How the Queen of Soul and the King of Sax Changed Rock Forever

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It's pretty much a given that you can't really love rock and roll without at least having a fundamental appreciation of soul--the roots of both are inextricably entwined. Still, throughout the 1950's and well into the sixties, the two traversed largely parallel paths. There were the rock charts and there were the R&B charts-- crossover hits were extremely rare on either side.

Blame it on record label marketing, not any kind of veiled racism. Bean counters have never been renowned as visionaries.

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Three nights in March 1971, at Bill Graham's Filmore West, made them open their eyes, though. San Francisco's famed venue played host to Aretha Franklin, backed by King Curtis and the Kingpins for three straight shows (March 5-7). The lines between rock and soul would be forever blurred.

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Two CDs from Rhino, appropriately titled Aretha Live at Filmore West and King Curtis Live at the Filmore West document those events in digitally remastered recordings so crisp the listener is aurally transported to those concerts. This is Aretha at her apex, belting out gospel-infused soul in her inimitable style. This is King Curtis, playing sax and fronting his dream team version of the Kingpins, as if there were no tomorrow.

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Aretha was already acknowledged as the "Queen of Soul", due in no small part to Jerry Wexler's tutelage since signing with Atlantic in 1966. King Curtis had a resume dating back to the fifties, and his sax stylings largely defined the instrument's role in in rock and roll. He was a musician's musician, though, and at that time, not a name generally equated with the rock scene. And while Aretha was an international star, most of the buzz surrounding her was generated from the R&B press.

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So it was with some trepidation that Wexler brought Aretha and King to the Filmore West. By his own account, he wasn't sure how an audience accustomed to acts like the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane would respond to what amounted to an all-out soul revue.

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He needn't have worried.

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Aretha Live at Filmore West hits the ground running with a revved-up performance of "Respect" and Lady Soul's promise to the largely "hippie" audience that they will "enjoy this performance as much as any you have had the occasion to see." She makes good on that guarantee, and then some, with her take on "Love the One You're With," as different from the Steven Stills original as midnight is to dawn. Aretha's greatest strength lies in her ability to completely redefine source material, and nowhere is that more apparent than her renditions of "Eleanor Rigby" and "Bridge Over Troubled Waters." Those two covers define the phrase, "it's not so much what you say as how you say it." And how she says it sends a shiver up the spine and a gut shot to the soul.

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But where Aretha Live at Filmore West shines most brightly is when she unabashedly returns to her gospel/blues roots--and it is here that she ultimately holds the audience captive. "Dr. Feelgood" begins as an earthy, blues-infused tune that stretches into an all-out revival for over four minutes, with the audience caught up in the spirit, "amen-ing" her every utterance. As it segues into "Spirit in the Dark," Aretha holds the crowd utterly under her sway. Like an A.M.E. preacher, she takes utmost advantage of the opportunity, unexpectedly bringing "the righteous reverend" Ray Charles to the stage to reprise the song. A spontaneous jam, the likes of which had never been heard, ensues. The electricity in that performance ranks as one of those "great moments" in the evolution of rock and roll.

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Aretha Live at Filmore West is an indispensable album for anybody remotely interested in the evolution of rock and roll, soul or pop music in general. This edition also includes outtakes and alternative mixes culled from those three nights, not included in previous issues of the album. This isn't just pop music history. It is soul at its very best.

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If Aretha's performances at the Filmore dispelled any doubts that soul could play to rock audiences, then a huge credit is due to her band, led by King Curtis. Besides providing an amazing backing to Aretha's vocals, he and his Kingpins served as her opening act. King Curtis Live at the Filmore West is a testament to the power inherent in unspoken vocabulary of instrumental music.

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Here, he augments the Kingpins with special guests Billy Preston and the legendary Memphis Horns. The resultant album is extraordinary, to put it mildly. Culled from the three nights performances, the tracks are nothing short of exhilarating. King Curtis was the greatest of rock and roll's saxmen, and he aptly demonstrates his talents here. From the classic "Soul Serenade" to his rendition of Procol Harem's "Whiter Shade of Pale," his tenor sax phrasings never falter. Even on "Whole Lotta Lovin" (an obvious choice for the flower child crowd) , his instrument takes on a voice of its own.

