The Musical Box

robert earl keen.

Sitting among the tunes on Robert Earl Keen’s new album The Rose Hotel is a slackers’ yarn titled Something I Do. It’s far from the deepest dish on the disc with its lazy boy chorus, pseudo-tropical groove and everyman’s lyrical demeanor.

“I kind of like just doin’ nothing,” sings Keen in a sleepy Texas drawl. “It’s something that I do.”

If you have followed Keen’s masterful Lone Star songwriting over the years, you know he is capable of drilling pretty far into misfit psyches for a song. Sometimes the results are positively harrowing (as on Dreadful Selfish Crime). In other instances they turn violently comedic (The Road Goes on Forever) or brutally family friendly (Merry Christmas from the Family). And then there are songs like Something I Do that suggest the recording sessions for his newest album was merry affairs indeed.

“Just like tacos,” Keen said about the songs constructed for The Rose Hotel. “They’re fun to make and fun to eat.”

Keen’s music is deceptively learned too. His songs sport sturdy Texas country roots that, in some cases, extend to honky tonk turf with a giddy Lone Star fiddle leading the charge. For The Rose Hotel’s Village Inn, though, echoes of pedal steel guitar are so vivid that you can easily picture the purple twilight skies that hang over the road stop. Granted, the song is actually set in Idaho. But when you hear Keen croon over the amenities… “free wi-fi, HBO, oh,” you know you’re dealing with the cosmopolitan campfire soul of a Texan.

“I really try to find a different level of thinking when I write,” Keen said. “If I can get to that level, I seem to be able to come up with some really cool ideas. And I can stay on that level for a long time as long as I’m not interrupted.

“I mean, you do a lot of writing in your job, don’t you? Doesn’t it take a certain amount of concentration and focus? But it’s so easy to find yourself sharpening pencils. Or maybe you go out and get yourself a hot dog. But then you’ve lost your focus. With songwriting, ideas don’t just run up to you while you’re driving to the store or something. To have something really significant to write about, you really need to spend time just cogitating a bit.”

The seeds of such cogitation for Keen were planted in the mid ‘70s when he befriended an unknown songwriting neighbor while attending Texas A&M. His name was Lyle Lovett. Their years of playing and writing songs together on Keen’s porch were chronicled on the mutually composed This Old Porch (The Front Porch Song). It has remained a vital part of Keen’s concert repertoire (and, frequently, Lovett’s) ever since.

“It’s a completely different perspective when I wrote with Robert because we were friends first,” Lovett said. “I just remember hanging out with him, playing songs and guitar together. It’s great to watch the world get that same feeling I used to get from sitting in that chair next to him and listening to him play.

“He is such an engaging and personable performer. It’s just nice to see that finally translate to the rest of the world.”

All of which begs the question, how did the world outside of Texas hear about Keen? His songs have hardly been radio staples, although The Road Goes on Forever gained a new life in the early ‘90s when fellow Texan Joe Ely recorded it. And Merry Christmas from the Family has been covered by numerous country acts (including Central Kentucky’s Montgomery Gentry), although Keen’s blueprint version is the one that tends to pop up most around holiday time.

The answer isn’t complicated. Keen simply fortified a reputation sparked by the popularity of a few renegade songs with relentless touring. Eventually, audiences discovered a larger artistic profile.

“By and large these days I have tons of fans that have either just found out about me recently or have known about me for years but never got to see a show until now. This is where the function of consistently being on the road comes in.

“When I first got out of college and moved to Austin for awhile, the word on the street was, ‘Man, you’ve got to hear (the veteran pop, soul and jazz inclined rock band) NRBQ.’ And the reason you had to see them was because they played all the time. And if you went to see them again, you weren’t seeing the same show you saw last time. You saw something different by guys who were fabulous musicians and sang really cool songs. But you found out about them because they toured all the time.”

The formula, at least in Lexington has paid off. Having established his performance reputation locally with late ‘90s shows at the long defunct Lynagh’s Music Club, Keen has gone on to bigger performance pastures. On Thursday, he will headline his third Opera House concert in as many years.”

“Sure, I think a lot of the stuff that’s going on for me now is filtered around certain songs like the Christmas song or The Road Goes On Forever. They’ve really found their way out to the counter culture. We see a lot of people like that at the shows. They go, ‘I heard you were playing here and that you wrote those songs.

“Luckily, I still have a burning desire to write more, and to write really good songs. It’s a task I haven’t completed at all.”

Robert Earl Keen, Todd Snider and Bruce Robison perform at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Lexington Opera House. Tickets are $22.50, $27.50, $32.50. Call (859) 233-3535, (800) 745-3000.

lyle lovett. photo by michael wilson.

It is record release day for Lyle Lovett - a Tuesday where his 14^th album, Natural Forces, is being unleashed unto the world.

Typically, such an occasion becomes the apex of a promotional push, a day loaded with TV appearances, performances and any number of exercises to capitalize on what is, in essence, “opening day” for a recording.

For Lovett, multiple Grammy Award winning songsmith, stylistically innovative bandleader and all around Texan, the day is something of breather. A fall duo tour with fellow songwriting pal John Hiatt concluded two days earlier. In less than a week, he will be back on the road for a month’s worth of shows with his Large Band, the brassy Americana army that has been his most visible performance vehicle of the past two decades.

