Guy by Steve Earle & The Dukes.

Old friends, Guy Clark & Steve Earle.

It is Saturday and I have been having a Steve Earle, Guy Clark kind of a morning. I’m Listening to Steve’s tribute album to the late Guy Clark which is simply called Guy. Every song on the album is written by Guy, so I have been listening to his original versions on youtube as well because I don’t have any Guy Clark albums at the moment. I thought I had a compilation cd somewhere that a friend made me but when I dug it out it turned out to be Gene Clark who is someone entirely different. I have discovered some great things on youtube that I wasn’t aware of, such as an amazing documentary film from 1976 called Heartworn Highways. It features Steve and Guy and Townes Van Zandt & Rodney Crowell. They all look like kids, I didn’t recognise Steve at first.  (See the photo below)

Steve and Guy have a lot in common. Guy was born in Monahans, Texas in 1941 and the family moved to Rockport Texas in 1954. Steve was brought up in San Antonio, Texas. Guy married his wife Susanna in 1972 and Townes Van Zandt was best man at their wedding. Steve Earle ran away from home at the age of fourteen because he wanted to meet Townes who was his hero. The album is a collection of Steve’s favourite sixteen songs written by Guy. In the sleeve notes he says that one of his biggest regrets is that he and Guy never wrote a song together.

However, Steve did sing backing vocals on Guy’s first album in 1975 called Old No 1 and several songs from that album are included here, such as Rita Ballou, L.A Freeway, She Ain’t Going Nowhere, Texas 1947, That Old Time Feeling and Desperados Waiting For A Train. That last song after hearing it twice is one of my favourite songs on this album. It is a classic. Apparently, it was inspired by Guy’s grandmother’s boyfriend. I looked it up and it has been covered by many people. I should have heard it before. There are also songs from Guy’s second album Texas Cooking such as Anyhow I Love You, Ballad Of Laverne & Captain Flint and The Last Gunfighter Ballad. These songs make you realise what a great storyteller Guy Clark was.

I won’t mention every song on the album but one song I immediately loved on first hearing it is The Randall Knife which Guy recorded in 1983. It is a brilliant emotional song inspired by his father. Another song that I think is great is Old Friends which features the wonderful Emmylou Harris who actually sang on the original version. It’s nice to see Rodney Crowell on this album as well. I saw Rodney & Emmylou in concert in Bristol a few years ago which was a great evening. I bought their album The Travelling Kind. I must play that in a minute, I haven’t heard it for ages. I also saw Steve Earle & The Dukes at the same venue. I should mention that this album Guy is actually by Steve Earle & The Dukes because the Dukes make a great contribution.

Listening to this album inspired me to see what else is available and I discovered that there is an album called Live At The Bluebird Café from 1995 by Steve Earle, Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. I have just ordered myself a copy. I’ll let you know what I think when it arrives. Steve made an album previously called Townes and he said he wouldn’t be able to face Guy in the afterlife if he didn’t make an album of his songs as well. After listening to the result this morning, I think Guy Clark would be very pleased with the way Steve has treated his songs.

Steve & Guy.

Steve Earle and Rodney Crowell - Stay a Little Longer

Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest by Bill Callahan.

On Tuesday when I was in Warminster, I thought I would treat myself to a couple of new cd’s. I got the latest album by Steve Earle which I will tell you about in a couple of days’ time because I haven’t played it yet. The album I want to tell you about today is Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest by Bill Callahan.

I only discovered Bill Callahan’s music a few months ago. A friend sent me some compilation cd’s and I liked the sound of Bill Callahan’s voice, also the sparse arrangements and the deadpan delivery of the words. The lyrics seemed very clever but also mysterious. I looked him up on Wikipedia and discovered that although he is American, he spent several years of his childhood living in Knaresborough in Yorkshire. I found that quite interesting although I don’t know if it has influenced his work in any way. This is the first Bill Callahan album I have owned, although he has made nineteen previous albums in a career of thirty years. I can’t compare this work to his earlier catalogue because I only have this album to judge him by. I must say though that after two listens I like it very much indeed.

The themes of the songs seem to concern life and death and domestic contentment and the responsibilities of parenthood. The lyrics are often quite vague, symbolist and dream-like. With all great art you can interpret the meanings of the songs anyway you like. The artist shouldn’t have to explain the meaning. It is a long album of twenty songs and over an hour in length, so I couldn’t possibly think of something to say about every song. I’ll just tell you what thoughts I had as I listened. I like the artwork on the sleeve by the way. 

Shepherd’s Welcome is the opening track and it mentions a dream about a Black Dog On The Beach which is the title of the second track. I don’t know anything about the meanings of dreams, but I wonder if the Black Dog could symbolise depression. I once read that Churchill referred to his bouts of depression as ‘The Black Dog’. There is a whole menagerie of animals mentioned on this album including Sheep, wolves, lions, dogs, birds and camels, some of which occur in several songs. The instrumentation on the second song is very romantic and western sounding. Many of the songs are like dreamscapes. I don’t know who Angela in the third song refers to, but the words are very witty such as Like motel curtains, we never really met. I think the comic book imagery of Ballad Of The Hulk might have been inspired by playing with his son.