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There is an unintentional melancholy to this album. I mentioned at the beginning of this piece that King Curtis played as if there was no tomorrow. Sadly, for him there were very few tomorrows after this performance. King Curtis was stabbed to death five months later. His legend lives on.

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Aretha Live at Filmore West and King Curtis Live at the Filmore West are two albums that beautifully document a time when rock and soul were finally coming to grips that they shared the same lineage. The music that would follow relishes in that new-found identity to this day.

Blues Around the World Holds the Key to Global Peace

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Attempting to uncover that one moment that was the point at which the blues began is akin to defining the origin of the universe--it can't be done. Once you think you've finally nailed the answer, "but where did that come from?" becomes the immediate question, and once that question is answered, another question arises, and so on, until you fall back on faith, or go stark raving mad.

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The blues is one of those great mysteries that simply "always has been." Sure, as a recorded genre, it can be traced back to the 1920's American south, pioneered most notably by Robert Johnson and a few others, but its roots go far deeper than that. The blues is a universal voice that was born at the same time whatever evolved into the human spirit was born--it's an inherent part of our genetic makeup, indifferent to primordial migratory paths and the rise and fall of empires.

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The Putumayo compilation Blues Around The World eloquently illustrates this point in an album that encapsulates the universality of the blues. From Chicago to Zanzibar, the blues imprint has left its mark across the globe, as evidenced in these eleven songs by musicians ranging from Bonnie Raitt to Long-ge. Throughout it all, a sense of spritual triumph and celebration permeates the music, regardless of its origins.

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There are collaborations here that literally span the globe, and if some seem unlikely, they only serve to augment the appeal of the genre. Urban blues legend Taj Mahal teams with the Culture Musical Club of Zanzibar for a sultry, Arabic-infused rendition of the Mississippi-born classic "Catfish Blues." The band Unseen Guest provides a seamless fusion between Western and Eastern musical influences, specifically, Irish and Indian, with the easy, pulsating beat of "Listen My Son." Habib Koite of Mali provides a perfect counterpoint to Bonnie Raitt's slide guitar with his open plucking style.

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It is in the diversity of the individual performers represented here, however, that Blues Around the World shines most brightly. Artists from Brazil (Blues Etilicos) , the Sahara (Amar Sundy), Taiwan (Long-ge) and Spain (Jarabe De Palo) all offer a unique interpretation of what the blues mean to them individually, and by extension, to the global community. More importantly, perhaps, is that in these performances, we are compelled to recognize the unifying threads that bind us together as humans.

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If music is the universal language, then the blues is the dialect most widely spoken. All of the songs here attest to the common hopes and fears, loves and loathings we all share, regardless of the particular locale in which we live. The idiom that is the blues resides deeply in our collective unconsciousness, holding a promise of hope in moments of despair. The blues, at its essence, reminds us that no matter how bad things may be, they can only get better.

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Blues Around theWorld is that rarest of compilation albums-- a collection made all the more relevant by current events. Its message, unintentional though it may be, is we have more in common than we care to admit.

What We Whisper Is What You Should Hear

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Darkly ethereal, What We Whisper, the new release from Jeffrey Luck Lucas, paints an aural landscape littered with dashed dreams and bleak futures, populated with jaded protagonists who wear their world weariness like a favorite jacket--tattered memories they can't throw away no matter how much they'd like to. The pain of them is perversely comforting. "Tell me why you carry your tears like a melody," Lucas plaintively asks in "The Pills," knowing the answer is in fact, the question.

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The questions Lucas poses throughout What We Whisper have at their root the eternal conflict of humaniity's place in a world much larger than itself, and he grapples with them in a voice soaked in urban angst. This is not an album of anthemic platitudes--it's more akin to Tom Waits as channeled through Leonard Cohen. As such, it beckons the listener into an intricate web of choices that may have gone wrong but have nonetheless left the protagonist with no regrets. In Lucas's world, there are no necessarily good or bad things that happen, only experiences.