That means while Natural Forces introduces the next edition of Lyle Lovett music, Lovett himself is back, briefly, in the only place he has ever called home - Texas.

“It’s exactly where I’ve lived all my life, on the same piece of ground I grew up on outside of Houston.”

To many, Lovett is modern embodiment of Texas music - its celebratory swing, its vigorous country soul and, most of all, its extraordinarily literate sense of storytelling. His songs are outlined with thieving hearts, family yarns and an unfailing pride in anything that hails from Lone Star territory.

In short, Lovett isn’t merely a Texas artist. He is the state’s unofficial cultural ambassador to the universe.

“All of that is high praise,” Lovett said by phone. “But I just feel that my music is a reflection of the music I’m drawn to. My intention with the songs I write is to say, ‘Hey, this is where I’m from.’”

On Natural Forces, the Texas inspirations are considerable. There are four new compositions (one of which, Pantry, is reprised with a bluegrass arrangement), six tunes penned by fellow Texas songwriters that have long been friends and mentoring influences and a song (It’s Rock and Roll) he co-wrote nearly three decades ago with fellow Lone Star scribe Robert Earl Keen.

“My father once told me that if I went through life with at least two best friends, I was set,” Keen said. “I went, ‘What are you talking about? I’ve got lots of friends.’ But sure enough, he was right. And to say I have had Lyle as a best friend all these years has been wonderful.”

For Lovett, the initial songwriting pull came from the masters - Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Vince Bell and the like. But not even Texas could contain Lovett’s expanding celebrity status as the ‘90s progressed. He toured internationally and took regular turns as an actor in television and film, including roles in five Robert Altman movies. But as the chorus of Natural Forces‘ title tune states, “home is where my horse is.” As such, Lovett devoted his sublime 1998 double-disc album Step Inside This House entirely to the music of his Texas inspirations. He does the same on the better half of Natural Forces.

“With Natural Forces, I knew going in that I didn’t have 10 new songs of my own that I was thrilled about recording,” Lovett said. “But those I did have I didn’t want to get any older. I was very excited about recording them. The other songs were first considered for Step Inside This House. They have long been part of my musical life. I didn’t learn anything new for this record. These were songs I’ve played and known for years.”

Listen to Natural Forces as a whole and it is good bet that, unless you already know the outside material, you won’t be able to distinguish Lovett the songwriter from Lovett the Texas interpreter. The songs share similar tones, temperaments and human detail. At its best, as on Lovett’s Empty Blue Shoes, the mood is stark to the point of being impressionistic.

“I met Lyle in Dallas at a club that’s now gone,” said guitarist Leo Kottke who shared numerous concert bills with Lovett following the release of the Texan’s self-titled debut album in 1986.

“I was in the dressing room and I could hear Lyle walk onstage. He hadn’t sung a note yet. He just walked onstage and the room instantly became quiet. Some people can just immediately fill a stage. Lyle is one of them.”

Of course, the ensemble Lovett has favored in filling performance rooms over the years has been his Large Band. It has accompanied Lovett at various Lexington venues over the past 22 years, from his local debut at the long-defunct Rhinestone’s on Athens-Boonesboro Rd. in 1988 to a headlining performance at Rupp Arena in 2001.

“That’s the beauty of that band - so many of us have played together for so many years. But that’s also the part that doesn’t seem real because I remember that first Lexington gig in 1988. It does not seem like it was over 20 years ago.

“You know, I was asked early on in interviews about my goals. People would ask, ‘What would success mean for you?’ The answer I always used to give was, ‘Success would be the ability to continue doing something I love to do.’ All these years later, that’s still my definition. To do something I love without feeling guilty because I have to also devote time to another job. To be able to legitimately engage in this music all the time…I mean, there is just not a better feeling. That’s the blessing of it all.”

Lyle Lovett and his Large Band performs at 8:30 p.m. Friday at the Norton Center for the Arts at Centre College in Danville. Tickets are $60-125. Call (877) 448-7469.

leo kottke.

In a recording and performance career that spans four full decades, Leo Kottke remains an original.

Onstage, he seemingly brings little with him outside of a pair of acoustic guitars - usually 6 and 12 string models. But within his playing is an assimilation of harmonic, stylistic and improvisational capabilities that merge into music that is as unparalleled as it is indefinable.

But he matches such virtuosity with devilishly constructed but wonderfully askew between-song stories. So one moment you’re taken in by the earthy folkish warmth he lends to longtime concert favorites like Tom T. Hall’s Pamela Brown or his own masterful instrumental suite Bigger Situation. The next you’re doubling over laughing as Kottke reminisces about smuggling baggettes onto submarines while serving in the Navy so they could be used as filters for torpedo fuel.

“They still let me play,” Kottke said last week by phone from Seattle. “That’s the amazing thing. I had no idea I would still be doing this. I thought my career would be all over, at the most, in about 10 years.

When it was suggested that the key to career longevity might be his distinctive blend of instrumental daring and wildly off-center storytelling, Kottke hesitantly agrees.

“That may be part of it. There aren’t many brands like me available to the consumer.”

