Posts Tagged ‘Hayes Carll’

Today’s Top 5: Life During the Great Pandemic, Vol. I

Posted: March 27, 2020 in 2020, 2020s, Allison Moorer, Bob Dylan, Courtney Marie Andrews, Hannah Cohen, Hayes Carll, Jackson Browne, Top 5
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For the past two weeks, like many others, I’ve led a shuttered existence – just me, Diane and our wooly bully of a boss in the apartment. Although my alarm still sounds at 5:45AM, instead of heading out the door to work within an hour, as is my custom, I bide my time until 7AM, when I telecommute into the office. Once I sign off at 4PM, weather permitting, Diane and I go for a walk – and breathe in the fresh pollen.

In other words, aside from allergies, we’re doing okay.

Tomorrow, Diane and I will do what we did last weekend – take a 30-minute ride into the countryside while E Street Radio provides us a perfect soundtrack. We’ll also tune in, at 8PM ET, to watch Allison Moorer perform on Facebook and then, on Sunday afternoon, attend a Church of Birch revival meeting on StageIt. Last weekend, we watched First Aid Kit on Instagram, which was fun; Courtney Marie Andrews, the Tallest Man on Earth, Sam Evian and Hannah Cohen on YouTube, which was interchangeably entrancing and interminable; and Diane Birch on StageIt, which cheered us up a lot. I also enjoyed Neil Young’s first Fireside Sessions at the Neil Young Archives; it was pre-recorded, edited and – with all respect to the others – the best of the bunch.

Until Wednesday, I hadn’t listened to much music beyond E Street Radio and those online affairs; I just wasn’t in the mood – which I’m sure others can identify with. But that morning I had the hankering to hear Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band’s classic Against the Wind, which I played a few times, and followed it with Jackson Browne’s equally classic Late for the Sky and his under-appreciated Hold Out, Courtney Marie Andrews’ May Your Kindness Remain, and Neil Young’s Trans. Yesterday, I revisited the 10,000 Maniacs’ Our Time in Eden a few times along with Paul McCartney & Wings’ Band on the Run. (“Stuck inside these four walls/never seeing no one…” takes on a new meaning in the context of today.)

This morning, my various newsfeeds were awash in new and recent songs from a host of my favorites; they provided a great distraction from the latest pandemic news and stock-market nosedive.

And, with that, here’s Today’s Top 5: Life During the Great Pandemic, Vol. I.

1) Hayes Carll & Allison Moorer – “That’s the Way Love Goes.” Originally a hit for Lefty Frizzell, this stunningly beautiful song is just that – stunningly beautiful.

2) Bob Dylan – “Murder Most Foul.” The bard of bards has apparently kept this 17-minute opus under wraps for…who knows how long. Whatever, it’s an instant classic – the kind of song that demands repeated listens. 

3) Jackson Browne – “A Little Soon to Say.” We learned on Tuesday that Jackson caught the COVID-19 virus while in New York for a benefit, but that he’s doing okay. Yesterday, he released this song, which though written and recorded, seems an apropos song for this odd time: “But whether everything will be alright/It’s just a little soon to say…”

4) Courtney Marie Andrews – “Are You Alright.” Amongst the upheaval of four non-techies trying to figure out how to livestream, Courtney delivered a spellbinding rendition of this Lucinda Williams song. (It begins at the 24:08 mark if the link doesn’t work as intended.)

5) Hannah Cohen with Sam Evian – “Motion Pictures.” Although Courtney, the Tallest Man on Earth, Sam Evian and Hannah Cohen delivered a bounty of Neil Young covers during their 2 1/2-hour livestream, this was my favorite. It’s possesses a Mazzy Star-like vibe. (It’s at the one hour and 30 minute mark if the link doesn’t work correctly.)

Allison Moorer at Cat’s Cradle, 2/22/20

Posted: February 23, 2020 in 2020, 2020s, Allison Moorer, Concert
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Singer-songwriter Allison Moorer wove a spellbinding acoustic set at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, NC, last night, taming a semi-raucous audience primarily there to see her husband, master singer-storyteller Hayes Carll. 

She opened with the ominous “Bad Weather” from her recent Blood album. Stripped to its core, its plaintive power was even more pronounced than on album, with the metaphoric storm clouds gathering inside the ramshackle music hall’s main room, which – in many respects – is little more than Philadelphia’s Boot & Saddle on steroids. (Speaking of steroids, Allison mentioned that both she and Hayes came down with a bad flu while on the recent Cayamo music cruise and, although over it, were both taking some form of steroid to help bolster their throats.)

“The Rock and the Hill” was stunning. Her vocals inhabited the soul, just about, much as they do in this Paste performance:

Two songs from her 1998 debut followed: “Alabama Song” and “A Soft Place to Fall.” While introducing the latter, she recalled that she first played Cat’s Cradle not long after that album’s release, when she opened for Junior Brown. She then made a self-deprecating joke about the trajectory of her career, given that – this night, at any rate – she’s still opening for somebody else. 

“Nightlight,” a song from Blood, followed. During her Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross last fall, she talked of how – at that point in time – she couldn’t get through it without tearing up. It’s a moving number about how her sister comforted her during the frightful nights of their childhoods.

“Thunderstorm/Hurricane” (from her 2015 album Down to Believing) was next. Thematically speaking, though inspired by a different life storm, it’s in sync with the Blood material – the “Bad Weather” materialized, in a sense. “Let it pour over me/Holy water make me clean/Drive and drive and I disappear/Like I was never here/Everything is washed away/A thunderstorm, a hurricane…”

Her set concluded with the soul-salving “Heal.” As I’ve said before, in another era it would have been played on the radio alongside Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and the Beatles’ “Let It Be.” It’s that tremendous a song. While introducing it, Allison talked about how she thought she’d finished writing the Blood album when, a month before the sessions to record it, the song’s title came to her. She called Mary Gauthier and cajoled her into coming over to help write it and, not long thereafter, a classic song was born.  

(Obvious from my use of the Paste footage, my videos didn’t come out all that well. Allison looks like a floating fluorescent light.) 

Later, she joined husband Hayes Carll for three songs, including a very funny “None’ya” in which he “over explained” some of the lyrics. (Hayes, who we’ve seen twice before, was laugh-out-loud funny with his introductions and intra-song monologues; and his songs are flat-out brilliant. Always worth seeing with or without Allison.)

During a meet-and-greet with Hayes prior to the show, she mentioned that she’s halfway through another memoir, this one about raising her son, and that she spends about an hour writing the posts for her blog. (Given that it took me three hours to write this little review, that fact astounds me.)