Take Five: Discoveries new and old
Five things that caught my ear and eye this week: Jayhawks, Joe Pernice and Charles Simic, "The Indian Card," Jason Moran and Sam Rivers, and of course, a little Bob Dylan
So here’s the goal: I’m going to try to post something I’ll call “Take Five” each Friday. This will be five things that I spent some time with over the course of the previous week. No criticism, no in-depth analysis, just a few things I think you might be interested to check out. When the spirit moves me, I’ll post other things at other time times. For example, early next week, I’ll share my thoughts about the new 40th anniversary box set for the Police’s swan song, Synchronicity.
The Jayhawks - Rainy Day Music. I'm not sure what led me to pull this out, but I'm glad I did. A few songs from this 2003 album have long been staples of mix CDs and shuffle playlists, but the entire album is solid, a warm, comfortable blanket of tasteful playing and sweet harmonies that cushions the enduring sadness of the lyrics. That it's the band's seventh album, and third of the post-Marc Olson era (or last of the pre-Olson's return before departing again era), makes it all the more impressive, or at least surprising. Rather than fit in with any previous prevailing trend (alt-country) or serve as an attempt at a big rock sound like its immediate predecessors, it plays to all of the band's strengths with complete disregard for the marketplace. It earned middling reviews at the time, but I assume those were people listening for something else rather than reviewing what they had in front of them. The best-known song here is probably the title track, but I do tend to favor the poppier moments.
This short live set features a couple of the best — "Angelyne" and "Tailspin" — but you can discover a few other gems in addition to a few older highlights by playing the entire thing.
The Indian Card - Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz. I usually don't use this space to promote my own work, but I have been fascinated as I make my way through this book and I don't want to wait until it comes out in October to put it on your radar. Schuettpelz, a University of Iowa professor, explores the notion of Native American identity, researching the policies and traditions of American tribes to answer the question, "Who gets to be Native in America?" Schuettpelz, an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe in North Carolina, begins with her own story and quickly expands through archival searches and interviews to discover who can and can't call themselves Native American and why. What could be dry and academic is instead lively and vibrant as Schuettpelz deftly weaves her own story into this larger tale. At a time when identity is both fluid and contentious, it's a fascinating look at an under-investigated question. As for my work connection, we will present Schuettpelz at the Iowa City Book Festival on Oct. 16 at Prairie Lights. If you’re in town, you should be there.
I recently read a thread about Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966, the official release of the bootleg erroneously known for decades as "The Royal Albert Hall Concert." It was posted on the amazingly prolific Dylan Substack "The FM Club," a repurposing of a thread on Colm Larkin's Twitter account, DylanRevisited. It reminded me of my affection for that concert's version of Dylan's "One Too Many Mornings," specifically the backing vocals from The Band's bassist Rick Danko. The original version of the song was found on Dylan's 1964 album The Times They Are A-Changin. It's a gentle acoustic tune there, but by 1966 it has become a weary plaint backed by the coiled tension of the Band, a tension that finds release on every chorus as Dylan wails, "…and a thousand miles behind" while Danko leans in over his shoulder with a high harmony on that final word, stretching it over two long syllables that seem to encapsulate everything these musicians were facing as they tore down walls and built them up again night after night before a confused and occasionally hostile crowd.
Songwriter Joe Pernice has a Substack called "Four-Track Substack" where he posts new, demo-like recordings of his songs and then shares stories about writing and recording them. He pulls from his work with Scud Mountain Boys, the Pernice Brothers, and his solo work. In a recent post about the song "Bryte Side" from the Pernice Brothers' exquisite album The World Won't End, Pernice acknowledged the Nick Drake homage of the song's title, then explained the album's title and its own nod to the late poet Charles Simic:
I should also add that I named the album The World Won’t End as a tongue in cheek nod to the late great poet Charles Simic’s Pulitzer Prize winning collection The World Doesn’t End. My choice of “Won’t” was meant to be at the same time reassuring and a lament. Too much thinking for the title of a “pop” record? Perhaps. And when it came time to design the record jacket, I tried to get Laura Stein (keyboards, vocals, matrimony, design) to use the same font on Simic’s book, but she wasn’t having it. In the end, the jacket she designed is perfect for the record, and I’ve always loved it.
This, of course, led me to go pull Simic's collection from the stacks at the Iowa City Public Library (which has rarely let me down when something leads me to seek out a book) and read it. I have read Simic and associate him with tightly constructed verse; these short prose poems were something else, not entirely dissimilar, perhaps adjacent to what had come before and since, and I welcomed the implied recommendation of Pernice's post. Pernice captions an image of the book jacket with "The prose poems in this book changed me," and while I don't see a direct influence on his own poetry and lyrics, I suppose it's in there with everything else he has read and digested over the years.
I have been slowly wading my way through the "read later" category in my RSS reader, finding occasional gems I have saved along the way. This one was embedded in a piece from 2023 about a resurgence of interest in the work of the late jazz saxophonist and composer Sam Rivers. The piece quotes pianist Jason Moran, who worked with Rivers on Moran's breakout album, Black Stars. The real find, however, is a video from those 2001 sessions with Rivers sitting in with Moran's trio. Amid snippets of conversation and the usual studio footage is a complete take of what became the album closer, "Sound It Out." I had always assumed the skittering piano was played by Moran, but the video shows the wildly talented Rivers is on the bench at the start, his long fingers flying across the keyboard as notes cascade forth. After a couple of minutes of this, Moran steps forward to join and then take over for Rivers, who gets up, goes to an isolation booth, takes up his flute and then plays a beautiful melody on top of the frenetic piano line. At the end he seems exultant: "You got that?" he says with a grin. They did, and the entire thing, question and all, closes Moran's second — and to these ears, still best — album.