Maverick Magazine Review
[+ Show ]
Carrie Elkin’s fourth release resounds with a sense of warm, earthy poetry that combines a strong fo...Carrie Elkin’s fourth release resounds with a sense of warm, earthy poetry that combines a strong folk/soul framework, her own sweet-toned but characterful vocals and quietly offbeat writing that never seems wilfully eccentric. The all-original collection was recorded in Austin, Texas, but significantly Elkin herself has lived and worked variously in Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado and now back in Austin. At times it’s hard not to draw comparisons with the subtle, rootsy eclecticism of Devon Sproule, particularly on the lightly jazzy Did She Do Her Best, which also showcases Elkin’s rich, rounded accent. Her compelling musical range also takes in the sparse, fragile piano-led opener Obadiah, as wispy and tremulous as anything by The Last Town Chorus, the pretty, child-like folk of Questions About Angels and the beguiling Celtic-influenced roots lilt of Roots & Wings, with its gutsy guitar twang and soaring melody. The album highlight must surely be the bittersweet country-blues bar-room anthem Ode To Ogallala, with its easy melding of co-producer Colin Brooks’ lap steel and a spirited chorus of backing vocals. Elkin’s loose, conversational lyrics trip easily off the tongue as she states, ‘It’s the end of the Texas trail, and it’s where I begin / A town too tough for Texans; Lord I think I’ll fit right in’. The tone takes a more melancholic turn with the brittle, darkly resonant ballad Year Before the War and Black Lung, a bleak but soulful tale of a miner’s early death. Elkin skilfully handles a redemptive conclusion however, and the uplifting album closer Gospel Song is soaked in laid-back bluesy charm. Mention must also be made of the fearsome multi-instrumental talents of Brooks (Dobro, lap steel, guitars, piano, dulcimer, bass, percussion, organ, background vocals) and co-producer, engineer and mixer Mark Addison (percussion, organs, mellotron, melodic, bass, bouzouki, guitars, piano, harmonium), whose colourful tones make an essential contribution to an instantly likeable, clever and rewarding roots album. HC
Folk Wax Review
[+ Show ]
One Night at Momo's
Three Straight Sets, Connections Galore
And A Kerrville Twist
Aust...One Night at Momo's
Three Straight Sets, Connections Galore
And A Kerrville Twist
Austin, Texas
By Arthur Wood
The original plan was simply to go see Danny Schmidt, a 2007 Kerrville Folk Festival Songwriting Contest winner, sing some tunes in a "round" at an Austin, Texas, venue called Momo's, which is located on West Sixth Street in the heart of the city. The date was Tuesday, May 20, two days before the 2008 Kerrville festival was scheduled to spring into action one hundred-plus-miles away at the Quiet Valley Ranch out in the Texas Hill Country. Sixth Street can be a wonderful and diverse trip if you are in any way musically inclined, with just about every genre imaginable purveyed nightly in its clubs, bars, and restaurants. The entrance to Momo's is located just off Sixth Street on Rio Grande and involves ascending a flight of stairs to the club's extensive indoor and outdoor floor areas.
I had contacted Schmidt a few weeks prior to leaving this sceptred isle for my 2008 Kerrville/Texas sojourn, and closed my initial communication with the enquiry, "Is woman who rocks in her chair while singing, headed Kerr way this year?" His reply amounted to, "Actually she's singing at Momo's later the same night as my show, if you feel like staying up late. She'll be with her band...it should be good." Schmidt's reply confused me somewhat and with no time prior to my departure for further communication, I concluded, "The woman must have hit the big time." The truth of the matter proved to be somewhat simpler. Carrie Elkin had simply relocated from Boston to Austin and recruited locally based players - but more of that later. Proof of her presence in Austin manifested itself within a few minutes of arriving at Momo's when I found myself, standing at the bar, in conversation with Carrie Elkin.
Danny Schmidt, Betty Soo, and Richard Bowden
I guess you're wondering what the specific thrust of this piece is going to be. What it's not going to be is a blow-by-blow account of the shenanigans that unfolded onstage at Momo's over the ensuing handful of hours, but rather a synopsis of what I saw and heard entwined, with reviews of the latest recordings by the artists who performed that evening. Sitting in the middle of the stage, as it were, between two roses, Schmidt's in-the-round companions were, to his right, Vanessa Lively, and to his left, Betty Soo. Lively opened the first round followed by Schmidt and Soo. While introducing her first song Soo mentioned that the guy sitting in to her left, with his back against the wall (at that end of the Momo's stage), was "Richard." Now Richard was wearing shades, but if you are sitting on the stage of an Austin club holding a fiddle, then you have to be Richard Bowden. And if you are at all familiar with top-notch, Texas-born fiddle players from the closing decades of last century, Bowden comes from the top of that heap.
