Lil' Band O' Gold "The Promised Land" (4*)

An Australia-only release that provides a soundtrack to a documentary of the same name, The Promised Land delivers a classy collection of tunes that could, generically, be labelled swamp pop, though there are some who might be scratching the old noggin at the inclusion of a cover of ELO’s Hold On Tight as one of the album’s fourteen tracks.

Well, you would if you were looking for something that could be slotted into a generic classification as Cajun or Zydeco or whatever, but when you’re talking swamp pop you’re not exactly operating in clearly defined territory. What you’re getting once you head off into swamp pop is, according to Rick Koster’s Louisiana Music, a hybrid that evolved in the early-to-mid fifties at a time when the young folks in ... southwest Louisiana ... were itching to Americanize the French-speaking culture of their parents and grandparents. So you’re looking, in other words, at traditional Cajun (French-speaking white) and Creole (French-speaking black) forms filtered through a rock’n’roll and R&B sensitivity to produce slow dancers or fevered high energy jumping jive.

Alternatively, Lafayette swamp popper Gene Terry is quoted in the documentary The Promised Land soundtracks describes it as white guys playing black music damn good. You’ll find Terry written up in Louisiana Music a couple of pages after Lil' Band O' Gold’s drummer (the Godfather of Swamp Pop) right before Johnnie Allen, who gave us the swamp-pop arrangement of Chuck Berry’s The Promised Land that was one of the highlights of a compilation album called Another Saturday Night. If you’re watching that clip I’d point out that today Johnnie Allan is a retired teacher and principal!

Singer/guitarist C.C. Adcock and singer/accordionist Steve Riley (Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys) came up with the idea for Lil' Band O' Gold over pork chop sandwiches at a Creole restaurant in Lafayette in 1998, and the band’s main gig seems to be a Monday night jam at the Swampwater Saloon in Lafayette,so we’re talking an outfit comprised of players whose main gig lies elsewhere and gets together to have some fun. Judging by The Promised Land, they’ve succeeded.

Drummer Warren Storm’s CV includes gigs with Slim Harpo, Lazy Lester, and Lightnin' Slim in the '50s, session work with Freddy Fender and John Fogerty and a string of local hits under his own name, singer/pianist and songwriter David Egan has had songs recorded by Percy Sledge, Joe Cocker, and Irma Thomas and bassist Dave Ranson has regular gigs with John Hiatt and Sonny Landreth. There’s also a three-piece horn section, comprising Dickie Landry (Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, and Philip Glass), David Greely (Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys) and Pat Breaux (Beausoliel) and pedal-steel guitarist Richard Comeaux to round out the nine-piece outfit.

From the opening of Spoonbread to the end of So Long you’re not going to hear anything new, and anyone with anything beyond a nodding acquaintance with the music that has emerged from southwest Louisiana over the years will find much that contains familiar echoes.

You might be inclined to go further than describing what’s on offer here as familiar echoes, but we’re talking a revival of a tradition and a desire to revisit the honky tonk environment in from which that tradition emerged, so what might be described as plagiarism in another environment works here as something cut from the same cloth, the way the great Delta blues players borrowed from each other and drew on similar strands of shared experience and influences in common.

You’re not going to hear anything startlingly original, but if you’re after something that goes well with beer, good company and seafood on the barbeque this cross-pollination of Cajun folk, pedal steel powered country and R&B might be right up your alley.

Jeff Lang "Carried In Mind" (4.5*)

Saying something like here’s another Jeff Lang album that’s everything the long time listener would expect might sound rather like damning the album with faint praise, but right from the beginning of Running By The Rock all the regular elements are there in abundance. Impassioned vocal, furious supercharged slide guitar that’s sitting on the theoretically improbable but in Lang’s case close to inevitable margin between virtuoso and gutbucket, and it stays in that sort of territory right the way through to Way Past Midnight.

Some of the elements change from recording to recording. Here, he’s integrated Garrett Costigan on pedal steel alongside his regular rhythm section of Danny McKenna (drums) and Grant Cummerford (bass). You’ll also, invariably, get some light and shade, and after the fury of Running By The Rock the pedal steel comes to the fore in the is reflective and restrained I'm Barely There.

Fisherman's Farewell, co-written with his wife Alison Ferrier, who also contributes harmonies, works as a minimalist showcase for Lang’s guitar chops, with moodily atmospheric burbling underpinning the vocal and the tone gets a tad heavier for Towards Love with Lang delivering Neil Young-style fuzz while Costigan’s pedal steel hovers above.

Costigan’s moody contributions are there again in Mama, Why You Holding Back Now? which taps into darker emotions surrounding domestic violence and emotional blackmail before a minute and a bit of eerie san xian (Chinese lute) in an instrumental You Never Know Who's Listening and the traditional Jack-A-Roe, which Lang first heard on Dylan's World Gone Wrong, a track that sits comfortably beside Lang’s sparse but very traditional sounding tale of rape and murder on Newbridge, a prime piece of what Lang would describe as Disturbed Folk.

Or rather, it would if there wasn’t an intriguing cross between Little Richard and AC/DC on Frightened Fool, a little rocker with an earworm chorus that mightn’t quite be up there with awopbopaloobopalopbamboom but isn’t that far off it in between the two. The track would be good fun if it wasn’t for the violence that underlies the lyrics. As it is, it serves to give a little bit of light relief in between Jack-A-Roe and the very chilling Newbridge.

The album closes with a fatherly lullaby in Way Past Midnight and the whole, cut live (eyeball to eyeball in the man’s own words) in Lang’s own studio onto 8-track analogue tape is very much another Jeff Lang album that’s everything the long time listener would expect. Lang has been working this vein of traditional-sounding song reworked and reinvented for so long, pushing his own envelope so consistently as he seeks to add further variations to his extensive bag of tricks that his latest collection of disturbed folk is guaranteed to provide an intriguing listen that will reward frequent replays.

Teddy Thompson "Bella" (4*)

1998’s going back a ways, but a listen to Celtschmerz, the live compilation from a Richard Thompson tour of the U.K. and you’ll notice a rather fine tenor hitting the harmonies on a couple of songs from the Richard & Linda era, not quite as high as the female range would go, but intertwining with Thompson’s voice the way you find genetically related singers often manage, and a glance at the sleeve notes would reveal the individual in question is one Teddy Thompson, son of Richard and Linda and no slouch in the vocal department.

On that recording he hit the spaces his mum used to fill in a manner that suggested a voice worth following and over the intervening decade plus Teddy Thompson has quietly gone about releasing five albums, four of ‘em original material, with a bracket of country covers (Upfront & Down Low) in the middle.

So, five albums into a career you’d expect things to be more or less set in place. Thompson writes with a quirky wit (it’s a very English sensibility on display here) and delivers jaunty melodies with an archly raised eyebrow here and there.

Take, for example, the album opener Looking for a Girl. Yes, your narrator is, in fact, out on the hunt for a partner and lists the qualities his ideal woman should possess (including the ability to recognise the signals when it’s time to knock the relationship on the head). It’s a want ad from the Personal column, but you can’t help thinking, given his expressed attitude, this bloke isn’t in for a whole lot of joy.

And from there it’s obvious that this dude does, in fact have his share of woman troubles. There are the ones he lusts after but are unattainable (The One I Can’t Have), the ones he can’t escape from (The Next One), the ones he’s lost along the way (Delilah), the ones he had but gave him the flick (Take Me Back Again), and the ones he can’t figure out (Tell Me What You Want, a romance gone wrong duet a la Mickey and Sylvia with Jenni Mulduar).

Produced by David Kahne (Tony Bennett, Paul Macartney, The Strokes, Regina Spektor, Wilco) who also contributed guitar and keyboard parts and string arrangements, and backed by Thompson's road band and a few guests (predictably including a certain Richard Thompson) Bella delivers a classy package that reflects a few obvious influences (with Roy Orbison being a prime factor in the blend). It’s the work of a craftsman who can blend his influences into a melancholy package delivered by a bloke who can definitely sing (given the genetics involved you’d be expecting that to be the case, wouldn’t you?)