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All of this is played against a backdrop of not surprisingly minor chords reminiscent of a modern noir soundtrack. It's all delicately nuanced, accentuated by the occasional cello and haunting background vocals of Wendy Allen. Desmond Shea's production complements the instrumentation perfectly, endowing it with an aura that is at once otherwordly yet disturbingly familiar. And throughout it all, there is that voice-- soaked in whiskey and weary with the weight of memories, tortured yet at peace, compelling the listener to hear these tales.

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What We Whisper is a deceptively subtle work that requires the listener to actually listen. What Jeffrey Lee Lucas has done here has given us a tour of love and life as seen from fog-shrouded

alleys and dusty border towns that only exist in our darker dreams. It's a tour that's best appreciated at night, when one can feel the pangs of retrospection.

Midlake revisits Seventies Art Rock--

It's A Largely Pointless Trip

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I was a high school freshman when the seventies dawned, and change was in the air. I'm not talking about sociopolitical upheaval here--I'm talking what really matters in our daily life--namely, rock and roll.

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FM radio was just beginning to subvert the AM top forty format with a curious genre called "album rock." For the first time, we could sample "deep cuts" from hit albums with our own ears, rather than relying on reviews from Rolling Stone, Village Voice and Crawdaddy, before shelling out our hard-earned coke bottle money on the latest Monkees release. We were free at last.

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Or so we thought.

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Every revolution has its downside, and the repercussions of the FM revolution was that it gave credence to that most horrid of all mutants, art rock. In retrospect, we can lay the blame squarely on the scrawny shoulders of Pete Townsend and the Who's Tommy, the world's first (shudder) rock opera. And while Tommy was a noble experiment, it had the unintended effect of empowering every arthead in every college town in America (and Europe, I suppose) with the idea that Tolkien-inspired bad poetry and music theory classes could elevate their garage bands to art.

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The sleepy little college town of Denton, Texas was at that time to fusion jazz what Austin would become to outlaw C&W. It was a well-deserved reputation-- North Texas State University's

One O'Clock Lab Band even won a grammy for its jazz endeavors. The sad offshoot of that was that it also attracted every hippie who had ever strummed a guitar, blew a few notes into a recorder or read a few passages from Gravity's Rainbow. For a Texas hippie, Denton was Utopia.

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Fast forward three some-odd decades later. North Texas State is now the University of North Texas, and Denton is still a college town forty miles north of Dallas, and still is a haven for collegiates who consider their every breath a whiff of "art." Occasionally, something relevant emerges from this self-absorbed community. Midlake's sophomore effort, The Trials of Van Occupanther, however, is not such an item.

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Midlake's full-length debut, Bamnan and Silvercork, was a bit of a cult hit and earned them a European tour. That's really not surprising, given its ennui-laced eighties pop feel, even less surprising, given they were signed to Cocteau Twins alumnus Simon Raymonde's Bella Union label. Still, it was an admirable first effort. Sheesh, even Jason Lee (My Name Is Earl) jumped on the Midlake bandwagon.

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On The Trials of Van Occupanther, Midlake eschews synths in favor of an accoustic sound that harkens back to the pseudo-medieval strains of early seventies art rock. Think Jethro Tull's Minstrel in the Gallery meets Moody Blues' Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. And then recall how overblown the messages those albums tried to convey seem in retrospect.

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Ostensibly, The Trials of Van Occupanther chronicles a man's trek on a path of self discovery, which somehow parallels some sort of universal truth about mankind--at least, that's what I think it ostensibly does. The problem is, the lyrics are so shrouded in "meaning" they don't ever tell the story. There's a pacifist theme here, a quest for everlasting love there and a longing for a simpler lifestyle over there. In their quest to create art, Midlake neglected to tell their story compellingly.

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Musically, however, Midlake succeeds in creating a soundtrack for this mess of a tale. The band is undeniably tight, albeit a bit reliant on music school theory. It's to their credit that Midlake faithfully recreated that overwraught, hipper-than-thou fairy-tale world of early seventies art rock. It's also to their detriment.

