It’s a Small World After All

Ever had a song stuck in your head? Not just stuck, but impenetrably lodged in the gray matter beneath your skull, ready to pop out at a moment’s reminder?

Well, I’ve just been through the Disney World Magic Kingdom experience with my two young girls, and one of their very favorite things was the classic, “It’s A Small World” ride. If you’ve ever been to Disney, you know exactly which one it is–I last went in 1974 and I could still remember it even before this trip. Now, of course, that annoying song is on permanent repeat in my head, until I get something else that’s catchy enough to replace it, I suppose.

Because I don’t like to suffer alone, here’s a recent home video of the actual ride, music and all…and if you find a song that’ll chase this one out, let me know.

“Were You There”

With another Holy Week upon us, I’ve been dwelling on my favorite hymn of the season, “Were You There.” The definitive version, or at least my personal pick for the best one, has to be by Johnny Cash–his craggy voice is well suited to this kind of somber gospel tune, and the assistance of the angelic voices of the Carter Family on most recorded versions makes it even more heavenly.
The take below is from the Grand Old Opry in 1962, in a much less “produced” rendition than the more common studio releases one typically hears.

There are many other versions of “Were You There,” of course, and its origins as a Negro Spiritual are well documented. Go here for the lyrics as printed in a hymnal in 1926.

Neil Young, Before the Ditch

Neil Young once famously commented that his hit song, “Heart Of Gold,” put him in the middle of the road, but he didn’t much like it there so he headed for the ditch. His musical ups and downs and various explorations have resulted in some great music, some okay music, and some godawful music over the years, but count me as one who still enjoys hearing “Heart of Gold,” every once in a while.

The video below is from a BBC broadcast in 1971, Young is introducing a “new song” called, “Heart Of Gold,” which is so new he has to hunt for the right key harmonica to play with it.

It’s this newness that makes this such a great take, I think–Young is still enamored of the song, just as any of us rightfully are when we create something that we enjoy and think is good.

Listen to the youth and the wonder in Young’s voice, which is something his recent albums have lacked–the youth, because he’s obviously much older; the wonder, because he’s obviously much more cynical and cranky.

The Avett Brothers–It’s a Family Affair

This is an extended version of an article that appears in this week’s Columbia Free Times. The Avett Brothers are one of the headliners for this year’s St. Patrick’s Day Festival in Five Points.