We knew he could sing as far back as Persuasion on his Dad’s Action Packed: The Best Of The Capitol Years compilation and the aforementioned Celtschmerz but Bella indicated he’s not just a bloke with a rather good voice. Impressive, and I’ll be watching for the next one.

Johnny Sansone "The Lord Is Waiting the Devil Is Too" (4*)

Here's one firmly in the less is more school of record production. Recorded live in the studio, with a very basic lineup (Sansone on chromatic and diatonic harmonicas and vocals, producer Anders Osborne on guitar with Galactic drummer Stanton Moore pounding the skins), The Lord Is Waiting the Devil Is Too apparently comes in the wake of a broken marriage and delivers some of the best overdriven blues I’ve heard in quite a while.

The pattern’s set from the start of Sinking Ship, four minutes of impassioned vocals, great globs of overamped harp and a guitar riff that probably doesn’t move out of the red zone on the old VU meters. The harp-dominant instrumental Corn Whiskey repeats the formula, though with the guitar dropped down in the mix, and gives a thematic intro to the gritty vocal on Down, with its meet me at the bottom because that’s where I’m gone chorus, and the issues related to homelessness that get done over in the darkly moody Invisible, with the backing dropped right back and Sansone’s voice and harp front and centre.

The casual listener isn’t, of course, going to know how much real life is reflected in the lyrical content, but there’s no doubt what we've got here is the sound of a man howling his anger, despair and frustration and blowing the hell out of the harp to vent just a little bit more. The side men are locked right into the same mode, Moore’s drums pounding away in the introduction to Johnny And Janie, a tale of betrayal and love gone down the gurgler with Osborne rumbling away down below.

Requests to Forget about You Know Who and questions like Where’s Your Heart? slot into that breakup scenario well, while The Lord Is Waiting the Devil Is Too comes across as a timely reminder that you need to make the right choice when decision time rolls around.

And since the protagonist has no intention of remaining in the vicinity Without Love, it seems fairly logical the final track should be titled Leavin’ and closes things out with a not quite slow drag instrumental. Last time around on my way out the door sort of territory.

In the wake of three and a half million well I woke up this mornings, the album serves as a reminder that heartache and inner turmoil were, after all, the wellsprings the blues came from. Sansone’s delivery, a gritty, stripped down, straight from the heart yowl of anguish, the stripped-down trio format producer Osborne apparently insisted on, and the live in the studio approach combine to deliver something that isn’t exactly easy listening but works just fine with the volume cranked and a therapeutic beverage at hand.

And the harp work, while it’s not quite Magic Dick on the lickin’ stick (the J. Geils Band’s harp man has long been Hughesy’s yardstick of harmonica virtuosity) is tasty enough to have me eyeing Sansone’s back catalogue, which definitely seems worth investigating.

Laura Marling "A Creature I Don't Know" (4.5*)

Taking a peek around the intertubes the way you do when you're listening to something impressive by someone you don't know a whole lot about I noticed there seems to be a degree of surprise about the quality of a third album coming from a twenty-one year old. It's not as if there's a law against relatively young singer-songwriters turning out quality product, so I suspect there's a bit of reverse ageism kicking in there.

Young writers aren't, presumably, supposed to be this good, though I fail to see why that should be the case. Richard Thompson, I should remind the reader, wrote Meet on the Ledge at the ripe old age of seventeen, and over the years there have been plenty of classy writers and performers who’ve risen to prominence at a relatively young age.

Since I haven’t heard Alas, I Cannot Swim or I Speak Because I Can I can’t comment on development, but given Marling’s background (Mum’s a music teacher, Dad used to run a recording studio, she’s the youngest of three sisters and you’d assume that having learnt guitar at an early age) she’d be coming from a music-rich environment. Add the fact that she is an avid reader and you’ve got a background likely to produce something of substance provided there’s a bit of creative imagination lurking there as well.

Over the last few years of my teaching career the whole language approach to teaching literacy stressed the importance of providing a text-rich environment so that children are exposed to a large quantity of quality text and become literate almost by osmosis rather than through explicit instruction in the rules and conventions of literature. I had my doubts about this concept as a general principle but accepted in the right conditions it could deliver impressive results that you wouldn’t be able to achieve through other approaches.

Based on her family background and a few listens to A Creature I Don’t Know I suspect we’re looking at the musical equivalent of deep childhood immersion in quality content followed by a relocation to London at the ripe old age of 16 where immediate absorption into the acoustic, tradition-tinged new folk scene (Mumford & Sons and Noah & the Whale et.al.) created a situation where there was plenty to explore for a kid who’d grown up in an environment where exploration and synthesis was probably encouraged.

For someone who never “got” Joni Mitchell, the fact that I got into the album more or less from the start of The Muse might come as a surprise, but there’s a certain arch charm, a wry sense of detachment to some of this stuff that doesn’t fit with recollections of Ms Mitchell stuff that had her filed under Nothing of interest here forty years ago. On the basis of A Creature I Don’t Know it might be time to re-dip the toe in the Mitchell oeuvre...

But back to The Muse, which shuffles along as Marling introduces The Beast, a recurring character representing one side to her personality, in an unsettling rambling narrative driven onwards by wire brush drums and a plunky banjo over a cello and double bass driven hook that delivers a tumbling, swirling ragtime shuffle..

She follows it with I Was Just a Card, three and a half minutes of stop-start interaction between horns, strings and delicate guitar, Don't Ask Me Why, about looking for answers in unsavoury places and Salinas, a portrait of her mother set in John Steinbeck’s hometown that builds up with ripples of melody and sharp-tongued as the beasts roar in the background and the narrator speculates whether she’ll ever see heaven again.

Starting with just Marling and her guitar, the album’s centrepiece, The Beast, clocking in at just under six minutes, delivers a devastating analysis of the ways love transforms itself into confusion, deception, anger and confusion and is followed by Night After Night which is an excursion into Leonard Cohen Famous Blue Raincoat territory, acoustic guitar and an eerily calm and measured voice delivering lyrics about love gone sour and sanctuaries that turn out to be minefields.

With the album’s themes firmly set in place, My Friends and Rest in the Bed continue the exploration before the album’s other tour de force, Sophia starts as a not-quite lullaby with  the narrator despatching a former lover (where I have been lately is no concern of yours), invokes the ancient goddess of wisdom, and builds slowly into anthemic proportions with a churning chorus.

That rousing chorus flows into sea shanty territory for the album proper’s closer All My Rage, which wraps proceedings up tidily with a lilting Celtic melody and a rousing chorus, but as you’d expect in the days of bonus tracks tacked on to the end, there’s an excursion into the Tuscan hills on Flicker and Fail, which works well enough as an extra but doesn’t really add anything much to the main proceedings.

So from here the question is where next? There’s enough on offer here to justify going back to investigate those earlier titles, though that’s not necessarily a priority at the moment given other avenues that also need investigating.

The appearance of a follow-up, on the other hand, will probably prompt an immediate purchase.

Levon Helm "Ramble at the Ryman" (4.5*)

Recorded by a travelling version of the late Levon Helm's Midnight Ramble, rather than the regular sessions that have been running at Levon’s studio at Woodstock in upstate New York since 2004 Ramble at the Ryman (that’s Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, the former home of the Grand Ol’ Opry) might look to be rather heavy on past glories (six tracks out of fifteen from The Band’s catalogue) but with a crack outfit including multi-instrumentalist Larry Campbell and Helm's daughter, vocalist and mandolinist Amy alongside a number of guests (Little Sammy Davis, Buddy Miller, Sam Bush, Sheryl Crow and John Hiatt) the result is a highly listenable collection of rock, blues, country, and folk that rocks along very nicely indeed.

The Band material here, starting with the opening Ophelia  and stretching through Chuck Berry’s Back To Memphis (covered regularly as part of The Band’s live set), Evangeline, Rag Mama Rag, The Shape I’m In, Chest Fever and The Weight are significantly reworked the way you’d have to when you can’t call on Garth Hudson’s keyboards, with the emphasis on the shambling horns and guest vocals from Sheryl Crow (Evangeline), Larry Campbell (Chest Fever) and John Hiatt (The Weight).