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The Trials of Van Occupanther is a living example of "second album syndrome"--a valiant effort, but a little too much of an effort. I'm not giving up on them--yet. Midlake is a band to watch, regardless of this effort.

Hindsight is 20/20. Tunnel Vision... Not So Much

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I should have known better.

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What began as what I thought was a simple plea for some Blogcritics writers to steer away from blatantly racist language in regards to the crisis in the Middle East has become instead a platform to espouse those very views. In effect, it's evolved (or devolved) into a microcosmic vignette of a seething hatred that echoes the tensions of post WWI Europe.

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In a perverse way, I should feel vindicated, I suppose. For years, I've said that everybody has an agenda, and the more insidious that agenda, the more vehemently it is denied. A cynical viewpoint, perhaps--but a cynic, as Ambrose Bierce said, is only a romantic who's seen reality. And the reality is this: we're living in a world in which everyone's already made up their mind.

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We haven't learned from history's mistakes, and we're rushing headlong to repeat them. Don't think for one second I'm advocating pacifism here--it is a basic responsibility of every human being to destroy evil. The trick is in defining evil, and therein lies the barrier to reasoned argument.

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The Holocaust was evil. 9/11 was evil. Does that mean all Germans are evil? Does that mean all Muslims are evil? Of course not. Does that mean politicians and hatemongers from every spectrum are going to spin evil to rationalize their agendas? Almost certainly. Hitler had to be stopped, and he was--at least for a time. His spectre still haunts us, channeled as it is through any number of hate groups. Osama Bin Laden, on the other hand, still eludes us, but nonetheless serves as a convenient poster boy for some ill-defined war on terror.

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Let me share an anecdote with you. Days after 9/11, here in Dallas, a skinhead extremist walked into a convenience store and shot the owner to death. It wasn't a robbery-- nothing was stolen--it was "retaliation" against 9/11. The man he killed wasn't even Arabic--he was a Sikh, recently immigrated from India with a wife and infant child. That was irrelevant to the murderer, and even as he got the needle, he went to hell proclaiming his patriotism.

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I mention that only to illustrate how absurd our mindset has become, knowing that it will fall on deaf ears. We've forgotten that in America, our greatest strength lies in our diversity. On a daily basis, I work with Kurds, Mexicans, Iranians, Africans, Israelis, American Jews, Indonesians, Koreans--even Aussies. Guess what? Not a terrorist among the bunch.

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Call this a plea from a person known to advocate emotion in writing. I'm not pleading from a Neville Chamberlain vantage--I am foursquare for rooting out the bad guys and killing them on the spot. The Israelis are not the bad guys. Neither are the Lebanese. There are issues here that Americans don't fathom, and don't even attempt to understand. It's much easier to sit in air-conditioned comfort and scream "my side is right and your side is wrong!"

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Meanwhile, World War III has begun.

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Pass me another Bud, would ya?

How to Write Good

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Grabbed your attention, didn't I? You just had to know what was coming next, even though you already had set yourself as the author's superior. But you knew, deep inside, he had in actuality set you up to make you keep reading. That, my friends, is the secret of writing for publication. It's like this: writing-- more than music, more than painting, more than any of the so-called arts-- is the ultimate act of ego. We write for one reason (and you know in your heart of hearts this is true, so don't bother taking me to task about it) and that reason is we just absolutely know what we have to say is important, and by god, you damn well better listen.
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Here is what writing is all about: baring your soul naked for the world to see. What you're writing doesn't matter--if your soul's imprint isn't there, it will ring false--and your audience will know it straightaway. They're not idiots--after all, they do read and they're giving you a moment of their time to state your case. As a writer, you have a responsibility to make the most of that moment. You have to scream "fire!" at the outset--not explain the origins of fire. Ideally, you do this in the title itself--if not, you have two opening sentences at most to alert the reader that they have just booked passage on your ship, and there will be no turning back, come hell or high water. The reader has signed on for uncharted territory and it's your responsibility to deliver.

