The Musical Box

joe henry. photo by lauren dukoff.

Confessing that he normally doesn’t perform in an unaccompanied setting, producer/song stylist Joe Henry vowed last night at the 930 Art Center in Louisville to play assorted songs of love, sex and death  “almost all in minor key.” But even with only two well worn Gibson acoustic guitars, an upright piano and nine strategically placed lamps as onstage allies, the evocative nature of Henry’s music was in no way shortchanged.

Sure, half the beauty of his recordings are the sonic fortresses - the ambient arrangements, the trip-hop grooves - that surround the atmospheric nature of the songs. But the combination of the pin-drop-quiet the 930 audience afforded the concert and the intimate clarity that resulted brought two often overlooked attributes of Henry’s music to the surface.

The first, of course, were the lyrics. Sometimes disparaging, often mysterious and, in more than a few instances, strangely sunny - they were all pushed to the forefront instead of serving as another element of the ambience. In this instance, no song sounded more involving or human than the title tune to what remains Henry’s finest album, 2001’s Scar. Served as a show-closing encore, the confessional grace in this hesitant but hopeful love song simply glowed with only a lone acoustic guitar melody as a backdrop.

The performance’s other great rediscovery was Henry’s singing. Instead of the purposely corrosive vocals that surface on his recordings, a crisp, patiently paced folk/pop voice liberated self-described “opaque” songs like Channel (one of five tunes pulled from the new Blood From Stars album). “Every fuzzy word I send returns a finer blade,” Henry sang before quoting the title to one of Van Morrison’s most mercurial songs You Don’t Pull No Punches But You Don’t Push the River.

Insightful as the performance was, it didn’t diffuse the wonder of Henry’s finest works, from the revolution-from-a-child’s-eye slant of This Afternoon to the romantic inscrutability of Progress of Love. Nor did it make apologies for past successes that slipped away. Henry summed up the differences between his Scar song Stop and the version that sister-in-law Madonna took to the Top 5 (as the re-titled Don’t Tell Me) with little regret.

“I recorded my version as a tango. She recorded her version as a hit.” With that, Henry let loose with the tango version in all its solo, unplugged glory.

joe henry.

The cost of a road-trip to Louisville will be your only expense for what may well be one of the regional concert highlights of the fall.

Tonight at the ultra intimate 930 Art Center is a very rare concert evening with Joe Henry, Americana stylist-turned avant-pop journeymen who doubles as one of today’s most scholarly and insightful (and in-demand) record producers.

We first got a look at Henry the performer in the mid ‘90s when he visited Lexington and Louisville as an opening act for bands like Son Volt. He was already starting to shed the Jayhawks-style alt-country leanings that underscored albums like 1992’s Kindness of the World and the exceptional 1994 covers EP Fireman’s Wedding. With turn-of-the-decade albums like Fuse (1999) and Scar (2001) - both essential recordings in the Henry catalogue - the stylistic contours of his music began to warp. Henry’s last three albums - 2003’s Tiny Voices, 2007’s Civilians and the new Blood from Stars take on almost Tom Waits-like abstractions that balance carnival-like playfulness and dark, noir-style pop accents.

On Blood from Stars, which will likely be the focus of tonight’s free show in Louisville (part of the 930’s opening of an exhibition of works by Cincinnati photographer Michael Wilson titled Whatever Happened to Martha?), such stylistic corrosion is detailed by way of the wiry guitars, stark percussion, jazzy dissonance and vocal animation that enhance songs like Death to the Storm, Suit on a Frame and The Man I Keep Hid. But the deconstructed orchestration of This is My Favorite Cage may better reflect the solo acoustic setting Henry will perform in tonight.

Of course, Henry has made just as much music with other artists as he had on his own over the past eight or so years. A devotee of vintage soul, he has produced recordings for Allen Toussaint (including this year’s extraordinary The Bright Mississippi), Solomon Burke (the Grammy-winning Don’t Give Up on Me) and Bettye LaVette (her comeback recording I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise). He has also produced more pop and folk directed works for Loudon Wainwright III, Ani DiFranco, Teddy Thompson and Aimee Mann.

