of blacks and some interesting compositions. What I found seems to rebut what people say about “South Carolina” which they say is his only work to depict blacks, or a black rather.
For the sports work, I also downloaded some source material that I think he might be drawing from.
The archivist at Whitney, maybe Gail Levin or her successor, has a piece labeled “Kiplin” sic which I presume is better titled “Kipling” as it appears to be the author Rudyard K. The piece is cropped to yield the misleading title, i.e. Whitney titles it’s pieces based on what writing, comment or label is on the actual piece. Later in the portfolio there is also a drawing from a Kipling work, which reinforces my inference.
There’s a piece called “(baseball player)” which depicts an athlete in gear standing on a field that has a goal post so I presume it is actually a gridder.
Edward Hopper, in Whitney
Hopper drawing, in Whitney archive: looks like the same subject as directly above
“Perphelia’s Trailer” (detail) by Red Wing Nez, from a private collection, but I thought of it recently in regards to Palo Alto’s trailer park, Buena Vista, whose residents, 100 or so families, are up in the air about whether they will have to relocate or where their kids will go to school
The announcer, watching the replay said “he’s got the ball on a string” meaning amazing control of it, like magician, and he jumped off the wrong foot to make this left hand layup, to make it 93-85 in Game 5, home, but setting up the chance to close out the Cavs tonite on the road; Cleveland rocks, you betcha.
ON the next possession, Curry steps back and shoots over Dellanova, who was in good position otherwise, to make it, 96-86, on the way to 104-91; it was knotted at 75-all.
And if you have 5 minutes to spare here, in 1985 April back at Philly Spectrum (a basketbal and hockey gym, for awhile) is Grateful Dead doing as first song of 2 hour show, “Why Don’t We Do It in The Road?” which I have adopted to fit, in Plastic Alto sense, the urgency of the Warriors tonite.
I saw the Dead at the Greek about a year later, in 1982. Actually, you can listen to that show, or those shows, all 3 of them at the Achive or Dead net. I also found a stack of ticket stubs from my days checking them out.
Hats off to Yoshi Kato for his preview of Live 105 BFD, in the Palo Alto Weekly, for focusing on Cathedrals, which is a two-person rock band electronica featuring Brodie Jenkins and Johnny Hwin. Best music news story I’ve seen in the Weekly in many a moon.
Brodie Jenkins has been on my radar for about ten years. I was at a Stanford basketball game and she sang the national anthem and really nailed it. For a while in my “A&R” file I had a ticket stub with “Brodie Jenkins” scrawled on it.
In 2011 I met Grahame Lesh at Jack’s I mean Alex’s Boom Boom Room and chatted him up a bit and at that time he still had a side project with Brodie called Maiden Lane.
I am less active in the rock scene, or any music scene, so it is unusual that I am relatively speaking on top of this.
Just now as I mean to send kudos to Yoshi via Plastic Alto and I suss out Cathedrals it turns out that The New York Times has a preview of Cathedrals in NYC, at Le Poisson Lounge, this week. By Jon Caramanica. Wow! He say:
The singer Brodie Jenkins has a voice that’s both pulpy and ethereal — she leans heavy into big words, her voice robust, then fading ever so dreamily. Le Poisson Rouge in New York has Cathedrals Saturday, June 20 for $12 advance $15 dos and also Shonen Knife Monday and Andrew Bird sold out the following Thursday.
The other half of Cathedrals Johnny Hwin rang a bell because he was featured in a New Yorker profile about the post-Millenials or whoever they are: he was part of a class at Stanford that got 1 million hits writing social media apps or a 7 figure exit; the kind of stuff that inspired Mike Judges’s spoof “Silicon Valley” on HBO. The article said that Hwin was also hanging with Steve Jenkins of Third Eye Blind, my Terman Junior High and Gunn school mate as in he’s twice their age; he, Steve Jenkins has a penchant for younger girls, for instance Vanessa Carlton, he dated and “produced”. (I doubt Steve and Brodie are related; but Brodie was part of a family band signed to Mike Curb or someone, with her mom and sis. Her parents I think went to Stanford; years ago I had a long mental list of every Stanford grad in the music scene but I’m long out of it. I did scout Siberian Front on a lawn recently, kinda sorta).
I hope Johnny Hwin also cross-pollinates with DVAN the Vietnamese cultural clique. (I presume Hwin is also Nguyen).
this is a Memphis fade out but: sussing this out a few days ago I went down a rabbit hole about Third Eye Blind versus Smashmouth and that the two bands were appearing at some festival, maybe Bottle Rock and Smashmouth brought Kevin Cadogan on stage to sit in, et cetera. Terry and I were at the Fillmore not long ago for a Anders Osborne show which morphed into a Phil and Friends Show, and Grahame Lesh and his band were the opening act, if that is not a tip-off Midnight something I will update. I had invited Grahame into my Wallace Stegner project.
and1: pretty amazing video, the stage lighting, the dancer, decent song and performance and lip-sync; it seems like the long-awaited response to Chris Isaak, “Wicked Game”:
2. (I guess this is like a footnotes section — I am still ambivalent about the practice of long digressons and rambling tail ends of blog posts versus or compared to giving Grahame Lesh and Midnight North his or their own post. And not sure how central to their respective stories — Grahame Lesh and Brodie Jenkins — their brief overlap is or was — ) Midnight North has about 15 dates booked and sort of crosses paths with Cathedrals somewhere back East, they were in Manhattan a couple days ago. There is a Tiny Desk Concert with Midnight North, GL and four others including a female singer I cannot quite find a name for. So it was October of 2013 that we won tickets from KZSU or KPFA to check out Anders Osborne at the Fillmore and then Phil showed up to play Scarlet Begonias. Here is a video. That’s father and son side by side for the jam. I had thought of Anders as a Boom Boom sized act so was surprised that they were at the Fillmore not surprised they were papering the house. But then word leaked that it was a Phil and Friends warm-up and it did fill.