.That is the first lesson of writing well--"lesson", not "rule", because in order to communicate, you have to take what you know and realize that all the so-called rules you learned in journalism and creative writing classes were there only to give you a foundation--they were not meant as a stone tablet delivered from on high. There is nothing--and I mean nothing-- more boring than writing that adheres to textbook rules. It may impress your professors, family and friends, but trust me--it won't impress an editor.

To write well, you must plunge headfirst and unafraid into the abyss of the blank page, which, as Conrad noted, is the most terrifying realm of all for a writer. It's a stygian wasteland of random thoughts, all clawing for your attention while they point to this rule or that, each one taunting you and gnawing at your confidence. This is the moment of truth, the point where you shrug off all those self-imposed notions of the so-called creative process, gather your thoughts, take a deep breath and say to yourself, "There ain't nothin' to it but to do it."

And you write. Those first words fall onto the page trepiditiously, as a babe taking its first uncertain steps. And you see those words and realize you have just given birth to something that never existed before this moment. The terror that was the blank page has fallen victim to the higher force of a confidence that had lain dormant moments before. Those few words that you birthed are the core of your universe, and it is a universe over which you hold sway. You have, in effect, become God.

In an infinite set of possibilities, universes are equally apt to thrive or wither of their own doing, wholly dependent on how they reconcile those possibilities within their boundaries. That said, those boundaries are limited by the imagination of the universe's creator. For your universe to thrive, you must take those first stumbling words and nurture them with every ounce (or however it's measured) of your soul, with no apologies and no regrets.

How you build your universe (and it can be anything from a critique to a novel) is dependent on your personality. Some writers build their realms strategically, discarding draft after draft until they have exhausted all feasible strategies and are forced to either publish or discard their work, never to be seen again. Those writers wrangle with the demons of art. Others, myself included, write from the gut and shoot from the hip, as if everything is on deadline, and justify first draft publishing as the essence of emotion. These writers don't fret over art, they wrestle the demons of immediacy..

Your personal habits are of no consequence. All that matters is that you transport your reader into those squiggly lines and dots that somehow congeal into a universe they've never visited. You do this by employing skullduggery and chicanery and any other devious methods at your disposal to lure them into the thrill ride of their lives. The title of your piece, or at least the first sentence, absolutely must have that effect. Otherwise, your would-be audience will wander to the next universe.

I realize that writers are fragile creatures, by and large, and resultantly, by and large, they don't get published. Why? Firstly, they state the obvious. For instance, the phrase "in my opinion" should be stricken from the English language. Unless you're a robot, anything you write is your opinion. Don't belate the obvious. I could go on and on here, but this is the absolute worst creative writing cliche ever perpetuated on the human race. Under no circumstances, even under threat of death, ever use that phrase.

Secondly, far too many writers (or painters or musicians or what have you) set themselves up as artists from the outset. I cannot emphasize this enough: you are not, by virtue of saying so, creating art. You are writing and attempting to gain recognition--nothing more. You are no different from a house painter when you bottom line it. To paraphrase Margot Fontaine, taking oneself seriously is disastrous, taking one's work seriously is essential. History will decide whether your ramblings mattered in the scheme of things.You are way too closely involved to declare yourself an artist.

Finally, writers who don't get published don't understand the business of getting published. You have to understand that publications, no matter how lofty their mission statement may be, exist to sell advertising. That doesn't mean you whore yourself out to get published--unless, of course, you're a copywriter, but that's a completely different story. What it does mean, however, is you write from your heart whatever it is you write, without looking back, and then seek out a market that is sympatico with your vision.

This isn't theory--it's reality. To write, and to get your writing read, you have to be willing to descend from the godhood of creation to the melancholy of being a hired gun. Is it writing well? That depends on how you load your words.

The Wishlist:

Life's Design of Mind

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Call it an occupational hazard, I suppose. When you write about music, you find you have a whole group of New Best Friends and an ever-growing collection of demo discs from bands who, for the most part, will never go any further in their music careers. I still have what they called tapes in the 1980's from local "new wave" bands who went on to pursue brilliant careers in retail management, banking and law. It wasn't that they were terrible musicians-- they just didn't understand that jamming and recording are seperate entities.