On his website, Henry recently divulged two 82 year old icons he is currently producing albums for: jazz-blues vocalist/pianist Mose Allison and calypso great Harry Belafonte.

No tickets are required for tonight’s Louisville performance. Seating is general admission. The Wilson exhibit begins at 7 p.m.

Joe Henry performs at 9 tonight at the 930 Art Center, 930 Mary St. in Louisville. Admission is free. Call (502) 635-2554.

tara jane o'neil

The chieftain behind the recent Boomslang festival, Saraya Brewer, passed along word about an intriguing WRFL-sponsored performance tonight at The Red Mile Round Barn, 1200 Red Mile Road, featuring former Louisville song stylist Tara Jane O’Neil.

Now part of a thriving music community in Portland, Oregon - home to, among others, The Decemberists and The Minus 5’s Scott McCaughey - O’Neil conjures wonderfully lo-fi but immensely atmospheric story-songs. Rounding out the five-buck-bill (that is, if you’re a student; for everyone else, it’s a mere $7) are two other indie voices from the great Northwest: co-headliner Mount Eerie from Anacortes, Washington (a buzzsaw folk project featuring The Microphones’ Phil Elverum) and Vancouver’s No Kids.

We will bow to Brewer’s recommendation on these acts. She offers an insightful preview of the performance over at her fine Blueline blog.

Showtime tonight is 8:30 p.m.

lyle lovett: natural forces

The Lone Star alliance of Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen, a friendship that extends back to the mid ‘70s, is wonderfully reconstituted at the conclusion of the former’s fine new Natural Forces album. On a jointly penned romp titled It’s Rock and Roll, Lovett speaks in his dry Texas tenor of glitzy fame where “the bright lights fall down on you and the money does the name” before a Slash-like guitar riff shatters the serenity.

The song is only partially tongue-in-cheek, mind you, as Americana accents dominate the rest of Natural Forces and all of Keen’s The Rose Hotel.

Natural Forces is essentially two albums in one. It sports four new originals, excluding It’s Rock ‘N’ Roll, and six covers of works by esteemed Texas songwriters that reprise the stately warmth of Lovett’s sublime 1998 tribute record Step Inside This House.

Of the new songs, the home cooked double entendres of Pantry offer the most immediate enticement. But Empty Blue Shoes, with its richly languid blues sentiments (”your mother might hold you forever but forever won’t hold you for long”) and the title song’s dark imagery of natural forces and very un-natural migration satisfy more deeply.

The Texas material, as with Step Inside This House, sounds regal. Eric Taylor’s Whooping Crane possesses an almost meditative unease while Vince Bell’s Sun and Moon and Stars outlines solitary but eerily elegant despondency. In comparison, Townes Van Zandt’s Loretta sounds surprisingly hopeful, a vision of home on an album where sentiments are as scattered as storms along distant Texas plains.

robert earl keen: the rose hotel

Keen mines more familiar turf on The Rose Hotel with tunes that tuck colors of minor chords into highly accessible choruses to heighten the mix of drama and sometimes wry but human humor. Such devices abound on Something I Do, a reggae-fied lowlife anthem with a cha-cha-cha beat and the album’s title tune storyline of intended but missed connections. Keen also covers Van Zandt by way of a darkly fantastical reading of Flyin’ Shoes.

But the kicker is Wireless in Heaven, a smart honky tonk yarn that ponders internet connections to the hereafter with a melody that morphs from country to bluegrass.

Sure, the tune may search for an ISP in heaven. But its lyrical and melodic drive still come from deep in the heart of you-know-where.

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

Robert Earl Keen, Todd Snider and Bruce Robison perform at 7 p.m. Nov. 5 at the Lexington Opera House. Tickets are $22.50-$32.50. Call (859) 233-3535.

battlefield band: sean o'donnell, alasdair white, mike katz, alan reid. photo by louis de carlo.