The guest vocals are, in large part, a function of the throat cancer that damaged Levon’s vocal cords and while the predictions that he mighty never sing again didn’t materialise, it took a while before his voice was up to singing, so for much of the early Ramble era he was content to leave the vocal department to others.

Issues regarding vocal resilience come to the fore in Dirt Farmer’s Anna Lee, where his own voice might not be strong enough to carry the song by itself on his own, but choral support from the ensemble’s female members gets it over the line.

Little Sammy Davis takes centre stage for the old R&B hit Fannie Mae, which dates, I suspect, back to the Ronnie Hawkins days, and Slim Harpo’s Baby Scratch My Back, while Sheryl Crow is front and centre for the Carter Family’s No Depression In Heaven and Buddy Miller gets to do his own Wide River to Cross.  The traditional Deep Elem Blues is handed to Larry Campbell, while Teresa Williams does the full country bit on Time Out For The Blues and Levon’s back for A Train Robbery.

That vocal chopping and changing could, under other circumstances, come across as an all-star celebrity occasion, but the ensemble, with egos deposited in the cloak room, comes across as a group of talented friends who coincidentally happen to be rather fine musicians getting together to have a bit of fun, sing and play and enjoy each other’s company.

It’s the kind of vibe that you can only create by extensive playing together (as noted the Woodstock Rambles date back to 2004) and the core group creates an environment where the guests slot in seamlessly. Helm’s work behind the drum kit drives things along, the instrumental line up are equally at home in the mountains and down among the bayous, the horns are a delight and while the half-dozen Band numbers form an unavoidable core (you wouldn’t really expect Levon to ignore them, would you?) they’re reinterpreted rather than reproduced.

Ramble at the Ryman may not be the same as hearing Levon Helm play for a few dozen guests at in Woodstock, but now he’s gone you’re not going to get that opportunity anyway. One of the greats, recorded in what’s arguably the right setting.

Trombone Shorty "For True" (4*)

There’s a school of thought suggesting the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina is going to be followed by an equally destructive reworking of New Orleans’ musical traditions, and you’d probably have every reason to believe that, yes, with the forced removal and relocation of so many previously tight-knit communities things aren’t going to be the same in the future.

Here, on the other hand, we’ve got a reminder that while you might take the kid out of New orleans you won’t necessarily be able to get the New Orleans out of the kid. At the ripe old age of twenty-six Troy Andrews (a.k.a. Trombone Shorty) is coming off two decades of involvement with New Orleans jazz and funk. When the influences are in that deep you don’t get them out unless you’re willing to consider major surgery.

Sure, there are the rap and hip-hop elements, but you’re likely to get them lurking in anything musical that’s coming out of America these days. There’s a rap in the middle of the latest Springsteen, and at that point I rest my case.

The real point is, however, that when outside influences things get to the Crescent City they tend to be reworked through a New Orleans sensibility. I’ve been listening to Heavy Sugar, and while you could look at it and label it as reasonably generic fifties and early sixties rock’n’roll and R&B there’s a stylistic thread running through the hundred and fifty tracks that, basically, says N’Awlins.

These things tend to run in families, or at least they do in New Orleans. Andrews is the younger brother of trumpeter and bandleader James Andrews and the grandson of singer and songwriter Jessie Hill (the man who played drums for Professor Longhair and Huey "Piano" Smith, wrote Ooh Poo Pah Doo, moved to California to work with Harold Battiste and Mac Rebennack and wrote songs recorded by Ike and Tina Turner, Sonny and Cher, and Willie Nelson).

Hill’s grandson grew up in Tremé, started playing trombone at age six, attended the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, picked up a gig in Lenny Kravitz's horn section in 2005 and put his current pop/funk/hip-hop outfit Orleans Avenue (Pete Murano, guitar, Mike Ballard, bass, Dan Oestreicher and Tim McFatter, saxes, Joey Peebles, drums, and Dwayne "Big D" Williams, percussion) together in 2009.

2010’s Backatown hit Billboard's Contemporary Jazz Chart at #1 and held that spot for nine weeks. With that under his belt, tours across the Americas, Europe and Japan and Brazil (opening spots for Jeff Beck’s U.K.tour and Dave Matthews Band in the U.S.A.) and recording sessions with Galactic, Eric Clapton, Lenny Kravitz and Dr. John have started to build up an impressive musical CV.

He’s managed to acquire an impressive array of friends in the process, and For True, produced by Ben Ellman from Galactic (he also filled the role for Backatown) along with Orleans Avenue, there are guest appearances from the Rebirth Brass Band, Jeff Beck, Warren Haynes, Stanton Moore, Kid Rock, Ellman, Ivan and Cyril Neville, Ledisi and Lenny Kravitz to add extra dimensions to the Trombone Shorty Supafunkrock.

The result is a blend of traditional New Orleans jazz, funk and soul, intertwined with hard-rock power chords and hip-hop beats, fourteen tracks written or co-written by Andrews, who plays trombone (predictable), trumpet (he’s equally impressive there), organ, drums, piano, keys, synth bass and percussion. He’s no slouch as a singer either, and while he’s not quite up there with the very best of them when he’s that good instrumentally he doesn’t have to be.

All the same, compared to Backatown you get the feeling Shorty’s out to carve himself a niche in the mainstream. Tightly focussed, aimed straight for the dance floor or a standing only concert venue (this stuff ain’t gonna work as well with a sedentary audience) in the same way the recent Robert Randolph, For True is the basis you could build a killer live set around and then move copies at the merch booth as the punters are on the way out.

From the opening notes of Buckjump with added funk from the horn section from Rebirth Brass Band we’re firmly in contemporary territory, with rap interjections from some dude called Fifth Ward Weebie, a combination that’d probably having Hughesy turning off if it wasn’t so obviously New Orleans. Bounce is the local take on rap and from the evidence here and on Galactic’s Ya-Ka-May, it hits close enough to the New Orleans past to maintain a rap-negative old bloke’s interest, largely thanks to those street-parade  horns and a rubbery bass line that’s almost guaranteed to get the old booty a-shakin’.

Warren Haynes (Allman Brothers Band, Gov't Mule, a bloke who turn up all over the jam band scene in the USA) adds his trademark slide to Encore, which is the second track rather than the finale, co-written with Lamont Dozier (the Motown legend, no less),  grounded in a B-3 groove with Haynes over the top and intermittent brass punctuation.

Electric guitar, in fact, gets a fair run through the early part of the album, with Pete Murano channeling his inner Dick Dale on For True over a hip-hop beat and spitting trumpet from Andrews, while Jeff Beck comes to the party for Do to Me, chipping in with an obviously Jeff Beck or someone with very similar musical DNA solo to go with the Orleans Avenue bounce on a horn-heavy sing-along.

In Crescent City parlance, a lagniappe is a small bonus given to a customer (an extra doughnut when you buy a dozen, that sort of thing) and Lagniappe, Pt. 1, at a tad over a minute probably fits into that definition rather well. House party mode and the dance floor groove continue through The Craziest Thing, which, again, bounces along in house party mode, complete with big beefy blasts of booty-shaking brass.

Dumaine St. and Mrs. Orleans work the same territory, though I could have done without the Kid Rock rap on the latter, there’s a New Orleans superstar presence on Nervis as Cyril and Ivan Neville do their thing through a groove that hearkens back to the seventies.

Roses fits, more or less, into the same slot as Backatown’s Show Me Something Beautiful, and is, more or less Beautiful Mark 2, but the instrumental  Big 12 (a tribute to big brother James) with layers of horns piled on top of each other is straight back into solid groove territory, as is the Balkan tango Unc. A guest vocal from Ledisi on Then There Was You  brings the main proceedings to a close before another Lagniappe winds things up completely.

While there are bits and pieces here that will more than likely give a died in the wool traditionalist a fit of the screaming abdabs, For True captures the vibe of a high voltage rave in some New Orleans club, blending tradition and innovation, rock and funk, hip hop and Mardi Gras. More mainstream (or aimed at a wider audience) than Backatown it’s still a vibrantly eclectic of a continuing tradition. When’s the next one due?

Terry Evans "Anthology" (3.5*)

Given the state the music industry finds itself in, news that artists are increasingly taking matters into their own hands should come as no surprise. At least, that’s what appears to be the case with this offering from Terry Evans which appears to be re-recordings of songs from a string of albums over the years.