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Every once in a very great while, when going through your one-offs, you stumble upon a disc that demands you pay attention. The freshman effort from the Dallas-based Wishlist, Life's Design of Mind, is such a disc. Produced by Casey Diiorio ( Bowling For Soup), this five-song EP is piano-driven pop balladry reminiscent of Keane, or Coldplay in their lighter moments. Even on a casual listen, you immediately realize that the Wishlist has no agenda beyond delivering a well-crafted package of romantic reminisces.

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That in no way implies that Life's Design of Mind falls victim to schmaltz-- quite the opposite. Despite its somewhat unwieldly title, this debut is artful without being artsy in its decidedly urban vignettes of coffee shop-flavored romantic angst. What bandmates Kevin Layne (vocals, piano), Alex Hastings (guitar), Rich Williams (bass) and Jonny Mack (drums) have done here is encapsulate the uncertainty and promise of love and commitment in a quintet of hook-laden tunes. It's date music with an edge.

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Still Creedence After All These Years

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Let's just get this out of the way from the top: Creedence Clearwater Revival was John Fogerty. He was responsible for the sound, the vocals, the writing, the production, the everything that was Creedence. Today, almost a quarter of a century after the band broke up, John Fogerty is still Creedence Clearwater Revival--and he sounds every bit as fresh as he did in those halcyon hippie days.

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How an Irish-American boy from the San Francisco area was able to channel swamp roots music into a palatable rock idiom is one of the Great Questions that will most likely never be answered, and is probably best left a mystery--but he did. And the footprint he left on rock and roll cannot be understated.

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Proof you want? Proof I got.

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Elke and I were watching The Long Road Home In Concert for maybe the third time last night when Fogerty and his band launched into a rousing rendition of "Down On the Bayou." Now, I've been married to Elke for fifteen years , so I know she has an affinity for Creedence (to put it mildly) and she's also been known to play a relatively mean Les Paul on occasion. What I didn't know was that Creedence was her introduction to American rock and roll of that time. German commercial radio back then played a lot of light pop but virtually no rock. The pirate station Radio Luxembourg, on the other hand, was known for blues and psychedelia. And it was on Radio Luxembourg one night that Elke just happened to hear "Suzy Q", the Dale Hawkins rockabilly song that launched Creedence into the spotlight. And from that moment, Elke just had to have an electric guitar.

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Okay, that was very anecdotal, but it made me think-- if that song could have that much impact on a girl from Tuttlingen, Germany, imagine what it must have done to the kids stateside. Here we are, nearly forty years later, and the answer is self-evident. If there were any doubts before, The Long Road Home In Concert will dispel them in a nanosecond.

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Filmed 15 September 2005 at LA's Wiltern Theatre, The Long Road Home In Concert hits the ground running with Fogerty and his band ripping into, appropriately enough, "Travelin' Band" and segues into "Green River." The 61 year old rocker has made contact with an audience largely composed of people a generation and a half removed from him, and he wastes no time immersing them into his world.

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Make no mistake about it--this DVD is not a movie. It would be a stretch to label it a documentary. It's a dead-on concert film, and Martin Atkins' direction never aspires to be anything more than that. But it is precisely because of that approach that throughout the show we are left with the distinct impression that Fogerty is a man vindicated after those years of legal wrangling with ex-bandmates and Fantasy Records. Fantasy actually sued him (unsuccessfully) for plagiarizing his own work with "The Old Man Down the Road." It takes on an especially triumphant tone in this performance, and perfectly counterpoints "Run Through the Jungle" (the tune he allegedly plagiarized from himself.)

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"What I'm about is just playin' rock and roll, so let's get to it," Fogerty proclaims at the very beginning, and that's what he does for nearly 100 minutes on this DVD. And for almost all of that 100 minutes, you are left with no doubt that this is the John Fogerty show--he is centerstage throughout, and loving every minute of it. All the obligatory Creedence classics are here, from "Proud Mary" to "Fortunate Son" to "Born on the Bayou"--the list goes on-- as well as songs from his solo career, including "Centerfield," and "Bootleg." In all, the songlist is made up of 26 songs, and not one misses its mark.