“Even with all his virtuosity, the first thing I noticed about Leo was how intent he was in pushing ahead with his playing,” said Lyle Lovett, who regularly opened concerts for Kottke in the mid ‘80s. “Guitarists everywhere were going out and buying 12 strings to try and play like him. But Leo was always looking for the next thing.”

To say that chance played a role in bringing Kottke to the guitar and, more important, to the stylistic innovators that helped him forge a commanding voice on the instrument, is not an understatement. He took up violin at age five and then moved on to trombone. He settled on guitar, primarily because “it made me happy.”

“It really hit me hard,” Kottke said. “By the time I was 11, everything took a back seat to the guitar. There was never a real effort to turn all of it into a job. I knew that playing music was something I needed. And when I found the guitar, I finally discovered the instrument I needed. That was enough. It was more than enough. But to make a living playing it? Well, that’s something I still can’t quite get around.”

This year marks the 40^th anniversary of 6 and 12 String Guitar, the recording that largely introduced the world to Kottke. Two independent recordings preceded it, but 6 and 12 String Guitar was released on the Tacoma label, an enterprise run by the guitarist who served as a mentoring force for Kottke - John Fahey.

“I had heard a lot of the great Delta players like (Mississippi) John  Hurt and people like (Appalachian banjoists) Frank Proffitt and Obray Ramsey, and even some jazzers like (guitarist) Kenny Burrell. But they were all kind of discreet to me. John put them all together. And he did it at a pancreatic level. It was so organic that there was no self-consciousness whatsoever.

“But the other thing about John was that his whole effect was metaphysical. It was as if music was a metaphor. Usually music is just itself. It kind of overrides and subsumes metaphor. Not with John. He discovered this whole attitude, this whole realm that was out there. He was like Marco Polo.”

Such stylistic innovation fuels Kottke’s music, as well. There have been all kinds of exemplary recordings since 6 and 12 String guitar, including the orchestral shadings of 1976’s Leo Kottke, the compositional calm of 1986’s A Shout Toward Noon, the playful pop experimentation of 1994’s Rickie Lee Jones-produced Peculiaroso and the collaborative fire struck with Phish bassist Mike Gordon on 2005’s Sixty Six Steps. When asked if he has a favorite recording, Kottke politely balked.

“The minute I think I have one, it turns out I actually hate it. Or the opposite happens. I used to be deeply ashamed of a record called Burnt Lips (an extraordinary 1978 album of unaccompanied vocal and instrumental tunes). The last time I heard it, I thought, ‘You know, this isn’t so bad.’”

The constant for Kottke, though, remains concert performance. He considers stage work, after 40 years, a privilege. That assertion was instilled long ago when the guitarist received a glimpse of an artist that had lost such a privilege.

“This was a long time ago. I played this old theatre in Miami, a really nice, kind of miniature concert hall. From the time of the soundcheck until I was leaving the building that night there was this one guy sitting in a folding chair. As far as I could tell, he was in his 80s. He never said anything. He never stood up. But he was there for the whole night. So I asked, ‘What the hell is that guy doing there?’ I was told he was the first act to ever play that theatre. He was a tap dancer, but now he comes to every show and just sits there for the whole thing.

“So, yes, it is a privilege to still play. There is something very humbling in that for me.”

Leo Kottke perform at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Kentucky Theatre, 214 E. Main. Tickets are $24.50. Call (859) 231-7924.

judy collins

In some ways, the career of folk empress Judy Collins has come full circle.

Take the performance residency she entered into last year. For six weeks in the spring, she performed at the Café Carlyle in New York. Sure the venue was vastly more upscale than the Greenwich Village clubs Collins performed in during the formative years of her extensive career. But the sense of immediacy and intimacy the Carlyle afforded was a welcome throwback for the singer.

“Oh, the Carlyle is very intimate,” said Collins, who turned 70 during the café engagement. “It only seats about 100. So it is a very similar experience to old New York folk clubs like The Bitter End. That kind of intimacy, really, was what built the folk movement in the first place. The only thing different now is the way people are dressed.”

Well, that and the cover charge. Since her recording career began in 1961, Collins has become one of folk music’s most familiar, welcoming and distinctive voices. Her singing - high, clear and jubilantly expressive - has aged remarkably little over the years.

For proof, compare two performance clips readily available for viewing on YouTube. Both feature Collins singing the wistful Ian Tyson renegade love song Someday Soon. One comes from an appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman in July. The other originates from the Smother Brothers Comedy Hour 40 years earlier. Her voice today may reveal more sage-like contentment. But the art of singing for Collins, in both approach and execution, remains as resolute as ever.

In a New York Times review of Collins’ opening night performance at the Carlyle, Stephen Holden wrote, “The higher she sings, most of the time with perfect intonation, the more she projects the ethereality of a flute played by the wind.”

Collins’ impact on today’s folk and pop generation is equally commanding. A 2008 tribute album titled Born to the Breed featured 14 Collins songs as interpreted by Chrissie Hynde, Rufus Wainwright, Dolly Parton, Dar Williams and others. The record is an unexpected celebration, in a way, as Collins is viewed by many fans as primarily an interpretive singer.