3. Another thought about Johnny Hwin and his scene is I wonder if they overlap with Rupa Marya and her scene of movers and shakers. Might be an interesting cross-over. Rupa from Palo Alto and Casti not I don’t think Stanford. Rupa is rootsier and world music –sings in Spanish — not electronica. Also forgot to say Grahame Lesh band is rootsier. The road is long, let’s see where all these good people cross and criss.
4. Nathan Heller October, 2013 “Bay Watched: how SF culture is changing the world” says that Hwin has been holed up in the Mission since 2009. How San Francisco’s new entrepreneurial culture is changing the country that is.
5. Here also is Johnny Hwin in The New York Times in 2011 described by Miguel Helft as a student of B.J Fogg’s famous app class, which was in 2007. Heller meanwhile quotes Hendrik Hertzberg in Newsweek in the 1960s describing and quoting Jerry Garcia and proclaims that that era they or we were interested in community whereas today there is a bent towards privatization. I wonder how the energy of being a tech inventor or investor differs or contrasts with that of being part of an arts movement. I am atypical but I very specifically left corporate America and ironically SF in 1992 to try something less industrial and less corporate which evolved into Earthwise Productions. Or I am just the worlds worst sour grapes case. Oh, I thought the Richard Hendricks outcome on Judge, with his company surviving but he being displaced or replaced called to mind J.D. Salinger or at least Shields and Salerno on Salinger and his Vendatic philosophy of having the right to work but not the right to expect to be recognized. The fictitious Hendricks still has stock in fictitious Pied Piper, or what was the dilution? I will add this: I used to smoke weed and drink with #@&^ ages 13 thru 16 or so and #@&^ when we were teammates on the Los Altos Hill Little League Expos Seniors pulled me aside one day and said “Do you know why we are kicking butt, why we are both hitting over .300? It’s because we smoke pot!!” (and stay cool, therefore). #@&^ who is with #@&^ and its new $100 M fund for enterprise software but says he is too busy to catch up with me, kind of a snub. And this is way off topic but kudos to Ariel Gore of HipMama who wrote a provocative essay on the Palo Alto youth and admits she did cocaine in the ladies room of Paly circa 1987 and then dropped out of school when she realized it was killing her. She says: get on the train, and leave town, down lay in front of it. Music is its own reward, not the killer app towards a “three commas” exit. If #@&^, or his assistant, reads this and contacts me and says “don’t say that I smoke or smoked marijuana” I will redact.
6. This was supposed to be a post merging basketball and music: “Why Don’t We Do it in or on the road?” about the Grateful Dead covering The Beatles and how the Golden State Warriors should close out Cleveland Rocks tonite, with a embed of GD in Philadelphia in late 1970s or early 1980s. (This is the entire show, but WDWDI is track one)
7. Also, Tim Lincecum is pitching today in SF, a nooner but maybe I can catch a few innings at The Old Pro and have a salad or chicken sandwich and then watch the Warriors at 6? Also, Wednesday tomorrow in Seattle it is Mad Bum versus King Felix – wish I was there.
8. Writing a blog, even one with 500,000 words and 0 readers is like a message in a bottle or a prayer yet it keeps me somewhat optimistic and maybe I am honing the skills of being able to say something important and timely some day some where. But yes I am rooting for Brodie and Johnny and Grahame and even #@&^.
9. Mazel tov to Bija Milagro, son of Rupa. She meanwhile in 2014 says her scene is gone:
“The rent where I used to live was increased by 300 percent — so my entire musical community has been smashed, completely destroyed, in that everyone has scattered,” she says, “It was not so long ago that we had a scene that was vibrant. It does not exist anymore. We miss the weirdos and the ragtag misfits and the eco-libertarians and the wacky San Francisco people.” (Note: I either co-managed with Chris Cuevas the unsigned Rupa And The April Fishes or was his intern, or just a pain in the side once a week up on Claremont, Chris who went to El Sobrante High with Kirk, who had Nosferatu on his guitar game 5).
10. Here is Johnny site. What’s funny or sad is I thought I saw this guy just an hour ago here in Palo Alto at Coupa, which is like the time I thought I saw David Choe working at Country Sun. Well, duh, because they are in NYC!
Altoon Sultan, via her blog, describes briefly the relationship between two of her small recent egg tempura paintings, a couple years apart, “Angles and Bar” and “Dark Ellipse”. Both pieces are based on agricultural equipment she has seen near her Grafton, Vermont home and studio.
Terry (Terry Acebo Davis) studied with Altoon at SJSU years ago and in 2011 while we were at my Dartmouth reunion (class of 1986 plus 25) we took a little sojourn to catch up with Altoon.
Altoon sends word of her work on the cover of a journal and the accompanying feature. I was impressed with her following on the leading social media.
I was also comparing two works by Edward Hopper, a 1913 painting and a 1921 etching that depict the same New York City building, but from different angles, if that explains where my mind is going.
Grafton, Vermont is about 52.7 miles from Dartmouth. In real life it looks like this:
Not to be confused with Grafton the acrylic saxophone, that Ornette Coleman used
and1: Diacritics is the name of the journal that Altoon’s lovely work adorns the cover of. Here is a link to her media page. Coinky-dinky like, Diacritics is also the name of something put out by DVAN the organization of Vietnamese artists that my former client Dao Strom is part of. Dao is passing thru Cali this month and I wish her well, even if we don’t actually meet up. (i had to avoid this morphing into “Diacritcs w. Diacritics” a whole nuther muther…)
one is out of Johns Hopkins since the 1970s and the other out of SFState or UC Irvine since more recent
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 