Evans has been around since the sixties, predictably starting in gospel and going on to work the clubs and juke joints of the AmericanSouth before moving to the West Coast where he took to writing songs and became one of the foremost session singers in Los Angeles, a status that brought him into contact with Ry Cooder. He has also worked with John Fogarty, Joan Armatrading, John Lee Hooker, Boz Scaggs, Maria Muldaur and Pops Staples but it’s his duo with Bobby King and work in the studio and on the road with Ry Cooder that brought him to my notice.

Two albums with King and eight on his own looks like an impressive discography, but unless you’re a much bigger name you’re probably never going to make a living out of CD sales alone, and in a situation where you’re touring with a band merchandise sales are going to be a vital source of income.

That, as far as I can gather, provided the motivation for the re-recording, and the fact that it’s on his own label means that once he’s recouped the costs involved with getting the album out the rest is profit.

As a result you’ve presumably got the core of his current at the time live set, more or less the way you’d get ‘em in a club setting. Let Me Go Back to the Country kicks things off in a lively manner, Natcha Bone Lover is what you’d expect it to be and Honey Boy delivers a semi-Bo Diddley beat in a neighbouring postcode. Nothing surprising just honest blues played by an outfit who know what they’re doing.

There’s some tasty guitar work (again nothing flash, but solid fare) on Let Love Begin, and Credit Card Blues shuffles along pleasantly without saying anything you haven’t heard around the time when the monthly statement arrives. There’s a more gospel-based approach on Come to the River and after the regulation blues and gospel content to date Shakespeare Didn't Quote That delivers a slightly different perspective on familiar themes, but it’s back to regulation territory for What About Me, I Fancy You and I Wanna Be Close to You God.

Good vocalist, solid band with a bit of lead guitar flash without going over the top and nothing a blues fan hasn’t heard plenty of times before, but if you’ve got the readies definitely worth a listen. The current shuffle by album routine has delivered Anthology to within reach of my shuffle-friendly Top 3000 and it’ll be interesting to see how far things have progressed in twelve months or so...

Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes "Men Without Women Live" (3.5*)

Mention the name Steven Van Zandt in Australia and, if you get a response at all, he’ll probably be identified as Miami Steve from Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, or (probably more likely) the actor who played Silvio Dante in The Sopranos. Mention the name in my presence, however, and you’ll probably get a reference to his contribution to the early albums by Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes and his identity as Little Steven, head honcho of an outfit called The Disciples of Soul in the 1980s.

Slotted firmly into Hughesy’s all-time favourite albums is 1982's Men Without Women by Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, and my enthusiasm for that album was such that when I noticed this live performance from The Stone Pony in Asbury Park dating back to July 2011 it was a fairly obvious no-brainer.

Six horns up here tonight exclaims Mr Lyon at one point, and that’s the key ingredient in a close to note for note reproduction of Mr Van Zandt’s earlier work. One imagines there wasn’t a need for too much rehearsal for the show that ran through the album’s track list from the opening Lyin’ In A Bed of Fire to I’ve Been Waiting, not least because many of the participants were on the original album anyway.

A bit rough around the edges, perhaps, but these dudes have playing stuff along these lines live for the best part of forty years, and what you lose in crisply rehearsed, brushed and buffed studio perfection is compensated for by an exuberant live vibe.

Two copies might be superfluous in most collections, but in these parts an old favourite with This Time It’s For Real, Broke Down Piece of Man and It’s Been A Long Time tacked on the end will be getting its share of airings. 3.5*  for the general public equates to Interesting but non-essential, but if you’re into horn-driven R&B you’d probably mark it up by at least half a notch.

Need convincing? Rock over to the iTunes Store and take a listen to Forever. Hell, rock over to itTunes and have a sample of all of it...

But start with Forever...

Ron Sexsmith "Long Player Late Bloomer " (4.5*)

There’s a point, from time to time, where peer recognition and cult status spills over into mass recognition and commercial success, but if that happens, it usually comes before your twelfth album. The list of artists who rate Sexsmith as a singer-songwriter aren’t quite legion but include enough heavyweights (Elvis Costello, Ray Davies, Sheryl Crow, Steve Earle, John Hiatt, Elton John, Paul McCartney) to have made some of us sit up and take notice.

The problem, however, is that while elegant melancholic folk-tinged pop might sound good you need an avenue to transform peer and critical recognition into mass success and by this stage it’s obvious Sexsmith doesn’t have one. In the current environment, with the old regime in tatters, the download as king (and, from what I can gather, there’s almost invariably a free, illegal source to obtain virtually everything) it’s obvious no one’s going to make a fortune unless they’re out there and gigging steadily, can land a song or three in most of the multitudinous let’s discover the next best thing contests on TV or wangle a duet with the likes of Michael Bublé.

Well, he's managed the Bublé bit, and he's gigging reasonably regularly.

One avenue that could be explored is recruiting a name producer, and that Bublé duet brought him into contact with fellow Canadian Bob Rock (Michael Bublé, Metallica, Mötley Crüe, The Cult). It mghtn’t be the most obvious artist/producer match, but the result is recognisably Sexsmith in an environment that would probably be radio-friendly if Ron could find a way of sneaking onto the mainstream airwaves.

Another collection of quality songs, buffed up just right by a producer who knows his stuff, playing up the melodic strength of the songs and delivering a result that’s engaging and  approachable. Try MIchael and His Dad, a song that hearkens back to Sexsmith’s arrival in Toronto with infant son in tow, Heavenly, or Love Shines, an attempt to write a song like Buddy Holly’s True Love Ways.

If you’re after perfectly crafted melodic pop delivered with a wistful sincerity and you haven’t encountered Mr Sexsmith to date, he’s definitely worth checking out. There’s not much here that he hasn’t done before, so long term fans won’t be disappointed unless they’re looking for some radical reinvention. Given the fact that he hasn’t managed one to date you wouldn’t be expecting one now, but as long as he can maintain the quality I’ll be buying.

Joe Henry "Reverie" (4*)

Although he’s probably better known as a producer (with Solomon Burke's Don't Give Up On Me, Allen Toussaint and Elvis Costello’s The River in Reverse, Mose Allison’s The Way of the World being three of his productions that have had plenty of air time on Hughesy’s personal radio station) Joe Henry started out as a singer/songwriter, working in genres including alt. country, rock, jazz and folk.

Reverie is Henry’s twelfth studio album, though studio might be taking things a bit far. Recorded in Henry's living room with the windows open in some ways it’s an equivalent of The Basement Tapes, and while it doesn’t have the lo-fi rough edges Dylan and The Band managed to extract in the nether regions of Big Pink there’s much of the same homespun eclectic vibe here.

Recorded with what is, by all accounts, his regular crew (Keefus Ciancia on piano, Jay Bellerose on drums, David Piltch on bass, and Marc Ribot on guitar with cameos from Patrick Warren, Jean McLain, and Lisa Hannigan), Reverie comes across as an impressionistic collection of short stories or snatches from a movie.

They’re showing a movie on the side of the bay is the first line of the album’s opener, Heaven’s Escape (Henry Fonda on the Bank of America), a dishevelled, ramshackle number with the vocal running over a small jazz combo simple piano and a rattling, echoey snare drum. That’s followed by Odetta, a fragile statement of elegantly wasted yearning, with the same rattling drum sound as the narrator sets out in search of something that might be as inspirational as the singer's music. I couldn’t help thinking back to The Band’s Bessie Smith. Like The Band and Music From Big Pink it’s a sound that can’t be pinned to a particular era in a style that operates outside genres.

As a result you can’t be sure which war he’s referencing in After The War, a ballad that may well be one of those love lost fading memory of a wartime romance narratives or might not be about wartime at all. The key lies in the After in the title of a song about the barrier between past, present and future and a longing to climb over that fence, a theme that runs right through the album.