Such a paradox is explored at the end of Born to the Breed when veteran folk troubadour Leonard Cohen offers one of the album’s two versions of Since You’ve Asked (Joan Baez sings the other). Again, a career comes full circle as one of Collins’ most beloved interpretations remains her 1966 version of Cohen’s poetic and plaintive Suzanne. She has also dedicated an entire album to Cohen’s music - 2004’s Judy Collins Sings Leonard Cohen: Democracy.

“I was the first person to put Leonard Cohen on a stage in 1966,” Collins said. “He had read his poetry in tiny little places in Montreal and Toronto. But he had never really been onstage to perform. So when I was doing a benefit show in New York, I told him, ‘Come on up.’ It was a big concert. I think Jimi Hendrix was on the bill, as well.

“So Leonard came to the show and got out onstage. He started to sing Suzanne and then stopped right in the middle and walked off. I always thought it was because he was terrified. He said later it was because he broke a guitar string, but I don’t believe that for a minute. He, of course, went on to become a phenomenally good performer. I always thought he was wonderful.”

Curiously enough, it was the initially stage-shy Cohen who prodded Collins into putting aside other artists’ work and focus on her own compositions.

“After I started recording Leonard’s music, he said, ‘How come you’re not writing any of your own songs?’ All I could say was, ‘I don’t know.’ That’s when I started writing, and Since You’ve Asked became the first song I ever wrote. So to have him sing it on the tribute album was thrilling.”

Collins celebrated the release of Born to the Breed with a performance at another grand New York locale, the Public Theater. The concert brought together several artists that have followed her folk path, including Shawn Colvin and Mary Gauthier, along with a sterling songwriting contemporary, Jimmy Webb. While the concert also served as a benefit for the famed New York music venue Joe’s Pub as well as a celebration of the 10^th anniversary of Collins’ Wildflower record label, it was similarly a testament to a love of performing that, much like her singing voice, remains ageless.

“Performing is very much what I love,” Collins said. “It’s the way I make a living. It’s how I find a way to get through to an audience. And it’s all wonderful.”

Judy Collins performs at 7 tonight at the Kentucky Theatre, 214 E. Main, for the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. The performance is sold out.

eric meyers and joe harbison of the ford theatre reunion with model katie stillwell of the lexington collaborative fashion group will be part of saturday's boomslang lineup. staff photo by mark cornelison.

Sitting on the patio of a Knoxville restaurant last winter, Saraya Brewer took notice of what was unfolding around her. The streets were alive with something called Big Ears, a festival that championed concerts by new and veteran underground acts, performance works and interactive exhibits.

Then the idea clicked. Something like this could happen in Lexington. As a WRFL disc jockey for over five years, Brewer was already tuned into the music she wanted to bring in, not to mention a source of funding. Big Ears, in turn, triggered ideas for using multiple performance venues and offering bills that mixed prominent (though decidedly non-mainstream) artists with local performers.

And, to top it all off, there would room for a carnival.

Thus Boomslang was born. The inaugural three-day local festival gets into full swing today. By the time it concludes Sunday evening with the regional debut of the groundbreaking Brazilian tropicalia ensemble Os Mutantes, Boomslang will have played host to over 50 acts and performers at five venues.

“We started by putting together a list of bands we would love to bring to Lexington,” Brewer said. “Since RFL had the funding in the place to put on shows, we found it was actually possible to bring in bands like Os Mutantes. From there, more and more bands began contacting us. So it mushroomed into a much bigger baby than we first thought.”

Already interested in playing Lexington before Boomslang was solidified was Faust, the immensely influential “krautrock” ensemble known for mixing psychedelic and prog rock styles.

“I think a lot of people aren’t that familiar with these bands,” Brewer said. “But it is possible to be legendary and still be underground. Faust actually contacted us. Their agent really liked Lexington and wanted them to play here as opposed to any other cities that are close by. So that was the first big band that we secured.

“But we wanted to also include bands that were more up-and-coming and more popular with the younger indie scene. We wanted to introduce a lot of the younger crowds to the bands that are the predecessors but, at the same time, introduce crowds more familiar with Faust and Os Mutantes to some of the newer bands that are doing stuff that could be seen as being very similar.”

Peruse the full Boomslang lineup and you will quickly come to an event that perhaps defines the festival’s sense of artistic adventure, not mention its temperament. It’s called, quiet aptly, the Boomslang Carnival. It’s part music, part fashion show and part side show. Playing in the Buster’s parking lot on Saturday, the carnival stems from a project that teamed the Lexington band The Ford Theatre Reunion - a sort of vaudevillian punk ensemble that dabbles in, among other genres, gypsy jazz and brutish, brittle folk - with the Lexington Collaborative Fashion Group.

“We’ve been working for awhile with Sarah Jane Estes  from the Lexington Collaborative Fashion Group,” said Ford Theatre Reunion guitarist Eric Myers. “We started planning in the late spring to put on some kind of carnival in Triangle Park. Then Boomslang wanted to bring us on board, so all of this kind of grew from there.”

The carnival will unfold with music performances mingled with models donning displays of circus-style attire. But the real fun comes after dark. That’s when the sideshow cranks up with displays of fire eating, snake charming and blockheading.

The latter is the correct carnival term for the act of hammering nails into one’s nasal cavities. And what lucky soul has been assigned that task?