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This was one fun concert, and this DVD documents it as what it was--there are no intercut interviews, no attempt at social relevance, nothing artsy--just a recording of a brilliant show that makes you feel you were there. That is to director Atkins' credit--he skillfully intercuts between a floor POV and a back of the stage viewpoint and does it with such nonchalance that you don't even notice. What is to Fogerty's credit is he immerses you in his world. This is not a nostalgia act--it's Americana that is every bit as relevant today as it was 35 years ago.

John Flynn's Two Wolves Doesn't Run With the Pack

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Two Wolves, at least on first listen, is an album laced with an almost child-like sense of innocence in its social commentary. This should come as no surprise, considering John Flynn is perhaps best known for his Love Takes a Whole Box of Crayons and his award-winning work in childrens music. In spite of that, or more likely, because of that, Two Wolves is at its heart a work about family and its relation to a world numbed by violence and inequity.

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Like the great folk singers before him, Flynn lures the listener into his world with an easygoing accoustic sound that belies the message of his lyrics. On "Dover," for instance, the music soars with a patriotic swirl while the lyrics personalize the sacrifice of soldiers who do not come home alive and the loved ones they leave behind. "Blink" takes a different tact in its Don McLean-esque structure and its sentimental look at enduring love . The album's title track could almost work on one of Flynn's children's albums as a simple parable about the choices we make in life and how they shape us.

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None of that is meant to imply that the music on Two Wolves is maudlin but harmless-- far from it. Folk music has always been quietly dangerous-- from Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan to Phil Ochs--and John Flynn's musings are no exception. Never politically overt, Flynn's lyrics nonetheless reflect the angst that is inherent in our collective mindset while maintaining a cautious optimism for the future. "There's No Them There" recognizes divisiveness ("races, creed and nations/are false separations") while steadfastly clinging to unity ("The colors of the rainbow/blend together and show/how we can blend also.") Likewise,"My Father's Chapel" celebrates the commonalities of the world's religions rather than dwell on their differences.

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Nor is he afraid to tackle issues head-on. Throughout the course of Two Wolves, Flynn speaks with directness and eloquence as witnessed by "Put Your Freedom Where Your Mouth is." He reminds us in no uncertain terms that flexing our military might across the globe entails a responsibility to equally flex our social responsibility here as well as abroad. ("Put your freedom where your mouth is/In a land of liberty/He's for freedom and he'll shout his/cause no silenced man is free.")

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Two Wolves is unlikely to be a chart-topper, and John Flynn probably won't be on VH1 or CMT anytime soon. That's unimportant. What is important is Two Wolves keeps the spirit of folk roots activism alive in a society sledgehammered by soundbites. This is an album that not only pays homage to the protest song but quietly reinvents it as well.

Willie Nelson:

The Last American Icon?

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As I write this, it's the Fourth of July 2006, late afternoon. It's dark and rainy in Dallas, with predictions of heavier rain to come. North Korea, in an extreme case of penis envy, is flexing their might by firing off long range missiles, and CNN is lapping it up. And me, I'm listening to Willie Nelson belting out "Whiskey River." It seems appropo, in a weltschmerz sort of way.

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Willie Nelson, when all is said and done, expresses a world weariness that strikes a universal chord among anybody who has ever heard him. Nowhere is this more evident than in The Complete Atlantic Recordings. It's pointless, thirty years-plus after the fact to attempt to dissect Shotgun Willie (sure, it was over-produced for the time), or Phases and Stages (country's first concept album)-- hindsight is always 20/20. And despite what latter-day critics are fond of saying, Willie Nelson did not reinvent country with those two albums--he merely returned it to its rightful roots-- the Texas honky tonk that nurtured it.

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That is by no means intended to detract from the significance of those two albums--quite the contrary. What Willie (some icons you just have to refer to by their first name) did on those two albums was revolutionary at the time. He broke free from a bloated Nashville establishment that was content to be a parody of itself, took his music, infused with jazz and blues, with him and set it free in the rolling hills of Austin. This was no mean feat, and without the aid of legendary producer Jerry Wexler (of Aretha Franklin fame), it's doubtful whether he could have pulled it off. Pull it off he did, though, and thus was born Country Outlaw.