Three tracks in the mood is set, and Henry’s strutting guitar, strolling bass and the album’s characteristic drum shuffle continue through Sticks & Stones, Grand Street and Dark Tears, diverting into tango territory for Strung while Tomorrow Is October  and Piano Furnace provide a world-weary lead in to Deathbed Version, where  the opening line (How do you like your blue-eyed boy?) echoes the closing line from e.e. cummings’ buffalo bill’s defunct, though we’re talking Billy the Kid rather than William Cody. That deathbed theme continues through Room At Arles. Eyes Out For You has the narrator searching for a lost lover while Unspeakable urges the listener to Take my unspeakable song as your own.

The album closes with The World And All I Know, a final scene that summarises everything that came before in muted tones. It’s an almost perfect close to an album that comes across as a series of moments in time, random glimpses of distant memories, cinematic without hyperbole, filtered through a musical curtain drawn from across the spectrum of jazz, blues and folk.

File under: World-weary fireside reminiscence for rainy windswept winter nights.

Galactic Ya-Ka-May (3.5*)

They didn’t get a guernsey in Samuel Charters’ New Orleans: Playing a Jazz Chorus (hardly surprising, they’re not exactly a jazz outfit) and attracting a one line assessment in Rick Koster’s Louisiana Music (crosses the jam band tendencies of Phish or the Dead with serious funk nuances and jazz chops) but I’ve had the outfit that formed as an octet back in 1994 under the name Galactic Prophylactic filed under Check these out for a while.

The most recent reminder came with Ben Ellman’s gig as producer for the two Trombone Shorty albums, but I’ve also picked up live material featuring drummer Stanton Moore sitting in with various collaborators, so some sort of investigation was always on the cards.

Galactic’s origins date back to the early nineties, when guitarist Jeff Raines and bass player Robert Mercurio moved from Washington D.C. to New Orleans to study at Tulane and Loyola, encountering the local funk scene, influenced by The Meters, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and the enduring legacy of Professor Longhair.

The current lineup is rounded out by drummer Stanton Moore, saxophonist/producer Ben Ellman, and Rich Vogel on Hammond B3. Until 2004 there was also a vocalist in the form of Theryl DeClouet, but since then they’ve been predominantly an instrumental unit with guest vocals from Corey Glover from Living Colour and assorted other New Orleans and related luminaries as their style moved from New Orleans funk to a fusion of hip hop, electronica, fusion, and jazz. 

The guest vocalist roster on Ya-Ka-May includes Irma Thomas, Chief Bo Dollis of The Wild Magnolias, Allen Toussaint and Walter Wolfman Washington, Trombone Shorty, Corey Henry, John Boutté, Josh Cohen and Ryan Scully of Morning 40 Federation, and Glen David Andrews, as well as Bounce artists Cheeky Blakk, Big Freedia, Katey Red, and Sissy Nobby and extra horns from the Rebirth Brass Band.

Ya-Ka-May, in case you were wondering is a noodle soup, possibly of Chinese origin also known as Old Sober due to alleged hangover-curing properties, where whatever meat you have on hand is simmered with green onions, noodles, hard-boiled eggs and the predictable Cajun-Creole blend of spices(more details here).

The fifteen tracks on the regular Ya-Ka-May (the iTunes version has two bonus tracks) give what sounds like a fair cross-section of what’s happening in N’Awlins. 

Once you’ve got the minute and a bit mad scientist rant Friends of Science out of the way, Boe Money kicks the musical side of things off with a bang as the horns of the Rebirth Brass Band lead through an instrumental that’s part dancehall jam, and part street parade. The rap and hip-hop bit kicks in with Double It with rapping from some dude named Big Freedia over an energetic dancehall groove that I personally could do without, but mileages, of course vary.

Much more to Hughesy’s taste is the Irma Thomas vocal on Heart of Steel, which hovers over the border between R&B and rap and Wild Man, two minutes of Big Chief Bo Dollis vocalising that’s recognisably coming out of Mardi Gras Indian territory via the dance floor and Bacchus where Allen Toussaint’s characteristic vocal and piano riffing bumps itself up against the rap elements, sort of Gil Scott Heron meets New Orleans over interesting rhythmic patterns from drummer Stanton Moore.

Moore kicks off Katey vs. Nobby with fairly traditional marching drums before New Orleans rappers Katey Red and Sissy Nobby jump in for a vocal cutting contest. Not being the world’s greatest hip-hop fan, Hughesy lost interest around the ten-second mark, though the marching band drums keep going under the street brat rapping. 

Cineramascope, on the other hand, lands us back in more familiar marching band territory as the Rebirth horns groove along over a funky riff with Rich Vogel’s B3 underpinning things. The John Boutté vocals on Dark Water work rather nicely as well, but from the start of Do It Again, what we used to refer to as a language advisory situation back when I was on the radio has Hughesy hitting the shuffle button. That might read like a bit of wowserism sneaking in, but there’s a definite ear worm in the rhythm and there are some things you’d prefer not to have running through your head, compris?

Liquor Pang is another track that’ll be pushing to find its way into Hughesy’s Top 1500 Most Played, with  singer Josh Cohen lamenting the bad decisions with the money I earn, but thirty-three seconds of Krewe d'Etat and four minutes of You Don't Know with gritty vocals from Glen David Andrews over wailing Dixieland horns are going to be lurking on the fringes thereof, as will Speaks His Mind, an interesting mix of rappy vocalising over an intriguing instrumental track with fluttering guitar though we’re back in hit the shuffle button mode for  Do It Again (Again) where those language advisory issues raise their ugly head again. 

The bonus tracks, Muss the Hair, an almost traditional-sounding excursion into Allen Toussaint’s regular territory and Sandor’s Revenge, an instrumental based around Moore’s driving syncopated drums don’t quite fit into the vibe of the rest of the album (presumably that’s why they’re bonus tracks, eh?) They’ll fit, on the other hand, rather handily into Hughesy’s iTunes Fat Tuesday playlist, so that’s fine with me.

In live performances Galactic, by all accounts, jam their way through marathon dance medleys, and what’s on offer here is probably going to provide the basis for on-stage extension, with three to four minute themes that can be linked and extemporised around, a set of party songs strongly influenced by New Orleans bounce rap that’ll also work when filtered through the DJ booth in a club environment.

There’ll be tracks from the album that’ll find their way to the top of Hughesy’s iTunes playlists (Boe Money, Heart of Steel, Wild Man and Bacchus for starters) and if we were still polluting the airwaves Galactic’s ghetto-funk and hip-hop elements would be a useful addition to the musical terrain.

If you’re into New Orleans music it’s worth an evaluatory listen. Approach with caution, maybe, but worth approaching, though the approach may not result in a purchase...

TP Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou Cotonou Club (4*)

The process of discovering West African music goes one step further with this studio album, the first in twenty years, by TP (that's tout puissant or all powerful) Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, who hail from Benin's largest city and seat of government. If your West African geography's not what it might be, the capital city's Porto Novo and you'll find Benin right on the western border of Nigeria.

Dating back to the mid-sixties and boasting an extensive discography (over fifty albums and a hundred singles) there's plenty to investigate assuming that this effort, recorded in Paris on vintage analogue equipment, is the sort of thing that floats your boat. It's a lively affair, combining traditional elements, Afrobeat, jazz and funk influences. There's more than a touch of Voodoo lurking there and will undoubtedly be having an adverse effect on Hughesy's credit card balance over the next few months, a process that has already started with the 32-minute $8.99 1st Album.

Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton Play the Blues (4*)

Given an extensive discography that varies between the sublime (the studio version of Cream, Layla) and the ridiculously naff (anything resembling Wonderful Tonight) my approach to a new Clapton recording invariably involves scrutiny of his collaborators on the project in question.

Given the intersection of superstar guitar hero status and an inclination to veer straight into the worst excesses of the middle of the road (I mean, how else do you explain Wonderful Tonight?) Clapton's at his best when he has someone to spark off who'll also spark off him (a la Derek Trucks and Doyle Bramhall on the mid-noughties world tour or the late great Duane Allman) rather than deferring to The Man Who Was Once God.

If that sounds like a put down, I'd point out my Claptonic wish list includes something along the lines of the item under review involving gospel music and Robert Randolph and a recursion into Delaney Bonnie & Friends territory with the latter day reincarnation of DB & F (Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi and the rest of the Tedeschi Trucks Band).

Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton Play the Blues (Live from Jazz At Lincoln Center), recorded at New York City’s premier jazz venue isn't quite up there but it ain't too shabby either.

Assuming, that is, the listener shares Hughesy's affection for the music of New Orleans. If traditional jazz gives you the heebie jeebies this one ain't for you, folks.

For a start we've got a collection of material selected by Clapton and arranged by Marsalis, and given Marsalis sits very firmly in the traditional side of things we've got a very traditional sounding effort. That's not to suggest it's all traditional material. Howlin' Wolf's Forty-Four gets a guernsey, as does Layla, rearranged as a Crescent City dirge at the request of bassist Carlos Henriquez.

Taj Mahal drops by to contribute vocals to Just a Closer Walk With Thee and Corrine, Corrina and Clapton's happy to play rhythm rather than dominating the spotlight, though he does contribute most of the vocals.

We're looking at a lineup based on King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band plus two (Clapton's electric guitar and Chris Stainton's piano) playing material stretching from from the rumbunctious hokum of Ice Cream to the spiritual (Just A Closer Walk with Thee) with a variety of staging points in between, all of them rounded into a setlist that works very well as a whole. The trumpet shines throughout and the rest of the lineup isn't far off stellar in the style.

Your mileage may vary, but this one sits somewhere between 4* Quality recording worth a serious listen and 3.5* Interesting but non-essential. Listening as I type I'm inclined to round it up rather than down.

David Bromberg "Use Me"

David Bromberg Use Me (4*)

As you might expect, someone who has been associated with the likes of Reverend Gary Davis, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jerry Garcia,Jerry Jeff Walker, Willie Nelson, Jorma Kaukonen isn't going to be short of musical friends and acquaintances.

On Use Me David Bromberg calls in some musical favours from Dr. John, Levon Helm, Linda Ronstadt, John Hiatt, Widespread Panic and Los Lobos to produce an album that offers a lively amalgam of blues, folk, jazz, bluegrass and country & western, played with Bromberg's characteristic restrained virtuosity.

After returning from a recording hiatus lasting 17 years for 2007's Try Me One More Time (in the meantime he's been operating a violin sales and repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware, with his wife) this latest effort, recorded on the various guest artists' home turf (Levon Helm in Woodstock, Dr John in New Orleans, Nashville for John Hiatt, Tim O’Brien and Vince Gill, Los Angeles for Los Lobos) works the same territory he's been mining through a lengthy career.

If you're looking for rootsy eclecticism, with very classy performances on fiddle, acoustic and electric guitar, pedal steel and dobro with warm vocals and a classy lineup of guests who don't get in the way, Bromberg's your man.

The Izzys "Keep Your Powder Dry" EP (4*)

The world of blogs can lead you off in some unexpected directions, and I've been adding blogs that have regular items of interest to my Reading List on the site that hosts the various Little House of Concrete blogs.

Saves you bookmarking and actually going to check for updates, and all that…

Blabber 'n' Smoke, according to the banner, is a Glasgow view of Americana and related music and writings, and seems to have a knack for digging up albums that don't make it into the pages of Mojo, Rhythms and Uncut. Worth a look, if Americana floats your boat and you're inclined to look beyond the mainstream.

A recent  review of Mare Wakefield's Meant To Be sounded like something that might be worth investigating, and a quick check at iTunes revealed all five of her albums on sale for $16.99 a throw, which was a bit beyond what I was likely to spend on the basis of a single review, but it seemed worth keeping an eye out for other references which might sway things.

It was about that point when I noticed Blabber ‘n’ Smoke has a category labelled Downloads, which seemed worth a glance, and further investigation revealed this free download of an EP by The Izzys, who appear to have been around for a while operating in and around New York City.

This Keep Your Powder Dry EP is available over there on iTunes, by the way, along with several other releases, and based on an initial listen or three, they may well be picking up a bit of sales action from the Little House of Concrete.

With any number of echoes from the quality end of the past forty-something years. I heard a fair bit of Pete Townsend and Ronnie Lane in the opening Tear 'em On Down, but that may be the result of recent exposure to Rough Mix and it continues throughoutn, while the EP concludes with a reading of the Jerry Garcia Deal.

One to listen to with a fellow music freak and a decent glass of red while you do a bit of I'm getting a hint of with the wine and the music. Derivative, perhaps, but it sounds like they're operating from some pretty classy influences.

Randy Newman QPAC Concert Hall 22 July 2011

I must have gone awfully close to missing Randy Newman with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra at the QPAC Concert Hall after I misjudged the amount of footpath on the other side of a lamp post and found myself tumbling onto Grey Street in the face of serious oncoming traffic.

Actually, I must have gone awfully close to serious hospitalisation but nothing short of serious injury was going to stop me from actually getting there, so it was a case of a quick return to the hotel room, an improvised patching up that used up most of Madam's supply of bandaids and a change of pants before resuming the quest for pre-concert nourishment.

Whether the delay kept us out of the preferred option will never be known. The tapas bar that was the preferred option was, as it turned out, a case of needing a reservation by the time we arrived on the doorstep and everywhere else in the vicinity looked reasonably close to chockers. We settled for a very basic toasted sandwich and a couple of glasses of water at the cafe in the courtyard rather than the tapas and interesting wine we'd pencilled in earlier in the day.

Still, with the prospect of Randy Newman in an orchestral setting I'd have happily settled for a slice of dry bread and a cup of warm dripping if it was going to ensure entry in a situation where the tickets advised us to Please note lockout period applies. In hindsight we could have gone for something a bit flasher in the dinner department, since we were in the environs of the Concert Hall well before the doors opened.

With the possibility of backstage access after the show I wanted something other than a ticket to get signed, and in the absence of anything resembling a program I shelled out for a copy of 12 Songs, the only Randy album I didn't have on CD or as a download from iTunes.

Actually, I would have had it as a download but bucked at the prospect of paying $16.99 for just under thirty minutes of music, which I thought was over the odds.

So I spent $25 for the CD instead.

The visit to the merch booth gave me the first inkling that we were in for an interesting audience as a woman who obviously knew nothing about Randy Newman but was intent on buying something agonised over the choice between 12 Songs and the two volumes of The Randy Newman Songbook.

I politely pointed her towards Songbook, and pressed for a choice between the two suggested Volume 1, but indicated that there wasn't much in it, so the best option was to buy both.

From there we wandered around, moving gradually towards Door 10, spotting Paul Kelly in the bar on the way. The concert was part of the 2011 Queensland Music Festival, so you'd probably guess Festival Director Deborah Conway and a couple of other notable figures were also in the vicinity, but if they were we didn't notice.

Given the demographic we're looking at where long term Newman fans are concerned there was no obvious way to distinguish between those who were there for Randy Newman and those who were there because of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. There were probably a fair sprinkling of people who were only there because they'd scored free tickets, or because they'd been given tickets as a Christmas or birthday present.

Those last two categories covered the couple on my left (freebies) and in front of me (present) who knew each other, so the pre-concert conversation among four people who knew nothing outside Short People meant reactions were going to be interesting once things got underway.

Lack of a program at the merch booth was negated by one on the seat when we arrived, though, significantly, Mr & Mrs Freebie next door didn't seem to have been allocated copies. Either that or they'd quietly pushed them aside, failing to consult them. Interesting.

In any case, the program contained a setlist, rendering the notebook in the pocket surplus to requirements, and a glance at what was scheduled revealed most of the most obvious candidates for inclusion, though there were some fairly obvious omissions, two of which, of course, turned up in the encores.

From the opening Birmingham through to the final I Think It's Going To Rain Today we got a setlist that would have satisfied most Randy aficionados once you'd taken the inherent limitations of the show into account.

For a start, if you've got access to a full symphony orchestra you're going to use them, so eight solo numbers out of twenty-four seems like a pretty fair ration. Following Birmingham with a solo Short People was a nifty way of getting the most obvious suspect out of the way early in the piece, and the introduction to Girls In My Life should've convinced the classical types in the audience that they weren't getting just another hack writer of pop songs.