This is Bill’s first album in six years which might explain the lyrics of Writing. Perhaps he had a period of writer’s block or maybe didn’t have the time for it with being busy with his new family. Morning Is My Godmother is an expression that occurs in a couple of songs. There are some nice little touches to this song with bells and backing vocals. 747 is one of the highlights in my opinion with birth and death suggested in the second verse. Watch Me Get Married is a very witty song with lions and sheep appearing again which seems quite biblical to me. I don’t know what to say about Young Icarus but Released seems to me to be the most political and angry of all the songs. What Comes After Certainty mentions an ‘imitation Eames’ and I didn’t know what that is. I looked it up and discovered that it is a chair. Confederate Jasmine is the name of a plant. The shepherd and the wolf appear again and there is quite a vivid description of something that some people might think is too much information. Call Me Anything has a line I like which is I sing for good listeners and tired dancers. Son Of The Sea seems to me to be a song about the responsibilities of being a parent. Camels is another very enigmatic song with a dream like quality and possibly might be a comment about watching the war in Syria from the comfort of television but I’m only guessing.

I think Bill’s mother died in recent years and that event might have been the inspiration for the trio of songs Circles, When We Let Go and Lonesome Valley. The last song is traditional and was made famous by the Carter Family in 1936. I prefer the Bill Callahan version. If you scrolI down I have shared a video from Youtube of this song. I like the line Sweet as hospital grapes. He has a great way with words. Tugboats And Tumbleweed is a wonderful song and I interpret it as giving advice to his son. You’re my tugboat is a very affectionate description. The Beast is the final song which I won’t even pretend to try and interpret, but I still like it though. I have enjoyed listening to this CD over the last couple of days. I felt better for listening to it. Great music doesn't enhance your mood, it actually creates it. I think Bill Callahan is a great singer-songwriter and I will certainly listen to more of his music in the future.

Bill Callahan at The Wild Detectives (11/17/2018) Lonesome Valley

The Typewriter Is Holy.

It was Allen Ginsberg who said in his footnote to Howl, ‘The typewriter is holy the poem is holy, the voice is holy, the hearers are holy, the ecstasy is holy!’

I was looking through my stuff today, searching for something else and I came across an envelope. It contained a letter from an internet friend called Shannon Vale from 2007. Shannon had been in Lowell, Massachusetts where there had been a summer program of events about Jack Kerouac. As you probably know, Lowell was Jack’s hometown. Jack’s actual typewriter that he wrote On The Road was on display and Shannon wrote a note on it and sent it to me which was very thoughtful and kind of her. It is quite amazing to have something that was typed on the same machine which was used by one of the great literary figures of the 20^th century.

I have something else in common with Shannon. We are both Van Morrison fans. Shannon wrote an excellent book called Astral Weeks Live, A Fans Notes in 2011. I think it might  still be available from Shannon’s website  http://followshannon.com/about/ if you want to read it.

Friday Morning Poems.

It was Friday morning and I gazed out of the kitchen window at the dreary scene. It was overcast, windy and raining. “I won’t be going far today”, I thought to myself. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. I was greeted by the cheery smile of the post lady. She handed me my post which included a small package.

It contained a cd called Charles Bukowski Reads His Poetry. I made myself a cup of tea and put the cd in the machine. It is a recording made in 1972 at the Telegraph Hill Neighbourhood Centre in San Francisco. This is the first recording I have ever owned of Buk reading his poems. I enjoyed hearing it. Many people might be offended by it. He is obviously drunk, and insults and picks fights with the audience at various stages and keeps belching into the microphone. Some of the subject matter of the poems would outrage a lot of people but not me. As I have said before I like his honesty and his humour. After one listen, a poem called The Shoelace I enjoyed the most. They are all good, Bukowski was never boring. I like his style of writing prose as well. The sentences are short, get straight to the point and no words are wasted. I think Hemingway was an influence on him in his early days which might account for his sparse style. I would like to write like Bukowski.

It cheered me up on this Friday morning. I felt motivated to achieve something today after listening to Buk and hopefully learned something from him as well. I must stop writing anyway, though, really and I think all the time. I have cut some of them out of this piece today. I hope my writing improves soon.

The Wine Of Youth.

I had a couple of books by Toni Morrison in my shop. One was called A Mercy and the other was Song Of Solomon. They both sold in the last 24 hours. I wish I had read them when I had the chance, but I didn’t. It seems now that she has died everybody wants to read Toni Morrison. That is understandable I suppose. I have sold a few other books recently, by the likes of Graham Greene, Jane Austen, Caitlin Moran & John Le Carre. I have bought some nice ones as well.

Manana Means Heaven arrived the other day. That is the story of the Mexican girl in On The Road by Jack Kerouac. I also bought three books of poems by Charles Bukowski called Burning In Water Drowning In Flame, The People Look Like Flowers At Last and Come On In. I like his poetry because it often tells a story, I can understand what he is saying and also there is humour in his writing. I like the poetry of John Cooper Clarke for the same reasons. A lot of poets go over my head, I can’t understand what they are on about. I think that is because I haven’t been educated to appreciate it. I think poetry is like painting in that respect. I never appreciated Picasso at all, until one night I watched a television programme with David Hockney talking about Picasso’s genius and I started to realise how great he was. You need a teacher in order to understand art, well I do anyway. I like Robert Lowell because we studied his work at school for A Level English. I learned some of his poetry off by heart and can still recite it today almost 50 years later.

I also bought a collection of stories by John Fante called The Wine Of Youth. John Fante has become one of my favourite writers in recent years and I discovered him through Charles Bukowski. He himself found the work of Fante in Los Angeles public library when he picked up one of his books purely by chance. Bukowski said that Fante was his god. He used to visit him towards the end of Fante’s life and played a large part in getting his work which was long forgotten back into print. He was republished by the Black Sparrow Press which was founded by a man called John Martin who sold his collection of rare books in order to publish Bukowski. I think Black Sparrow and City Lights are my favourite American publishers. I even like the texture of the covers of Black Sparrow books and the feel of the paper. It has a nice quality to it.