“Oh, that’s me,” Myers replied. “I love the aesthetic of all these performances - specifically the ones that are not illusion - like eating fire and swallowing swords. The reality is what fascinates me.”

“They haven’t needed much direction from me,” Brewer said of the carnival crew. “We just showed them the space they could use and they took off with it.”

Most everything else lands in Brewer’s lap. She said a mammoth volunteer crew helps. But logistics, schedules, last minute cancellations and, in a few joyful cases, last minute sponsors (like the Alltech Fortnight Festival, which signed on to co-present Faust) and band announcements (like the addition of the Boston post-punk band Mission of Burma to tonight’s bill at Buster’s), falls to her.

“I’ve been multi-tasking like I never have been in my life. On any given day, I’m dealing with 16 different aspects of the festival. But I think it will be so neat if Lexington can pull something off like this.”

Boomslang will be presented at various venues through Sunday. Single days tickets are $20; weekend passes are $50. For a complete schedule go to http://boomslangfest.com.

os mutantes will close out the inaugural boomslang festival on sunday.

Notions of a lasting reunion were fleeting when Os Mutantes reconvened in 2006. Dormant for 28 years, the fabled Brazilian tropicalia ensemble began a second life with a sort of re-awakening performance at London’s Barbican Arts Centre.

For Sergio Dias, resurrecting the band meant bring able enlist a brigade of younger collaborators. His brother, bassist/keyboardist Arnaldo Baptista, was equally eager but would eventually leave the realigned unit in 2007. Singer Rita Lee, the third of the band’s original members, opted not to participate in the reunion at all.

So it fell to Dias to keep alive Os Mutantes’ brand of tropicalia - a mix of animated pop, indigenous stylistic inspiration, politically streaked storylines and improvisation that surfaced as an artistic movement in Brazil during the late ‘60s.

“When we first agreed to play for the Barbican, we thought it was going to be for one concert,” Dias said. “Then a small but very solid tour lined up. In America, we were getting booked at all of these important places, like opening for The Flaming Lips at the Hollywood Bowl, playing the Pitchfork Festival in Seattle and eventually playing at the Fillmore, which was a dream for me. And this was all before we had played one note. We weren’t even a band again yet, but all these people were eager to hear us. I couldn’t understand it.”

Even at the height of the tropicalia movement, Os Mutantes were sailing well under the artistic radar mostly because its records never received wide distribution in the United States. It nonetheless garnered a modest but devout following on these shores. Among Os Mutantes’ American fans were Kurt Cobain (who tried, unsuccessfully, to initiate a reunion concert in 1993) and David Byrne (who oversaw the band’s 1999 compilation album, Everything is Possible).

Curiously, veteran fans aren’t making the biggest fuss over the new Os Mutantes lineup Dias has assembled or Haih…Ou Amortecedor…, the first full album of new studio material under the band’s name in three decades. Instead, far younger audiences - like the one expected for Sunday night’s Boomslang finale performance at Buster’s - are tuning in to the band’s often playful experimentation.

“It’s a beautiful thing to put out a record sung entirely in Portuguese and have these kids accepting it and enjoying it. To have the freedom to do whatever we wanted, that’s the beauty of these times. I don’t think we could have done something like this in the ‘80s or ‘90s.”

But that’s fine with Dias. Freedom, in his book, does not translate into nostalgia. Despite his band’s extensive history, he views Os Mutantes very much as artistic voice of the here and now.

“Even at the first date back together at the Barbican, the first thing I said was, ‘Let’s do a new album.’ We didn’t want to conceive a band that lives on through some music we did 30 or 40 years ago.

“Music is not about thinking. It’s about feeling. We understand music as a free concept, an open canvas. You’re allowed to do whatever you want.”

Os Mutantes performs at 9:30 p.m. Sunday at Buster’s Billiards and Backroom as part of the Boomslang festival. Tickets are $20. For more information, go to http://boomslangfest.com.

the decemberists. photo by autumn dewilde.

Almost by definition, pop music is viewed as an easily digestible commodity. It commands that you stick to a familiar and accessible theme, conjure an appealing melody and, for crying out loud, it’s got to move along briskly. A pop tune isn’t an epic, you know.

Or is it?

The newest album by The Decemberists, The Hazards of Love, harkens back to an artistically haughty enterprise known as the “concept album.” That means that even though it is technically divided into 17 songs, the recording is essentially one piece - and a fairly fanciful one at that. Its storyline involves fabled but forbidden love, forest witches and the promise of some very nasty deeds from a fellow known as The Rake.

So what could be more out of step with the pop mainstream than to release an album that is, in essence, a single extended work? How about going on tour and performing the entire thing from start to finish.

Did Capitol Records, which signed the one-time indie sensation in 2005, think such moves conflicted with conventional pop strategies? Hard to say. But Decemberists drummer John Moen had an initial word for releasing and performing a concept work like The Hazards of Love - “inadvisable.”

“I thought, ‘OK, now that everyone is back to ordering just one song at a time on the internet, we’re going to make an entire album that is one big, long song.’” Moen said. “But you know, sometimes it can be really interesting to do something that even you are telling yourself is a bad idea.”