Long time fans, of course, are only too aware that Newman could probably do a reasonable line in theatrical comedy, and the explanation of the song's origin that preceded The World Isn't Fair reinforced that impression, as did the intro to I Miss You (I wrote this for my first wife while married to my second).

If there was going to be a departure from the printed setlist it could only come in one of the solo slots, so while the program said Kingfish slotting in Mama Told Me Not To Come before Love Story, Marie and You Can Leave Your Hat On delivered a rather nifty overview of early Randy before the audience participation on I'm Dead (But I Don't Know It).

A glance at the lyrics of I'm Dead leaves a fair indication it's aimed firmly at those survivors of the seventies who are still going through the motions, delivering the same old schtick but Randy's introduction pulled no punches before he coached the audience through our role, one which we (and the members of the orchestra) allegedly enjoyed too much in the delivery.

The Great Nations of Europe was suitably stirring, and while I wasn't familiar with I Love To See You Smile (subsequent research reveals it's from the soundtrack to Parenthood and apparently unavailable in any legitimate way shape or form, so that's hardly surprising) I wasn't upset by the inclusion. Yes, I know it kept something else out of the setlist, but it was a fairly natural lead into the instrumental suites from Toy Story and The Natural, which had conductor Guy Noble skipping off stage, leaving Newman the baton.

Not being a movie person I wasn't familiar with most of what followed before and after the half-way break, having seen Toy Story with a major hangover one breaking up day and having missed The Natural, Maverick and Avalon. I'm not overly familiar with the likes of Aaron Copland either, so while he's one reference point quoted for Randy's soundtrack work I can't comment.

What was obvious over the twenty-plus minutes was that Newman knows his way around a conductor's baton (hardly surprising since he's conducted the orchestral segments of his soundtrack work) and the four suites worked pretty well by themselves without accompanying visuals or the oh yeah, that's from the bit where familiarity with the movies involved.

Comments from my left at the end of the interval revealed Newman newcomers who'd been highly impressed, and with the Maverick and Avalon Suites out of the way, it was back to solo mode for It's Money That I Love before things were slowed down for In Germany Before The War and Cowboy with the Orchestra adding light and shade. Dixie Flyer kicked things up a notch, Better Off Dead dropped it back slightly, and You've Got A Friend In Me was preceded by an apology for leaving it so late and a suggestion that kids in the audience could be woken up.

The main set concluded with a magnificent Sail Away, Emotional Girl, a Political Science that produced the predictable reaction to we'll save Australia and a Louisiana that would've resounded rather deeply with many in the audience after the floods earlier in the year. It brought me to the verge of tears, anyway.

The absence of obvious suspects Lonely At The Top and I Think It's Going To Rain Today from the program was explained when they appeared as the encores, and while I suspect the crowd would have happily gone on clamouring for more Rain was preceded by a definite ruling that there'd be no more.

Madam sighted the First Aid station on the way out, and we managed to get the injuries from the fall earlier in the evening patched, a process that lasted long enough for most of the crowd to disperse so there was no chance to gauge the audience response around the merchandise booth (I didn't get that far during the interval either) and we made our way downstairs in search of the Stage Door where we found our names on the list for backstage access.

Having received a couple of passes we settled down to wait, passing some of the time in conversation with a couple from the Sunshine Coast and their daughter who were waiting on the off-chance of an Anthony Warlow autograph.

As it turned out everyone ended up disappointed. Warlow, Randy and any other backstage dignitaries all managed to escape through an alternate egress, something that was understandable given a bloke who's sneaking up on seventy, had delivered a good two-and-a-bit hour show, had spent two days in rehearsal and was probably coming off jet lag as well. Madam suspected that there was a touch of something else in there as well as he seemed to struggle a little when it came to hitting the high notes.

In any case, if you'd asked me twelve months ago I'd have told you I'd never expect to get the chance to see Randy in a live setting, and if the opportunity eventuated it'd probably be a solo gig, so everything beyond that was a bonus...

The setlist:

Set I:
Birmingham (Orchestra)
Short People
Girls In My Life
The World Isn't Fair (Orchestra)
I Miss You (Orchestra)
Mama Told Me Not To Come
Love Story (Orchestra)
Marie (Orchestra)
You Can Leave Your Hat On
I'm Dead
Great Nations of Europe (Orchestra)
I Love To See You Smile (Orchestra)
Toy Story Suite (Orchestra, Randy conducting)
The Natural Suite (Orchestra, Randy conducting)

Set II:
Maverick Suite (Orchestra, Randy conducting)
Avalon Suite (Orchestra, Randy conducting)
It's Money That I Love
In Germany Before The War (Orchestra)
Cowboy (Orchestra)
Dixie Flyer
Better Off Dead (Orchestra)
You've Got A Friend In Me (Orchestra)
Sail Away (Orchestra)
Emotional Girl (Orchestra)
Political Science
Louisiana (Orchestra)

Encores:
Lonely At The Top (Orchestra)
I Think It's Going To Rain Today (Orchestra)

R.I.P. Clarence Clemons

It's ironic that news of the passing of 69-year-old E Street Band saxophoist Clarence Clemons arrived in the midst of rumours of a new Bruce Springsteen album and speculation as to whether it would feature the E Street Band or show new material in a different setting.

On the strength of The Ghost of Tom Joad, Devils and Dust and The Seeger Sessions it's possible to imagine Springsteen without the E Street Band, but I find it impossible to imagine the E Street Band without Clarence Clemons.

While Clemons had worked in other settings with, among others, Ringo Starr, Jackson Browne, Aretha Franklin and Lady Gaga, it's hard to imagine any of that happening if it hadn't been for a legendary encounter on the Jersey Shore that may or may not have happened quite the way the participants tell it, but if it didn't go down that way it should have.

Actually, the way it should have been factor goes well back before thatr. A much younger Clarence allegedly wanted an electric train set for Christmas but his fish merchant father bought him an alto sax and arranged lessons.

Forced to practice in the back room of the fish shop while his peers were playing baseball, Clarence wasn't a happy camper but switched to baritone for a stint in his high school's jazz band before his uncle gave him a record by R&B tenor player King Curtis. which didn't quite seal his fate, but was a vital factor in the way things turned out.

A music and football scholarship took Clemons to college in Maryland and a sociology major landed him a job in Newark, New Jersey counselling disturbed youths. In the bars and clubs along the Jersey Shore he worked with bands like Norman Seldin and the Joyful Noyze before the dark and stormy night that took him from the Wonder Bar to a place called The Student Prince, where he sat in with a scrawny kid called Bruce Springsteen on Spirit in the Night. Whether the door actually blew off the club that night doesn't matter. If it didn't, it should have.

Anyone familiar the gatefold sleeves of the first two Springsteen albums, densely packed with lyrics in fine print can't help noticing the trimming down that occurred on Born to Run and subsequent albums, but after two less than spectacularly successful albums, number three was, to all intents and purposes, crunch time.

And when you look at the front cover of Born to Run, what do you see? A grinning Springsteen leaning against someone. Turn to the back and you'll spot that the someone is a largish Afro-American wearing a black hat and playing a sax.

The word about Springsteen had been out for a while, largely based on his strengths as a live performer rather than the records, good though they might have been. There were a myriad of new Dylans out there, but there weren't too many that sparked off huge ex-college footballers homking on a tenor sax, were there?

Anyone who's seen the video footage that turned up on the box sets that celebrated the 30th anniversaries of Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town will be all too aware of Clemons' importance as the man mountain visual counterpoint to the energetic front man. As Springsteen hopped and bopped Clarence anchored the visuals on stage right the same way Garry Tallent's bass anchored the music.

The Springsteen phenomenon was built on the strength of the live performances between Born to Run and Darkness, fuelled by the recording standoff as Springsteen sorted out his issues with former manager Mike Appel. No new record? Well, play the songs anyway. Need to get the word out? Well there are these FM stations that'll broadcast the sold out shows from medium sized venues like San Francisco's Winterland. Bootleggers, roll those tapes!