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But it's on the previously unreleased Live at the Texas Opry House that Willie Nelson proves himself as a performer and vindicates his desertion from Nashville. This is Texas honky tonk at its best, centerpieced by a kickass rendition of "Bloody Mary Morning" that would do Bob Wills proud. It's not urban cowboy stuff-- it is the real thing. We Texans have always had an affinity for fusing music genres into something distinctly, well, Texan-- and Willie epitomizes that fondness like no other.

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Willie's affiliation with Atlantic was short-lived, but it produced two classic albums. The Complete Atlantic Sessions pays fitting tribute not only to that affiliation but to to the man who singlehandedly made Austin the American capital of all things cool. It's a handsome boxed set, packaged like a box of fine cigars, filled with anecdotes, outtakes, alternative versions and , perhaps most importantly, a slice of American pop culture that has become an integral part of our history.

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But back to the present. Yesterday, Willie bought the Abbot Methodist Church. Why? Willie is a native of Abbot, Texas and the old Methodist church is where he first sang as a child. He just couldn't stand to see it demolished. History is too important. As I write, it's still dreary outside, but Willie's music, tinged with melancholy as it is, gives me hope that we'll get through it. Next door in Fort Worth, Willie is presiding over his 33rd Fourth of July picnic.

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Yeah, we'll be alright....

Johnny Dowd's Cruel Words Ring Uncomfortably True

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Though it's been available as an import since February, It seems only fitting that Cruel Words, Johnny Dowd's fifth album should be released stateside on the Fourth of July. This is a work that is undeniably American, straightforward and unapologetic in its tales of characters who may have slipped through this crack or that, but who refuse to go unnoticed or bowed by their circumstances. They're not necessarily angry, but you're left with the sense they're not resigned to their lot in life, either.

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This is not an album geared to casual listening. From the pounding drum intro of "House of Pain" to the dying strains of "Johnny B Goode," Cruel Words demands the listener pay attention. This is the aural equivalent of film noir, deceptively simple at its surface but laced throughout with complex ambiguities. The characters who populate this landscape, from the disillusioned wheelchair-bound vet of "Praise God" to the newly divorced man residing in "Poverty House" to the dead lounge singer of "Final Encore," may be marginalized, but they hardly represent the underbelly of America. Largely, they have fallen on bad times and are not above the solace of the bottle, but they live with a cynical hope that things that will be alright in the end. "Jesus waits behind the counter/Waiting for the soldiers to return/From the long march to Bethlehem," Dowd growls in "World of Him," as he drunkedly but deftly maneuvers the minefields of the culture wars.

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Johnny Dowd is generally catalogued under the "alt-country" file, one of those catch-all terms, like "progressive jazz" or "new punk, " that sound authoritive (at least to lazy journalists), but have no meaning in reality. While Dowd's lyrics, structurally speaking, are perhaps rooted in a working class base, his music draws inspiration from a number of sources, all of which are distinctly American. With Michael Stark's Hammond B3 organ strains punctuating almost every song on Cruel Words, Dowd (vocals and guitar) and Brian Wilson (drums and bass pedals), along with Kim Sherwood on backing vocals, meld blues to acid jazz, roots soul to Texas swing, surf rock to lounge music, run it through a blender from hell and somehow manage to serve up a concoction that sounds wholly unique. Toss in a little British punk from the Mekons' Sally Timms and Jon Langford on "Drunk" for a dash of spice and Cruel Words emerges as a feast from the bland, albeit an acquired taste.

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Cruel Words may not elevate Johnny Dowd from his cult status--I rather hope it doesn't. It's nice having an old friend over for a beer or two and talking about the people we've run across in life-- especially when the friend sounds like Tom Waits referencing Frank Sinatra as he spins his tales. On the other hand, I want America to hear what Johnny Dowd has to say about our day to day world. I want them to know that a guy approaching 60, who didn't record his first album before he was already 50, can rock with the best of them. Better than most, actually.

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