When asked at last night’s taping of the WoodSongs Old-Time Hour at the Kentucky Theatre to describe the instrument he cradled in his hands, Battlefield Band’s Mike Katz didn’t hesitate. “It’s beautiful,” he said. “It’s the sexiest of all instruments.” Then again, how else would you expect a six-foot-something Scot with a beard that would put ZZ Top to shame to profess his love for the Highland bagpipes?

Katz actually spent more time doubling on bouzouki last night, meshing with fiddler Alasdair White and guitarist Sean O’Donnell to create a sort of Scottish string band hybrid sound. Still, the pipes wheezed, whirred and roared to attention during the Counting Cowries finale of the Ku’ula-kai medley, one of four “pursuit of wealth tunes” Battlefield Band pulled from its new Zama Zama (Try Your Luck) album.

Once considered a bit of a rogue Scottish folk operation for its sometimes contemporary accents, Battlefield Band steered down a largely traditional path last night with the dance hall flavor of founder Alan Reid’s electric keyboards taking a back seat on the string driven Baile An Or (Gold Town).

But the traditions surrounding the performance took flight from Scotland more than once. While Plain Gold Ring became a lament of Celtic-spun desire thanks O’Donnell’s stoic vocals, the tune didn’t originate in ancient Scotland at all.  It instead emerged on American pop charts in the ‘50s as a hit for Nina Simone. Then there was the blues spark that prefaced the bagpipe celebration of The Pretty Apron. And let’s not forget that the title Zama Zama boasts zulu ancestry.

Adding to the program’s international thrust was Bardstown multi-instrumentalist Pauly Zarb, a native of Australia. Much of his set leaned toward Americanized pop-folk performed in almost vaudevillian one-man-band fashion with Zarb juggling keyboards, congas and guitars with his hands and kick drum and hi-hat with his feet. A nod to his homeland by way of a cover of the 1982 Men at Work hit Down Under added flute to the mix.

Zarb and the Battlefield Band also teamed for impromptu jamming at the show’s conclusion. While neither really needed the other’s help, the onstage bonding was fun to watch. But in the end, when Katz cranked up the bagpipes one last time during the encore of The Merry Macs (from Battlefield Band’s 2001 album Happy Daze), the global summit wound down as that sexy beast from “the ol’ kintry” took centerstage.

jolie holland. photo by scott irvine.

Even in its rockier moments, like the ones that define her wonderful 2008 album The Living and the Dead, there remains an unmistakable intimacy to Jolie Holland’s music. It requires space and demands attention. So placing her stories of addiction, abandonment and faith on display at the new Woodland Ave. music club Cosmic Charlie’s may not have been the most skillful booking job in the world. Located in the same space that occupied the old Lynagh’s Music Club, the room’s design seems to almost amplify the noise made by restless bar crowds - and last night there was a wealth of it. There was so much, in fact, that the musings of Holland and accompanist/guitarist Grey Gersten almost seemed like a secondary part of the bar atmosphere.

Amazingly, the performance drew a hearty crowd - a feat in itself, considering the concert received almost zero publicity. But it was disheartening to find nearly one-third of the crowd located at the back end of the room near the bar treat an artist and guest (and a performer they forked over 10 bucks to see) with such flippant resignation and ill respect. On club atmosphere alone, the evening was a disappointment.

Now, take away the offstage distractions and you were left with a rather accomplished performance. Holland painted musical portraits with a vocal accent beautifully stalled between the longing of Lucinda Williams’ Lone Star drawl (Holland, likewise, is a Texas native) and the soul/jazz phrasing of such timeless stylists as Billie Holiday. Instrumentally, she colored her tunes with rhythms from a weather-beaten Epiphone guitar and a handcrafted, cigar box-shaped violin, although Gersten’s keen guitar leads propelled the material

In terms of repertoire, the performance was a delight, from the show-opening montage of death, love and loss in Mexico City to the lone encore - a cover of alt-country fave Freakwater’s Gone to Stay. In between, the performance revealed snapshots of Western-flavored mystique (Roll My Bones) and rural Appalachian fancy (Alley Flowers) along with a few fun, well-chosen covers (Michael Hurley’s O My Stars and Sonny and the Sunsets’ Halloween-themed Death Cream).