A connection was made, however. While The Hazards of Love didn’t sell in Michael Jackson-like numbers upon its release last spring, it did become the highest charting album of The Decemberists’ career, making it to No. 14 on the Billboard Top 100. More arresting than that, though, was the sheer expression and invention of the record.

Inspired by a 1966 EP disc of the same name from British folk songstress Anne Briggs, The Hazards of Love moves from delicate passages of dark acoustics to thundering bits of keyboard-charged rock ‘n’ roll. It’s part Brit-folk fairy tale (which is fascinating given that the band is from Portland, Oregon) and part rock ‘n’ roll theatre.

“I love The Decemberists,” said fellow Portland musician Scott McCaughey, who recruited all of The Decemberists for cameos on his new Killingsworth album with indie rockers The Minus 5. “Great lyrics, absolutely killer musicians… they’re incredible. They go from doing really stripped down English folk to bombastic prog rock, but also sound great on everything in between. I really love that about them.”

The Hazards of Love, like all Decemberists records, is the invention of Colin Meloy. As the band’s vocalist, frontman, co-founder and chief songwriter, he mapped out the album’s epic pop design. But this wasn’t the first time Meloy had devised a concept recording for The Decemberists (which currently include multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk, keyboardist Jenny Conlee, bassist Nate Query and Moen). In 2004, he wrote the Irish-inspired (though decidedly un-Irish sounding) The Tain. But the EP’s five songs clocked in at a mere 18 minutes. The Hazards of Love runs nearly an hour.

“It was daunting, firstly,” Moen said. “I wasn’t in the band when The Tain was recorded. So I was kind of nervous about how all of this was going to come together. But Colin made a pretty detailed map, a demo, for us. Once you listened to everything you realized how there are songs in there that hold up on their own just as much as the other material he writes.

“So once we heard the tunes, the ideas just started popping in our brains about how to make this sound unique. It became a kind of creative puzzle.”

The Hazards of Love will make up the first half of The Decemberists’ Lexington debut performance tonight at the Singletary Center for the Arts. The band will be augmented for the new material by vocalists Shara Worden (of My Brightest Diamond) and Becky Stark (of Lavender Diamond). A second set will feature earlier Decemberists songs.

“I think we have proved that a show like this really isn’t such a silly thing to do,” Moen said. “I mean, I wasn’t sure at first this was such a good plan, but it’s been great to pull off playing the whole record, to get the whole thing done. I wouldn’t have predicted something like this at all. But I’m really proud to be part of it.”

The Decemberists perform at 7:30 tonight at the Singletary Center for the Arts. Laura Viers and the Hall of Flames will open. Tickets ate $30, $35, $40. Call: (859) 257-4929.

mark o'connor. photo by erica horn.

Some artistic visions can take years, decades even, to formulate. And that can often be meager compared to the time it takes for those ideas to find an accepting audience.

For Mark O’Connor, the journey continues this fall with the further realization of what he terms new American classical music. Over the course of an October residency in Lexington, he will perform with the latest version of the ensemble that helped introduce his new string music to the world, team for two concerts in two cities with the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra and introduce instruction of a violin method that is as Americana friendly as O’Connor’s concertos, string quartets and symphonies.

“About 25 years ago I started this idea of combining classical music - the styles, techniques and even instrumentation - with American fiddling,” O’Connor said last weekend from his New York home. “I’ve been able to explore that in the solo music I’ve done, in chamber music and now with orchestras. So this idea of cross pollination of music is something that continues to this day.”

“As a player, Mark is at the very top of the field,” said UK Symphony director and conductor John Nardolillo, who has collaborated with O’Connor on numerous performances over the past five years. “He is the best and best known living fiddler. His facility with the instrument is just extraordinary. It may even be unequalled in the classical field, as well. But what draws in the audience is his incredible expressiveness on the stage, even if it’s with the simplest old time tune.”

A Seattle native, O’Connor’s early career involved work with such disparate ensembles as The David Grisman Quintet (a leading new generation string music group that combined elements of bluegrass and jazz) and The Dregs (an early ‘80s version of the Southern fusion band Dixie Dregs). But studies with such visionaries as French swing-jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli, along with an active ‘80s career as a Nashville studio musician, expanded an already versed stylistic vocabulary.

In the mid ‘90s came two recordings that set O’Connor’s classically inclined string music into motion. 1995’s The Fiddle Concerto offered two extended pieces - a concerto and a string quartet - heavily accented by American fiddle playing. The following year brought Appalachia Waltz with fellow string journeymen Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer. The third and newest Appalachian Waltz Trio, with violist Gillian Gallagher and cellist Mike Block, brings O’Connor back to Kentucky tonight for a performance at the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour that will be augmented by four string players from the UK orchestra.

“The trio plays some of my most accessible music,” O’Connor said. “But it also really helps me describe the idea of this new American string music.”

Such music, in essence, begins with Americana inspirations. That means echoes of folk, jazz, bluegrass and country register within O’Connor’s compositions. For instance, within O’Connor’s String Quartet No. 2: Bluegrass (released on an album in May on O’Connor’s Omac label), a plaintive melody circulates that sounds for all the world like a vintage Hank Williams record.

“I was listening to one of his violin caprices the other night,” Nardolillo said. “It’s sort of written in the style of a Paganini caprice. So on the one hand, it’s incredibly virtuosic. But on the other hand it sounds like fiddle music. It’s an extraordinary combination.”

