FOLK TALK
Dala at The Sanctuary May 21st, 2011 Chatham, NJ
Nu-Folk. What is it? Is it the British Invasion in reverse? There’s a lot of evidence that London is once again the capital of the distinctly American music form known as folk. But what’s in a name? We have here right on this continent as much a claim for the rebirth of acoustic based heartfelt music with a purpose as any. What’s clear is that “It’s all over now baby blue” as far as the recording industry is concerned and folk music is the best chance we have at reclaiming music as a people’s medium. Folk music is a way of communicating radical ideas and helps the powerless gather the great courage needed to fight for survival against the mechanical button pushing future that awaits us if we don’t do anything. A call to arms is at the center of this movement and if it isn’t is should be. This is the time to put away your electric guitar and crossover to the acoustic side. On July 25th, 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival Bob Dylan with a ragtag band made up of musicians from The Butterfield Blues Band that only knew two songs that they rehearsed the night before played to an astonished crowd an electric version “Maggie’s Farm” which started a trend that has maybe now finally come to an end and run its course. It’s time to realize that by playing electric folk music today’s musicians would be giving in to the corporate powers simply by being held hostage to using the electricity that they spew out at alarming rates considering the plight of the planet that we’re ravaging while we’re reveling. Aren’t we consuming the dirty resource while we’re playing electric instruments that’s precisely at the center of the endless power struggle between the haves and have nots? The corporations do have great power over us but the times are changing and we really need new folk heroes to lead the way. “Unplugged” was the good old eMpTV’s way of circling the wagons around their monopoly but they’ve long since given up that pipedream to American Idol and that ilk. All they seem to care about now is celebrity pregnancy and to titillate you with dumbed-way-down vacuous reality shows about people who don’t know the first thing about folk music. Who will lead us out of the musical darkness we’re now in and how will they use this powerful medium of the people to help guide us away from the precipice of the ultimate corporate takeover that will swallow us up if we don’t take decisive action?
The Dala girls are great candidates. I saw them perform last May 21st, 2011 at The Sanctuary in Chatham New Jersey and they brought out the big names with their angelic voices that are so perfectly matched that they will undoubtedly be forced to stay together for life. As an acoustic duo treasure from Scarborough, Canada they are just one of our great hopes for the future of the music we know as folk. Why? Because they sing “Ohio” like they mean it and they know exactly what side they are on. Because they sing “Girl from the North Country” like it was always their song. It was Canada after all that brought us so many great folk artists like Joni Mitchell. They performed “Both Sides Now” as if it was written just for them to sing. It’s also songs from the great American folk songbook that they play like North Carolina’s Loudon Wainwright III’s “One Man Guy”. Amanda (Da) who dedicated the song to her father in the preamble and told us a great story about him packing her lunch hippie style (one raw carrot) and not allowing music at the dinner table. Since they played music all day long they needed to take a little break for their nourishment. She loves her father’s free spirit and gives him full credit for helping shape her mindset that will always be faithful to the values of the previous generation instead of rebelling against it. Why? Because those values he gave to her are universal and bridge any generation gap. Amanda also has a wonderful stage presence and is a true star in the sense that she commands your attention without demanding it. She also plays the ukulele, guitar and glockenspiel. Sheila (La), the other side, showed us great musicality and the ability to soar to great heights with her voice. The two played one solo number each and could stand on their own very nicely but it’s the duo that sets off the sparks. They ended the show with Mancini’s “Moon River” and fellow countryman Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon”. Both these songs conjure up great notions of the vastness and power of nature in the North American continent that should be cherished and protected. They also have a great Smothers Brothers like repartee on the stage even when addressing a serious issue.
Mel Lyman, the self proclaimed avatar and charter member of The Jim Kweskin Jug Band, is credited with being one of the people who helped calm the crowd down after Dylan’s Judas moment at Newport and restored the folk faithful to its purpose. He unfortunately went on to create a weird commune on Boston’s Beacon Hill that was infamously highlighted on national TV in 1970 by two blissed out cult members who were unknown stars in the Antonioni movie called Zabriske Point, Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin. They had an extremely strange appearance on The Dick Cavett Show to promote the film and both curiously said that they simply lived to serve Mel Lyman. Well that sort of thinking helped put an end to the hippie-folk movement. Why should anybody support or join any movement following a musician when musicians are much better suited to be guides and spokespeople not leaders that we blindly follow? Maybe that’s what Dylan was saying all along: Don’t follow me because I’m doing my own thing but try to listen to a little of what I say and maybe you’ll learn something you can use to help the world be a better place.
These Dala girls are very cute and they do not quite have the transformative presence of a Joan Baez singing “Joe Hill” at Woodstock but they could be at the forefront of something new. They could deliver the message that needs to be heard and they have the bright clear voices to do it. They had a short song about Global Warming and they should flesh that one out but at least they showed that they care about the things that need to be dealt with if we are going to save the planet and save ourselves from corporate dominance. They probably are as good an example of what‘s out there on the road going town to town singing their hearts out. Their voices are golden and without the slightest bit of affectation which in today’s warble-y world of nothing but female vocal gymnasts without a cause is thankfully a new direction. If I hear one more baby-voiced singer espousing the virtues of a car in a commercial who is nothing but a folk singer wannabe without anything to say who was raised on nothing but Portishead, or the numerous others who all sing in that same old fashioned fake twang, I’ll stop watching TV all together and listen to some real music in my vast collection. If we can just give up our electricity maybe we have a chance and just play music around the proverbial campfire.