Topping everything, though, was the highlight tune from The Living and the Dead - a remorseful but ultimately elegant romantic still life called Palmyra. Quietly rugged as this version was, it was still beautifully restless, emotive and tense enough to deflect the dismissive bowling alley ambience of an uninvolved bar crowd.

jack white, jimmy page and the edge exchange riffs and conversation in "it might get loud," which is still playing at the kentucky theatre.

If you were late to the party that is It Might Get Loud, as I was until last night, cheer up. The extraordinary documentary by An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim that brings together three landmark rock artists from three generations for conversation, shop talk and some honest artistic reflection, is being held over for an extra week at the Kentucky Theatre.

If you’re a guitarist, the film is loaded with obvious appeal as Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White discuss their instruments, their hardware and the ingenuity that transforms the simplest of riffs into monster musical hooks. But the appeal of It Might Get Loud is by no means exclusive to gear heads. Anyone who has experienced a serious rock ‘n’ roll itch, especially fans, will get a royal kick out of being a fly on the wall as the three guitarists gather with a ton of equipment on a Los Angeles soundstage to swap stories, divulge influences and share a few impromptu jams.

That summit is then balanced with footage shot at three locales reflecting the musical heritage of each player. Page pokes about East Hampshire’s Headley Grange, where Led Zeppelin recorded its third, fourth, fifth and sixth albums. But nothing compares to watching Page, 65, beaming like a child at Christmas as he listens at home in London to a recording of Link Wray’s Rumble.

Similarly, the film allows The Edge to revisit the school where the U2 members met and initially rehearsed. But the shadows of Dublin’s violent political past remain vivid as he describes the climate surrounding the band’s beginnings. That, in turn, leads into The Edge working alone on the riff that was to become the backbone of the recent U2 single Get on Your Boots.

White, who seems a touch stand-offish at times around the guitar elders, nonetheless confides his love of the blues as he roams the American countryside outside of Nashville detailing stories of a Detroit upbringing that are every bit as deflating as those The Edge reveals about Dublin.

Finally, the three square off on trademark songs from each of their respective careers with only their mutual guitar voices as artillery. White unleashes the dirty blues of the White Stripes’ Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground while The Edge offers the chiming stutter of the early U2 favorite I Will Follow. To no one’s surprise, though, Page steals the show as he cranks up the Zeppelin warhorse Whole Lotta Love. There, the good-natured Edge and the initially distant White sit transfixed and trumped by the true guitar hero.

Dig into It Might Get Loud and you will be, too.

jolie holland. photo by scott irvine.

Here’s a show we didn’t see coming. Well, actually we did, but we had given it up for lost.

In the lingering days of summer, Texas songstress Jolie Holland, who has long been a Lexington favorite, was booked for an Oct. 16 performance at The Dame. Come August, of course, The Dame called it a day. So those of us who have been championing the stark, poetic nature of Holland’s songs, as well as the fascinating encyclopedia of folk, jazz and pop voices she uses to display them, sat with sunken hearts.

But fear not, friends. Holland’s concert is still on, but at a new venue. She will perform tonight at the new Cosmic Charlie’s at the sight of the old Lynagh’s Music Club on Woodland Ave.

This will be Holland’s first local outing since a set at WRFL’s FreeKY Fest last year. Since then, she has sent us another stunner of an album - a collection of sweetly sung stories of heartbreak, addiction and isolation titled The Living and the Dead. Holland co-produced it with the great Shahzad Ismaily, who performed as guitarist and percussionist (at times, simultaneously) during an in-store show last year at CD Central with the experimental bi-coastal pop trio 2 Foot Yard.

Eastern Kentucky-born New Yorker Matt Bauer will open tonight’s performance.