“A long time ago, perhaps when I really started focusing on my solo career, I realized people my age and older we going to be sort of slow to come to the musical changes and philosophical differences I was bringing to the table,” O’Connor said. “That’s when I thought my best success, so to speak, would be with the next generation of string players.”

That brought O’Connor to the idea of developing his own violin method, one that stressed the same Americana inspirations as his compositions. The first two books of what will be a 10-volume series on the method will be published in November. Part of O’Connor’s October residency, which culminates with performances with the UK Symphony here and in Ashland, will focus on instruction of the method for area music teachers.

“With the method, I realized I had an endgame,” O’Connor said. “And that endgame would be the string player of the 21^st century. That would involve a player with working knowledge of jazz and folk as well as classical music.”

But how will an educational system that didn’t widely accept jazz as part of a music curriculum until the past few decades feel about an entirely new method of violin instruction?

“The establishment of academia is exactly that - it’s an establishment. To change these things overnight is difficult just as changing government overnight is difficult. Over time, people come to change and establishments eventually adapt. The violin has been around for a long time with established ways of teaching. So there is bound to be resistance to the method because of the change.

“That doesn’t mean people won’t come around, though.”

Mark O’ Connor performs at:

+ 3 p.m. Oct. 4 at the Kentucky Center for the Arts Bomhard Theater in Louisville with the Appalachian Waltz Trio. $25, $32. (800) 775-7777.

+ 7 p.m. Oct. 5 at the Kentucky Theatre for the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour with the Appalachian Waltz Trio. $10. (859) 252-8888.

+ 7 p.m. Oct. 27 at the Paramount Arts Center with the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra. $20, $25, $35. (606) 324-3175.

+ 7:30 p.m. Oct. 30 at the Singletary Center for the Arts with the UK Symphony Orchestra and Chorale. $10 (student) and $20 (public). (859) 257-4929. 

mary chapin carpenter

It took a concert last spring in the Deep South to underscore for Mary Chapin Carpenter the love, vitality, and perhaps even restorative power that can come from a live performance.

The occasion was a songwriter summit staged as part of the Eudora Welty Centennial celebration at the Pulitzer Prize winning author’s hometown of Jackson, Mississippi. The show teamed Carpenter with a trio of new generation folk voices from the South - Kate Campbell, Caroline Herring and Claire Holley. In essence, Carpenter was honoring a lifelong inspiration but picked up three new friends in the process.

“We played a lot of songs that were directly and sometimes indirectly connected to Eudora,” Carpenter said. “It was put together and performed by the seat of our pants. But we had a wonderful time.”

The concert’s importance went beyond being a tribute, though. It was Carpenter’s first stage appearance in two years. Why such a break for a singer who toured incessantly for the previous two decades? And why a similar silence from a recording career that had yielded Americana albums full of stark emotive detail (1992’s quadruple platinum Come On Come On and 1995’s Stones in the Road being among the best of a strong lot) as well as a string of early ‘90s singles (I Feel Lucky, Shut Up and Kiss Me and the jubilant Cajun collaboration with BeauSoleil Down at the Twist and Shout) that earned her a solid fanbase at country radio as well as five Grammy Awards.

“It’s not the first time,” Carpenter said of the break. “When I got married in 2002 I took a few years off just to, well, enjoy married life.”

But this time was different. Following work on her 2007 album The Calling, Carpenter was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism - a blood clot in the lung that often forms with few symptoms as warning signs. Severe and undiagnosed cases can cause sudden death, although Carpenter’s PE was discovered when chest pain and breathing difficulties sent her to an emergency room.

“You go through all sorts of questions about your identity and what you’re able to do when you get a health scare like that. It’s certainly not something I ever imagined would happen to me.

“When you sit down with your business manager and talk about the nuts and bolts of having careers like mine, they say, ‘Well, you’ve got to have insurance.’ And I’m like, ‘Why?’ ‘Well, what if you get sick and can’t play again?’ And I was like, ‘That’ll never happen.’ You just never think that will happen to you.

“You keep asking these questions about identity and purpose and things like that - things you just don’t think about on an everyday level. Maybe you shouldn’t spend a lot of time thinking about those things. Then all of a sudden, you’ve got the time on your hands to think about them because you’re not able to do anything else. There’s not a manual for this. You just have to bumble your way through it.”

With recovery and reflection, there was writing - lots of it. Carpenter has completed a new set of songs that she will begin recording shortly after her first Central Kentucky concert in nearly 17 years. She performs Friday at Equus Run Vineyards in Midway for the Alltech Fortnight Festival.

“As time goes on, writing sometimes feels harder. But maybe that’s because you become harder to please. Then every once in awhile, a song will kind of write itself, clichéd though that may be, and you will feel in full possession of your tools. It’s not predictable. But I still love to write songs. It doesn’t feel like anything other than a complete labor of love.”

Carpenter’s writing also went to print about a year ago. She was invited by The Washington News to write a bi-weekly arts-related column, which she continued until work resumed in earnest on her songwriting last spring.