When it comes to making music, it’s a family affair for the Avett Brothers even if you’re not actually blood kin, says their bassist Bob Crawford.
“It has been six and a half years now that we’ve been playing together and I couldn’t feel more related,” He says, “from their parents down to the whole Avett family. It was just the three of us for a while, but now that we’ve added a road manager, a sound man, and a cello player, I’ve seen that the way I was welcomed into the clan is the way all of us have been treated. It always has been a very tightly knit family.”
Over those six-plus years, the Avett Brothers have produced a string of recordings that combine old-time music,bluegrass, country, and folk in ways only a group that started out as a high school rock band could imagine. Their raucous live shows are attended by a rabid fan base who sing along to every song, and 2007’s Emotionalism garnered enough positive press to land on a number of critic’s year-end top ten lists. With all this attention and a grassroots groundswell of popularity, it’s interesting to note that the group has issued all but their first couple of self-produced CDs on their manager’s label, Ramseur Records.
“We did the first two ourselves, and when things began to grow, Dolph (Ramseur) was just a guy who had another job, saw us play, liked it, and thought he could help,” Crawford says. “He has worked so hard for us, I think if he had to put on a sandwich board and walk the streets to get people to come see us play, he would. If you play in a band, you’re always meeting people who say they can do stuff for you, but we gave him the chance and he’s come through for us.”
The band’s status as the flagship act of a label with them as the only client doesn’t mean that they are not open to some other arrangement, however.
“We’re not elitist, indie-music snobs,” Crawford says. “We’re not anti-major label. Dolph is our manager and our label, and that’s worked for us so far. If we move to a bigger label he’ll still be with us in his role as our manager, we just haven’t found the right fit yet–we’ve been very cautious about making that move. With the bigger labels, a lot of it is living up to their expectations, and what you can put into it yourselves.”
Just like any band who stays together for more than a few years, the Avett Brothers sound has evolved, from a rangy, raw punk-grass to a more refined yet still sometimes wildly energetic melodicism.
“I think we have been changing gradually all along,” Crawford says, “Even since the last album, we have demoed about 60 more songs in the past six months. As you learn, you use the studio better, play your instrument better, write better songs. We probably feel the musical changes more than others, we’re hearing new textures, new sounds, but there is still an underlying current that has remained constant.”
The Avetts have cross-genre appeal, having played the big folk and bluegrass festivals like Merlefest, plenty of rock ‘n’ roll venues around the country, and now they’re even scheduled to play the Grand Old Opry in April.
“We have a long history with Nashville,” Crawford says, “We have been playing there since we started, making 30 bucks a trip. We got our publishing deal and our booking agent in Nashville, too.
As for that crossover appeal, Crawford agrees that the band covers a lot of ground in their music.
“Whatever it is that we do, there are points in it where we touch certain things. we started out playing Tom T. Hall and Ramblin Jack Elliot songs, so the country music thing isn’t really new to us. We played the Americana music awards last year ( and they won two awards themselves) at the Ryman Auditorium, and to be on that stage where the Opry began, that’s the real deal.”
Despite their prolific recorded output, the Avetts have always gained the best notices for their live performances, and Crawford acknowledges that there are differences between the two.
“We used to try to capture the live thing on a recording but were always frustrated because it didn’t come across well,” He says. “Radio stations wouldn’t like the album enough to play it, but they’d come see us live and love it. we’ve always had trouble with the transition. On Emotionalism we worked with Bill Reynolds (Blue Rags, Band of Horses), and it was the first time I saw Scott and Seth give a little control back, listening to someone else. with Danny and Bill’s help, we formed a new team. They set us up like we were playing live for the basic tracks, then we added stuff to that. We went for different textures, different sounds, and brought in pedal steel, fiddle, and cello. We began to think more from the angle of what worked in the studio. I can only imagine with this new awareness what the next album will be like.” Crawford doesn’t see an end to the disparity between the live show and the albums, however, and that’s okay with him as the group continues to explore new directions in their own methodical, gradual way.
“The recorded and live work may diverge a bit,” He says, ”We’ve added a drum kit, which Seth and Scott alternate playing, and Joe is with us full time on cello. We’ll be addding a keyboard player soon, too.” Chances are pretty good that they’ll be welcomed into the growing extended Avett clan just as warmly as their musical brethren already in the band.

He’ll be Edwin McCain, Thanks

This is an extended version of an article that appears in this week’s edition of the Columbia Free Times. McCain is one of the headliners for this year’s St. Patrick’s Day Festival in Five Points.