Jolie Holland and Matt Bauser perform at 7 tonight at Cosmic Charlie’s, 388 Woodland Ave. Tickets are $10. Call (859) 309-9499.

steve ferguson.

In the midst of what has been an especially active October for live music, we lost an often neglected artistic neighbor. Steve Ferguson, founding guitarist for NRBQ and a longtime staple and elder of the Louisville music scene, died last week after an extended battle with cancer. He was 60.

A Louisville native, Ferguson’s tenure with the acclaimed NRBQ was brief. He stayed for two albums - a self-titled debut recording (noted for its crackup cover of Sun Ra’s Rocket Number Nine, a tune that would pop up in NRBQ’s stage shows well into the ‘90s) and Boppin’ the Blues (a collaboration with rock ‘n’ roll forefather Carl Perkins) - before leaving the band in 1970. But an extraordinary live document of Ferguson’s NRBQ days was offered in 2006 thanks to a concert recording pulled from the archives of shows held at Cincinnati’s fabled Ludlow Garage.

Over the past two decades, especially, Ferguson became a fixture in Louisville clubs with his band the Midwest Creole Ensemble. Stabs were made at forging a similar following in Lexington. But aside from a few slimly attended shows at the defunct Lynagh’s Music Club, such an audience never materialized.

The NRBQ link remained strong enough, however, for Ferguson and fellow NRBQ founder Terry Adams to reunite for a 2006 studio album called Louisville Sluggers. But slip on Ludlow Garage 1970 and you will hear the splendidly ragged guitar speak of Flat Flew Flewzy and the wonderful rootsy corrosion of Wan Do. Within the playing are seeds of the wondrous groove Ferguson would explore so inventively later with his own bands.

rosanne cash: the list

Born within two years of each other, Rosanne Cash and Patty Loveless represente a country music generation once embraced by radio. Since then, Cash explored heavily introspective songwriting that took her light years away from corporate Nashville while Pikeville native Loveless designed albums with husband/producer Emory Gordy, Jr. that received widespread country acclaim before refocusing on the mountain inspired roots music of her youth.

Now as members of a demographic that Nashville regularly shuns (women artists in their 50s), Cash and Loveless have again found common ground. For Cash, it comes with a collection of covers suggested by her legendary father, Johnny Cash. For Loveless, the link is a sequel to a hit recording of traditionally inclined rural country inspiration.

Cash’s The List, a new collaboration with her own husband/producer, John Leventhal, takes its cue from a catalogue of 100 songs termed essential by the elder Cash. Some are country staples forever associated with the Man in Black, including the always-dramatic Long Black Veil. Daughter Cash’s telling of the gallows tune’s storyline is understandably gentler than her father’s version. But some neat guitar tremolo and world weary harmonies from Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy make the song’s ghostly inspiration all her own.

Equally daring are grand takes on the Patsy Cline hit She’s Got You and the Merle Haggard classic Silver Wings. Both tunes indicate the grand sweep of The List by showcasing a voice than conveys heartache, urgency and simple human drama in a manner that respects regal country and pop traditions.

patty loveless: mountain soul II

Loveless doesn’t quite go for the epic tone of The List when approaching Mountain Soul II, a sequel to 2001’s Mountain Soul. That record was exquisitely timed with renewed interest in pre-bluegrass country music at a peak thanks to the hit soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? But Mountain Soul II is every bit as homey as its predecessor with acoustic arrangements that bring out the deeper contours of Loveless’ singing.

The bluegrass spiritual Workin’ on a Building, especially, is a work of wonders. It sports support from two of the mightiest bluegrass forces on the planet, Del and Ronnie McCoury, but the gospel gusto fueling the tune belongs to Loveless alone.

Loveless and Gordy add a few fine originals, too. But the killer is a cover of Emmylou Harris’ Diamond in My Crown, which is delivered as a hymn-like lament. As the vocal wail is reigned in, the gospel fortitude is magnified with only organ and Harris’ wildly plaintive harmonies as backdrops. Have mercy.