Okay, back to the round. We reviewed Danny Schmidt's most recent release, Little Grey Sheep, back in mid-January this year [click HERE to read the review]. A Chain Unbroken is San Antonio-born-and-bred Vanessa Lively's sophomore recording. Strange to relate, particularly for an Austin-based musician, Lively's second album was recorded over a two-month period during the winter of 2007 in a studio in Mossley, a suburb of the city of Manchester, in North West England. Stefan Pope, an Englishman that Lively befriended in Ecuador while recording her debut, Let Me Rise, assisted Lively to produce both releases. A Chain Unbroken features ten Lively-penned originals, plus a cover of Oaxaca, Mexico-born, Lila Downs' hypnotic, Latin-flavoured "Dignificada" (translates as "Dignified"). The latter lyric relates how Digna Ochoa, a human rights lawyer, was assassinated in her Mexico City office during October 2001. Released earlier this year, highlights on A Chain Unbroken include "The Only Day There Is," "Before Her Time," and the saxophone-propelled album closer "Alleluia." Lyrically, Lively's songs feature repeated references to love, grey skies, and the wind, but rarely possess tangible storylines. The album liner consists of basis fold-over that, artwork apart, mainly features track-by-track details of the session players, studio, etc. The song lyrics are posted on Lively's website (vanessalively.com).
On a typically blowtorch-hot Hill Country afternoon, four days after my Momo's escapade, sheltered under the relatively new corrugated metal and timber canopy that tops the Kerrville campgrounds located Threadgill Theatre, as a finalist in this year's New Folk Songwriting Contest, Betty Soo performed "Glass Heart" and "Never The Pretty Girl." Some thirty hours later Soo was, deservedly, confirmed as one of this year's half-dozen New Folk winners. A week earlier Soo enjoyed similar success in the Singer/Songwriters Contest at the Wildflower Arts & Music Festival, held annually in Richardson, Texas. A Korean-American, Soo grew up in the town of Spring, Texas, which is located to the north of Houston. Her latest release, Little Tiny Secrets, also her sophomore effort, was released last year. A separate EP has accompanied many of Tom Russell's recent album releases: similarly, concurrently released with Little Tiny Secrets was Soo's four-song Never The Pretty Girl. Commerce does not however, rule over all else in Soo's world and the proceeds from sale of her EP are being donated to International Justice Mission, a non-profit human rights agency (you can learn more about this organisation at www.ijm.org).
Both discs were produced by guitarist Stephen Doster (Nanci Griffith, Hal Ketchum, Tommy Elskes) and recorded in Austin. Let's begin with the EP, the winner thereon being the aforementioned "Never The Pretty Girl," a 21st century hook-laden creation in the vein of Janis Ian's 1970's classic "At Seventeen" - "If you'll take a chance on a plain face/You'll find a heart that's up for the race/You'll find a head full of thoughts of love/You'll find a hand that will fit like a glove/And if you come back for a second look/You'll find a tender heart loneliness shook/You'll find eyes filled with the glow of you/You'll find us two." The song is simply divine and a tune that cries out for the listener to hit replay. The ten-cut Little Tiny Secrets begins with the truly optimistic musician-on-the-road-themed "Coming Over Me," divulges the intimate thoughts and memories running through the mind of a woman living on the edge in "Stay," waltzes its way through the delightful "The Story Of Us," while, propelled by a Jazz shuffle, "Secrets" is a black comedy replete with asides that the narrator proffers in a sly, conspiratorial fashion. Conscious or unconscious (when composing it), Soo's anthemic song "Revival" is a spot-on exposition of the Kerrville ethos: "It could always be this way." "If You Fall" possesses the feel of a song Dar Williams would have penned during her early career peak, and the hits simply keep on coming with Soo's up-tempo "Easy Living," while the reality-check album closer, "Goodbye," is generously laced with humour. Soo's comprehension that discernable melodies cry out for cleverly plotted poetic lyrics is way beyond evident on Little Tiny Secrets, and given a full FolkWax review this album would be a shoo-in for at least an "8" rating. Soo's website is located at bettysoo.com.