It'd be easy to run on from there, telling much the same story as the flood of newspaper and magazine obituaries, the disappointment when Springsteen put E Street on ice in 1989, the collaborations and side projects, the 1999 reunion tour and subsequent albums, how much he contributed to, say, Spirit in the Night, Rosalita, Born to Run and Jungleland, all of which went on to become staples in the E Street live set as Springsteen developed into the stature that allowed him to sell out multiple nights in stadium sized venues…

But if you're not familiar with the man, his stature and his contribution to post-seventies rock, I'd point you right here and rest my case.

Born in Norfolk, Virginia on 11 January 1942, Clemons suffered a massive stroke at his Florida home on June 12 and despite hospitalization and subsequent brain surgery, departed this life on 18 June 2011.

Rest in peace, Big Man.

Tedeschi Trucks Band Enmore Theatre Sydney 21 April 2011

I guess there are plenty of couples facing down the old problem of dual careers and a growing family, and there are all sorts of workarounds to tackle the issue, but when the dual careers involve reasonably high profile musicians with existing and more or less separate careers the logical solution is to find a way to merge them.

That mightn't have been the actual starting point that led to the formation of the Tedeschi Trucks Band, but I suspect that it was there lurking under the surface as things sorted themselves out. After all it's not as if Derek Trucks doesn't have one eye on the future.

Other people would probably have used the money differently, but Derek put his earnings from two years on the road with Eric Clapton's touring band into the construction of Swamp Raga Studios in the back yard of his Jacksonville home, and while 2009's Already Free was recorded there, one album every couple of years probably doesn't rate as a reasonable return on investment unless you see it as part of a substantial learning curve an artist can afford to indulge himself in.

Trucks is on record as saying that he's learning the tricks of the studio as he goes along, so while the need to combine separate careers mightn't have been the starting point, it may well have been a case of discovering that, Hey, this works pretty well as a couple of tracks were being laid down.

From the initial decision to combine the talents of two artists who are significant attractions in their own rights, of course, the problem is one of differentiating the new lineup from the previous configurations of two separate bands. For a while there it seemed like things were working from a try it and see combination of the old Derek Trucks Band and the former Susan Tedeschi Band, but eventually things had to settle down.

A look at the new look Tedeschi Trucks Band reveals two survivors from the former DTB (keys/flute wiz Kofi Burbridge and vocalist Mike Mattison) and one member of the STB (drummer Tyler Greenwell) along with a couple of not exactly surprising enlistments.

The chief of those is bassist Oteil Burbridge, who, apart from providing a strongly grooved anchor provides a visual counterpoint to the invariably undemonstrative Derek Trucks.

With the lineup sorted it becomes a matter of repertoire, and here again the obvious approach would be to take a bit from here, a bit from there and glue the disparate elements together with some newer material, the sort of thing you could work up as you go along.

That's not, however, the way things have gone here. While there are a couple of covers, notably the old Leon Russell/Joe Cocker Space Captain, which I've personally found almost invariably underwhelming and Sing A Simple Song (which worked a treat for Sly & The Family Stone, roared along nicely for Jeff St John and roared along wonderfully here) most of the rest of the set was new, presumably purpose created material, the best of which was the Mike Mattison penned Midnight In Harlem.

The release of Revelator, the first Tedeschi Trucks Band studio album would clarify a few minor matters like song titles through the rest of the set, but from the opening Bound For Glory, everything thundered through just fine, with repeated solos from Mr Trucks producing roars of approval from a crowd who were, presumably, there with a reasonable expectation of what they were likely to get.

And if they weren't there for Derek and Susan, they'd have had high expectations of the opening set from Robert Randolph & The Family Band, who would, more than likely, have stolen the show from any act short of potential superstar status.

If you'd gone straight from Live at the Wetlands to last year's We Walk This Road you might well have suspected that those long passages of high intensity sacred steel virtuously had been relegated to the background, but that approach to things probably has limited appeal as a commercial recorded proposition anyway.

If you want that lengthy high intensity instrumental thing, of course, once you've got Wetlands you possibly don't need too much more, and if you do there are plenty of live recordings over there at archive.org, so there's a definite need to do something different with the studio recordings, which have turned out doing a pretty good job of slotting Randolph into the evolving tradition of Afro-American music.

 In the live setting the opening We Walk This Road, complete with growled Blind Willie Johnson lead in (I'm not a big fan of that sort of thing normally, but in this setting it really works) led off towards the desired direction, maybe not for as long as you'd have preferred but the intensity was there.

The March and Ted's Jam both got airings as the Family Band went through their paces at a thunderous roar.

Which brings me to the one major disappointment of the night, and it affected both bands.

Now when you go to a Robert Randolph or Derek Trucks show, you're almost invariably there for extended high volume guitar workouts, but you do like to hear a bit of light and shade, and you do like to be able to discern what's going on vocally.

Maybe it was the venue, possibly it was my seat in the upper tier, but whatever it was the vocals were more than a tad on the muddy side, which wasn't such a problem during the numbers but definitely became an issue when spoken patter between songs came into play.

But, in the long run, it's about the music rather than the patter, and while the vocals could have been clearer the instrumental work through both sets was quite sublime. It's a high volume, high intensity sublimity, particularly when Derek cuts loose with those swathes of sheeting squalling slide soundaramas that are his trademark, but each and every solo brought roars of approval from a crowd obviously enjoying what they were actually there for.

As for the rest of the band, Susan Tedeschi makes a fine visual focus at the front, that semi-demure school librarian appearance contrasting nicely with a vocal intensity that would have satisfied most Janis Joplin fans.

But where, in Joplin's case, there was a tendency to screech when she headed for the heights, Susan's voice is smoothly melismatic as she heads for the upper register, and, as stated, the intensity when she really gets into it, as she did on That Did It (at least I think it was That Did It, based on a single hearing during the Allman Brothers' Beacon Theatre run last month) contrasts nicely with the librarian next door appearance.

Oteil Burbridge pinned things down nicely on the bass, contributed a vocal on Manic Depression and delivered a visual counterpoint on stage left, while brother Kofi's keyboard contributions, largely delivered from the darkness on the edge of stage left, contributed light and shade, filling in any holes in the sonic spectrum.

Throw in some interesting percussive interplay between drummers Tyler Greenwell and J.J. Johnson and the vocal harmonies from Mike Mattison and Mark Rivers and you’ve got a combo with plenty of sonic variables to play around with. It’s early days yet, but I’m sure there’s a lot to be revealed as things knit together in an outfit that’s stunningly good already and is only going to get better.

Suggestions that Robert Randolph would be joining the band come encore time failed to materialise, though that may have been due to an unannounced or unexpected visit from Warren Haynes, also in the country for Bluesfest, who came out to contribute to an energetic reading of the old Delaney & Bonnie Comin' Home.

With Revelator out in early June, I’m looking forward to further revelations...

Tedeschi Trucks Band "Revelator" (5*)

Tedeschi Trucks Band "Revelator" (5*)

I'm well and truly past the stage where I expect to have my mind blown by someone's latest release, so if my reaction to this very classy debut by a great band seems somewhat restrained don't let that fool you.

As is the case with Robert Randolph, there's a slight issue when a guitar-slinger noted for extended high intensity soloing hits the studio, and those looking for the trademark Trucks shredding exercise may well be disappointed here. The solos are there, of course, but they're carefully melded into a mix that shares the spotlight around. Understandable when you've got a vocalist of the calibre of Susan Tedeschi, and it's not as if the rest of the outfit lack class.

The result is, in many ways, rather similar to a really good bottle of red wine, and organic red wine at that. The album definitely feels like something that's been very carefully put together with attention to light and shade so there's always something interesting going on.

Kicking off with Come See About Me (no, not the Holland Dozier Holland hit for The Supremes) the dozen collaboratively-written tracks (thirteen if you opt for the iTunes version) deliver a succession of grooves that will form a pretty good platform for expansion in the live setting.

Highlights? Well, start with Midnight in Harlem and Bound For Glory, the horns at the start of Until You Remember reminded me of Allen Toussaint's horn arrangements for The Band's Rock of Ages, and the hidden track tucked in after Shelter's pretty tasty, but the best summary of the album comes in the video take on Learn How To Love, with the band in action in Swamp Raga Studios. A collective effort that's been carefully assembled by a highly talented outfit who look to be having plenty of fun doing it.
Needless to say I'll be looking forward to the next one.