Among her column topics: a tribute to Piedmont bluesman John Cephas, the beauty of a Hem song used in a TV commercial and the snubbing of Bruce Springsteen at last winter’s Grammy Awards (for not being nominated for The Wrestler).

“There were times when I had to be reminded that this was for the Arts page as opposed to something where I would be flapping my political wings,” Carpenter said. “I also have been taught how much respect to have for people who write on deadlines.”

But perhaps the most eloquent and moving writing Carpenter has penned since her recovery was a short essay for National Public Radio’s “This I Believe” series titled “The Learning Curve of Gratitude.” There, she recounts her illness, the consuming guilt resulting from the canceled tour and the difficulties of her recovery. But it also speaks of a renewed appreciation of love of life.

“I will think about how uncomplicated it all is,” Carpenter writes at the essay’s end. “I will wonder at how it took me my entire life to appreciate just one day.”

“It’s your joy,” she added in our interview. “You get your joy back. I mean, I’m just so grateful to be here.”

Mary Chapin Carpenter and Mother Jane performs at 6 tonight at Equus Run Vineyards, 1280 Moores Mill Road in Midway for the Alltech Fortnight Festival. Tickets are $55. Call (859) 846-9463 or visit www.alltechfortnightfestival.

manchester orchestra with singer and lyricist andy hull in foreground. photo by james minchin iii.

The goal was simple. When Manchester Orchestra hit the studio to cut its sophomore album, Mean Everything to Nothing, the idea was to make “a rock record.” As the band’s keyboardist Chris Freeman put it, “We were ready to make some louder noises.”

But what happens as Manchester Orchestra cranks things up is a bit unexpected. When the volume is raised, so are some especially restless spirits. Within the earthy, unsettling and often spiritual songs that make up Mean Everything, Manchester Orchestra offers more of an ear-crunching séance than a conventional rock ‘n roll party.

Take the leadoff tune The Only One, where singer Andy Hull howls about life as the lone son of a Southern pastor and the ultimately “passive power of the truth” over buzzsaw guitars and synths and a mutated ‘60 pop groove. It’s a song both exhilarating and squeamish.

“Lyrically and thematically, this is a very personal record for Andy,” Freeman said. “I mean he really is the son of a pastor. He grew up in the South. So there are definitely religious aspects to the lyrics and the music. These were things that became a big part of growing up in the South and remain part of what we think about on a day-to-day basis.”

In a review of a spring performance that celebrated the release of Mean Everything, The New York Times’ Jon Caramanica pegged the band’s music as “a comfortably depressing blend of emo and Southern rock, shaggy and desperate.” It went on to mention how the band “played with the vigor, thrust and density of a heavy metal band… there was barely any room to breathe.”

Such a temperament may point to the middle ground that will be occupied when Manchester Orchestra comes to Manchester St. in Lexington to play Buster’s as part of a triple indie rock bill that also features the power punk charge of Bowling Green’s Cage the Elephant and the far sleeker yet elemental melodies of the Los Angeles pop brigade Silverspun Pickups.

But there is also a tug of war within Manchester music where repression often battles discovery. On Mean Everything songs such as My Friend Marcus, the conflict turns very dark. Real life, though, has been less foreboding.

For much of his Georgia upbringing, Freeman was forbidden to listen to contemporary pop, rock or rap by his parents. Older rock records by The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and the like were allowed. But the only permissible sounds of the era had to come from Christian radio stations.

Eventually - and, perhaps inevitably - the outside world came knocking. For Freeman, it came in the form of a Radiohead record.

“I remember the first time I heard (the band’s second album) The Bends,” he recalled. “I was in the back of my friend’s sister’s white 1996 Mustang driving down to the beach during spring break of ‘01 or ‘02. When the record ended, I felt like a hammer had hit me over the head.”

Today, Manchester Orchestra’s music gets to do the hammering. But the band’s often agitated indie tunes have also been afforded some very commercial outlets. For example, I Can Feel a Hot One, which was released on a 2008 EP titled Let My Pride Be What’s Left Behind before finding a place on Mean Everything, was featured on an episode of Gossip Girl. And if you think a pack of spiritually inclined Southern hothead rockers don’t think that’s cool, guess again.

“Hey, I’ve watched Gossip Girl pretty regularly since I lost The O.C. as my guilty pleasure show. So when we got the offer to have our song on Gossip Girl, we freaked out. The night that episode was on, we all ordered some dinner and sat in front of the TV like little school children and watched for our song to come on.”

The steady rise in popularity of Manchester Orchestra has also earned Freeman two new fans: his parents.

“It’s funny, for Mother’s Day, I bought my mom an iPod and filled it with all of my favorite records as well as records I thought she would enjoy. Of course, I left off all the ones with massive amounts of swearing and drug references. And now she’s totally into all the music that I tried to get her to let me listen to back in the day. She loves Kings of Leon. All of her friends are blown away by the music she listens to now.

“But then getting to perform like we have on David Letterman and Conan O’Brien has kind of vindicated our careers with our parents. Now we can be like, “Hey, mom, we’re gonna be on TV. This is a real job where we’re kind of making some money.’ So that’s always fun.”

Silverspun Pickups, Manchester Orchestra and Cage the Elephant perform at 8 tonight at Buster’s Billiards and Backroom, 899 Manchester St.  Tickets are $25.