Carrie Elkin
Since we've already established one English connection, here's another. The last occasion on which I saw Richard Bowden perform was a few years back at The Musician, a Leicester, England, venue, as accompanist to artist/playwright/songwriter Terry Allen and his son Bukka. Strange to relate the next act scheduled at Momo's that Tuesday evening was none other than Bukka, accompanied by his Screen Door Music cohort and cellist par excellence Brian Standefer. The pair performed a short set, previewing Allen's upcoming weekly summer residency at the club. His performance complete, Bukka told me that he had, finally, released his sophomore solo album late last year. Sweet Valentine, his debut disc, surfaced nearly nine years earlier. Furthermore, it appears that a follow up to the Y2K Screen Door Music - The Blue Album, an instrumental recording by Screen Door Music (Bukka, Standefer, and Robbie Gjersoe on guitar and backing vocals) is also in the works. A couple of years back Screen Door Music produced the excellent various artists, "nation at war" themed, Red House Records release 13 Ways To Live.
Featuring ten Bukka-penned originals, in addition to stalwart support from Gjersoe and Standefer (the latter also engineered the recording) for the Confidante sessions Terry Allen (keyboards, accordion, lead vocal) enlisted locals Chris Searles (drums, percussion), George Reiff (bass), Chris White (bass), Richard Bowden (fiddle), Pam Miller (background vocals), and Will Sexton (guitar). The album opener, "Cadillac Hotel," is prefaced by a sombre-sounding cello figure and midway through the melody changes tempo, while Bukka's (female?) narrator, her hotel window open, recalls hearing a street musician play "fourth story Blues." Optimism for the future permeates "Betterside," loss and regret underpin the emotive "Behold What You Found," while the "Baby's Gone" narrator appears overpowered by melancholy. Employing the poetic device of an artist creating a picture, the narrator in "World Of Pretend" transports the listener from that first awkward "Hello" through to the event of two bodies merging into one. Confidante closes with the angst-filled love ballad "Wash Out And Dry," and I have to profess adoration for the racy lyric and waltz-paced melody that graces "Naked Display." The marriage of Standefer's cello and Allen's keyboard and voice make for a heady mix, as they relate the latter's lyrically dark-hued tales. Bukka's website is located at bukkaallen.net.
At the outset of this piece I mentioned "woman who rocks in her chair while singing" and I guess it's time to explain the source of that comment. When Danny Schmidt played the Kerrville New Folk Winners show last year he was accompanied vocally by Carrie Elkin. Both performers sat on chairs. I soon concluded that Elkin possesses a big voice that belies her slight frame. Schmidt's performance climaxed with a rendition of the still-to-be-recorded "Serpentine Cycle Of Money" and I recollect that, perfectly balanced on the rear legs of her chair, Carrie simply sang her heart out. With Elkin the next scheduled Momo's act, as the Tuesday evening progressed I figured that if I was in for a penny I may as well be in for a pound. It was going to be a late night...
Elkin's band consisted of Mark Addison (keyboards), Mark Williams (cello, bass), Dustin Welch (banjo), and Doug Marcis (drums), plus sitting in was guest guitarist/vocalist Colin Brooks. Brooks' current combo, the Band Of Heathens, had played an album release set just up the road at Waterloo Records earlier that evening. Addison, Brooks, and Amy Burchette produced Elkin's latest recording, The Jeopardy Of Circumstance. Unlike the foregoing trio of recording artists, this is Elkin's fourth solo release. There is also another British connection - with Elkin's disc already being available in the U.K., publicist Rob Ellen and his North of Scotland-based Medicine Music had scored enthusiastic reviews for it in a number of nationally distributed U.K. music publications.