“I’ll Be,” Edwin McCain’s number one hit from 1997’s Misguided Roses, has continued to bring the South Carolina singer-songwriter recognition, with the audience from Dr. Phil voting it as their favorite wedding song last year.
“I figured if I ever got on that show it wouldn’t be good,” McCain says, “I’m happy to have been on when it wasn’t about something weird.” The extended life of that song in particular has been a major factor in his continuing career.
“The gift of having a song like that, which keeps on going and going, is that it affords me the ability to keep doing what I do,” McCain says. “I can go back to the world of independent music and not focus on the sales charts any more while that song just stays out there and does the work for me.”
Not that McCain hasn’t put in plenty of his own work over the years, however.
“I’m going on seventeen years of playing professionally, and I know that for at least ten of those years, we were playing full time,” McCain says. “I learned that from bands like Blues Traveler and Warren Haynes, they were never big radio bands but they had careers and the respect of their peers.” That’s a model that McCain says he’s tried to follow himself.
“If your’e going to have a career that’s the one to have,” He says. “As far as the music industry goes, I’ve had my strugggles, but I would still do it the same way–If I had experienced the kind of Dave Matthews succes or Hootie, i’d probably be dead.”
McCain’s referring to the mid-1990s glory days of fellow South Carolinians Hootie & the Blowfish, who sold over 14 million copies of their debut Cracked Rear View, spawning a small army of coattail-riders plying similar versions of the band’s accessible, rootsy, pop-rock sound, including McCain. He’s the first to admit the huge difference that the support of the guys in Hootie made.
“I’ve told them a bunch of times that I don’t think I can ever repay them for what they did for me early in my career,” McCain says, “How totally generous they were, they let me tag along.” One of the staples of those joint tours with Hootie was a show-closing rendition of the Bill Withers classic, “Use Me,” with all of the members from both bands back out on stage for an extended jam.
“That jam on, “Use Me” was a standard thing at all our shows back then,” McCain says, “We did that song I don’t know how many times in my association with the Blowfish guys, and it was always a lot of fun.”
McCain’s love of classic soul has led to a new project coming out this June, an album where he’ll be covering a batch of soul hits from the 60s and 70s.
“Time Life Records came to me about doing this album, which is strange because they are part of the same company I used to be with (McCain’s major label deal was through Atlantic Records, another division of Time/Warner) and I thought it was a cool oppportunity,” McCain says, “I’ve always credited this music as an influence on me, but never sung it, or at least recorded it before.”
The album will feature songs from Al Green, Sam & Dave, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and more, and the sessions were some of the easiest he’s ever been involved with, McCain says.
“We cut the whole record in ten days with a band that included people like Ivan Neville,” He says, “It has a real live feel to it. There are special guests like Joan Osborne, who sang on ‘Dreams to Remember’ with me, and overall it was just a really unique experience.”
While McCain’s profile isn’t what it once was on the national stage, he has kept busy satisfying a solid fan base by touring and playing events like the yearly Rock Boat cruise, which just sailed in February for the 2008 edition to Cayamo with McCain among performers like Shawn Mullins, Lyle Lovett, and Emmylou Harris.
“I have to work to make my living and feed the band members, I’m basically running a small business,” McCain says. ”I like to have that kind of challenge, though, slugging away in the bars doing the grunt work–I love it.” For McCain, the hits and the album sales that brought fame, however fleeting, were all icing on what has been a career that mostly occurred by dumb luck and pure happenstance.
“It’s all been by accident, right down to how I got started doing this,” McCain says. “I was a student at the College of Charleston and crashed my car, since I owed money on the repairs I started playing a few nights a week at a mexican restaurant in downtown Charleston, San Miguels. The first night I got seventy-five bucks and a meal–I dropped out of school right then and haven’t looked back since.”
These days Edwin McCain’s life is about as close to normal as it will probably ever get. He’s married and has two boys, 2 1/2 and 1 1/2 years old, which has affected his life in ways he couldn’t have imagined, he says.
“We took the boys to see ‘Diego Live’, and Dora made a surprise appearance,” He says, “It was like a rock show, only they use more production on these shows than I’ve ever had.” The advent of children has influenced another aspect of McCain’s life that hadn’t changed in a long, long time–his trademark long, straight locks of hair were shorn last year.
“There seemed to be some gender confusion with the boys looking at me and their mother,” McCain says, “There was ugly mama and pretty mama, as far as they were concerned. Also, if you’ve done the kid thing you know they like to grab the hair and yank on it, and let’s face it, dealing with brushing the knots out of your long hair every morning falls way down the list of priorities once you have kids.”
So Edwin’s career and family life are continuing onward in a balance that he seems to be comfortable with.
“I’ve got a bunch of new songs of my own written already and I’ll be sorting through them all to plan a new original relelase in the next year, year and a half,” He says, ”Frankly, I hope I’m still doing this when I’m eighty.”