”Time will tell who has fell and who was left behind when you go your way and I go mine.” Maybe Bob was trying to tell us something when he went electric that day, he went his way and we followed but we all benefited by an increased awareness of seeing things his way which was universal in its day. The rock and roll movement was back then. Now the time is clearly upon us and we’ll need to step away from the amplified noise and embrace the acoustic music. This is truly the meaning of Nu-folk. Community breeds creativity and makes us stronger. Steve Gabe, 8/4/2011
An Evening with Roger McGuinn at The Clark, April 9th, 2011
When I was a teenager The Byrds had already come and gone but their Greatest Hits collection LP was still up front and center when it came to album listening. Eight Miles High was my all time favorite. Everyone had to have at least one favorite Byrds tune. I can still hear my friend Tom saying "Play Mr. Spaceman, man". By the mid-70’s the best groups were already gone or winding down and their recorded music was all we had left to show us the way back to the golden era. Still there were the Stones, the Dead, the Dylan, James Taylor, Jesse Colin Young and the country blues folk rock space cowboy thing going strong but the "scene" had all but died while disco and punk were coming on strong to fill the void. The new wave it seemed could only be held at bay through our vigilant album listening parties, our major hanging out activity in our tapestry billowed bedrooms, where we partook in those songs and the rituals of the hippie generation: plunking the needle down on the record and reclining, dreaming and somehow still remembering what it was like when those songs held court over the airwaves. We also hung out in the park a lot and anyone with an acoustic guitar could always be counted on to bang out a few decent Byrds, Dylan or Cat Stevens tunes and the music lived on right up through today where being at An Evening with Roger McGuinn at The Clark was the live version of everything everyone wanted to hear back in our bedrooms had the "scene" lasted just a little while longer and more.
The surprising thing about Roger’s show is the artful storytelling aspect which brings you gently along with him on his incredible rise to fame. All the many lucky and unlikely events that transpired to make his career: from the good teachers at the folk music school he went to in Chicago to the way too high action on his first guitar which forced him to eschew chords and learn a riff from a B-side of a early rock single that coincidentally was the same riff George Harrison was learning at the very same time...The stories are all like that, equally amazing and told in a mood and an atmosphere that makes you float deep back into your own imagination. Then here comes the music. Not a hit was left off the table, the ones you know, the ones you don’t, but they were all hits and well constructed thoughtful music at that. There’s really something to talk about here. A full two hours worth went by so easily with no shuffling in the seats and no short changing either. The life story he shared with us was a magical musical moment. It felt like there was nothing but time and that there was nothing better to do with it.
The concert at the Clark was so much more than we had expected with the rousing applauses and the well deserved multiple-song encore. To think I was still vacillating up to the very day as to whether we should stay home and do a video restaurant review of a new restaurant in Pittsfield, or go up north and see the great folk rock pioneer? Well, if reading this review doesn’t give you the answer then I’ve failed as a writer. I want to let people know that I am so glad we went. I’m still singing the songs. I don’t even need to listen to music because it’s all still there in my head. Sitting back and listening and learning how Roger’s incredible career trajectory mirrored the coming of folk rock and the Beatles is as thorough a lesson in the history of modern recorded music as you’re likely to find and you certainly won’t find it in any college course at least not with the musician himself flawlessly playing and singing to you all the fine examples he’s penned or re-imagined. My favorite story of course was how he came up with the hybrid Eight Miles High, which he told us in his most eloquent storytelling style, was simply about a flight across the pond, a simple question of doing the math and his not so simple idea of combining of folk, Coltrane and Indian sitar music. There are many other amazing stories he tells throughout the evening so letting a couple out of the bag to give you an idea of how your mind will be expanded should be forgiven. That’s the beauty of storytelling. The story will be told for generations to come especially if younger kids go. If they love the Beatles and folk music they’ll love Roger. The Byrds were the American Beatles, they took folk to the next level up and they were the missing link between the Chad Edwards Trio and Limelighters and the folk rock explosion. Roger played with both those seminal folk acts because in the past people came up through the ranks. They didn’t just burst on the scene as the next big thing and fizzle out.
Recently I was scouring the racks at one of the last standing record shops around, a great pleasure that will be sorely missed when they’re all gone, and I came across the Byrds Greatest Hits CD for $7.99 while I was looking for new folk acts like The Monsters of Folk, The Low Anthem and Wilco but it was the Byrds CD I had to have. When I saw that Roger was playing locally it just seemed like kismet. I do not want to disparage or dissuade anyone from listening to new folk or new folk rock music a/k/a "Alt Country" because of course that is our mantra at NFC, so please go out, listen and buy new music. But seeing "An Evening with Roger McGuinn" and listening to The Byrds Greatest Hits CD I realized that we all should pay more attention to what has already been created in order for us to truly offer up something new and inspired. The Clark’s auditorium by the way has fantastic acoustics and is a very comfortable venue to see an intimate concert.
Roger, Wilco, over and out...see you next time.Steve Gabe, 5/1/2011