Carrie Elkin's The Jeopardy of Circumstance
Click Cover For More Info
Questions about faith and spirituality subtly flavour the storylines that grace The Jeopardy Of Circumstance. The narrator in the album's opener, "Obadiah," might just be Lily Downs, the central character in Sue Monk Kidd's debut novel The Secret Life Of Bees [2002]. "Roots & Wings" contrasts mankind's desire for a place to hang one's hat with the urge to be going. A soulful goodtime-sounding number, "Ode To Ogallala" is full of suggestion and warm memories, while the waltz-paced "Questions About Angels" poses interesting questions regarding morality and wealth. Now mature in years, the blind, male narrator in "Year Before The War" reflects on his two marriages and the vicissitudes of life, and Elkin (once again) courageously employs a male voice in "Shell Of A Man." Melancholy, loss, and love permeate "Black Lung," a word movie, while, based on what I've said so far, "Gospel Song," the blissfully wayward-sounding closing cut, requires no explanation. Across ten tunes, employing nearly twenty instruments, Elkin and Co. have created 3D Technicolor musical backdrops, while Elkin's lyrics evoke mystery and magic and cleverly draw the listener in. Carrie's website is located at carrieelkin.com.
Having related what I witnessed when she vocally supported Schmidt a year back, I told Elkin following her Momo's set, "I have never seen a performer so in love with the act of singing." That's the gospel truth, and from what I've subsequently learned I'm not the only one to believe or state that. Onstage Elkin was simply a force of nature, offstage her eyes retain an impish 24/7 twinkle. So twinkle, twinkle...
And there you have it, a night filled with music, connections galore, and a Kerrville twist. Austin, I love ya!
Arthur Wood is a founding editor of FolkWax. You may contact Arthur at folkwax@visnat.com.
Steamboat Folk Singer Cranks Up Electric Energy
[+ Show ]
THE MUSIC ALWAYS COMES FIRST, of course. But for me, the difference between a great live show and ... THE MUSIC ALWAYS COMES FIRST, of course. But for me, the difference between a great live show and just a plain old good concert has a lot to do with whether the performers genuinely seem to be having a good time. If they seem bored and slightly indifferent, I always take it personally. If they're genuinely excited, well, so am I. There were Crosby, Stills and Nash in 1977 at the Chicago Auditorium; Joe Walsh [at Milwaukee's Summerfest]; The Grateful Dead in Des Moines; the Boss, performing on the shoulders of a fan in the crowd at the old McNichols Arena in Denver...Bonnie Raitt at the old Capitol Theater in Madison, Wis.; Muddy Waters in the UW field house, Susan Tedeschi laying down some smoldering blues at Howelsen Hill; and most recently, Carrie Elkin and the Loose Men making believers out of a packed house in the DepotArt Center in Steamboat Springs. Carrie Elkin and the Loose Men? You'd better believe it. Rarely have I witnessed an artist bare her soul as completely as Elkin did Saturday night before a sometimes rowdy audience that was heavily salted with friends, family and even a few strangers. Nobody paid a cent to get in the door. Was she excited to release her new CD "the Waltz," in front of a live audience? If human auras were visible, Elkin would have had a blue buzz of electricity surrounding her body, and sparks would have been flying. If she hadn't been anchored to some veteran side men...her feet might have left the ground. Elkin could have floated away, she was so excited. However, she wasn't nervous, at least I don't think so–otherwise, her pure voice could never have conveyed the power it did Saturday night. Elkin, a native of Cleveland, who resides in Steamboat by way of Taos, confessed she'd had a sleepless night Friday out of anxiety that no one would show up at her free show. She even told the audience that she dreamed her head fell off and her teeth fell out. Yikes! She needn't have worried. Elkin's band Saturday night was a hybrid–the result of joining members of two local bands, Loose Change and Worried Men. They could have called themselves Worried Change, but that name doesn't have the same symbolism as Loose Men. So, it was an easy choice, and the band was smokin'. Elkin deliberately attempted to horrify her mother (who was tending bar during the concert) by announcing that she was perspiring heavily (I think she might actually have used the word sweat) and could use a towel to wipe her armpits. The audience laughed its approval. [I]t was as though she was sharing personal secrets with her therapist, only she was standing in front of hot stage lights and at least 150 noisy fans. [I]f Elkin can come across with the kind of stage presence she showed Saturday night on a regular basis, she's going to achieve widespread acclaim. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that in November 2004, Elkin's artistry is on a par with that of Bruce Springsteen and Bonnie Raitt. Not yet, anyway. But she is a serious songwriter and a gifted vocalist. And with a veteran band behind her, Elkin is going places. Just wait and see. Or better yet, don't wait. Plan to see her next public performance. But because her next local date hasn't been booked, you could trot over to All that Jazz and pick up a copy of "the Waltz." Monday, November 15, 2004
