Los Lobos "The Neighborhood"

Looking at the eighth album by eminent roots rockers Los Lobos it’s useful to remind oneself of the chronology that lead up to its 1990 release. In the wake of critical rather than commercial success with How Will the Wolf Survive and By the Light of the Moon they’d done the soundtrack to the Richie Valens biopic La Bamba, hit the notional big time with the eponymous single and then run into a big problem.

According to drummer Louie Pérez, We had released a bunch of cool records and then La Bamba happened and we became this big thing. It almost eclipsed everything else that we had done before. I think the band went through a little bit of an identity crisis because, here we were, 'The La Bamba Band.

The reaction was to retreat to their folkloric roots with the all-Spanish La Pistola y el Corazón (1988), and then head back with a collection of new rock-oriented material with the disc under consideration here.

From the start of Down on the Riverbed to the title track at the end of the album, The Neighbourhood runs through a variety of settings and genres, from a bluesy rock exploration of a vagabond existence where you really don’t want to make anything resembling a commitment even though the offer is made (Down on the Riverbed), a countryish hoedown with vocal assistance from Levon Helm (Emily) and a rocking statement of self reliance (a sizzling I Walk Alone).

There’s a semi-Cajun lilt to Angel Dance, a subdued hymn-like vibe with mandolin and rangy vocals from Levon Helm on the delicately minimalist Little John of God before the rock returns for Deep Dark Hole and the muscular fatback stomp of Jimmy McCracklin’s Georgia Slop. I Can't Understand offers an interesting writing credit of Cesar Rosas/Willie Dixon (yes, that Willie Dixon) and rocks along very nicely indeed and, with Hidalgo’s accordion to the fore The Giving Tree heads back into Cajun territory.

They drop it back a tad for Take My Hand then it’s off into Mitch Ryder house party territory  for Jenny's Got a Pony, four and a bit minutes of old-style sixties R&B before the swirling, accordion-led Be Still and a swing back into the territory we started in for The Neighborhood.

A glance at the personnel listing reveals what looks suspiciously like a vote of no confidence in drummer Louis Pérez, with session musos Jerry Marotta and Jim Keltner getting most of the action, but that’s possibly explained by the guitars, jarana, hidalguer in the credits after Louie’s name.

Looking at the big picture (with the benefit of some twenty-odd years’ hindsight) you can trace an evolution in the Los Lobos catalogue from the first two independent releases to the dance/party band (...And a Time to Dance), to eclectic roots rockers hinting at good things to come (How Will the Wolf Survive, great album in itself, but hasn’t quite got there yet) to stretching the wings a bit (By the Light of the Moon).

In my reading of things La Bamba is an understandable flirtation with the mainstream since the preceding  recordings didn’t race out the door by the semi-trailer load and someone had to provide the music for the Latino rocker biopic, so why not?

Reassert the roots with La Pistola y el Corazón, which I suspect has a bit to do with the array of traditional instruments in the listing below. It’s difficult to go much further than I suspect in that regard, since The Neighbourhood is the only album where the Wikipedia provides those details and the other results at the top of a Google search for Los Lobos discography don’t provide ‘em at all. Pistola presumably had them as well, and with the possibilities in the process of being explored things are being set in place for what was to follow.

What followed was, of course, Kiko, one of the great (for my money, anyway) albums. With The Neighborhood they’re well on the way but not quite there yet. Kiko and the subsequent consolidation of the territory is, however, well and truly on the horizon and The Neighborhood’s bringing-it-all-back-home portrait of the ups and downs of an urban existence delivers a slice of Americana (before that label existed as a genre) blending strands of roots music into an intriguing mix that’ll offer plenty of room for subsequent exploration.

Personnel (according to Wikipedia):
David K. Hidalgo - vocals, electric and acoustic guitars, 6-string bass, tiple, accordion, bajo sexto, violine, Hawaiian steel, koto guitar, drums, percussion
Cesar J. Rosas - vocals, electric and acoustic guitars, bajo-sexto, huanpanguera
Louie F. Pérez, Jr. - drums, percussion, guitars, jarana, hidalguer
Conrad R. Lozano - vocals, fender precision and 5-string bass, guitarron, upright bass
Steve M. Berlin - tenor, baritone and soprano saxophones, organ, clavinet, percussion

Jerry Marotta - drums
Danny Timms - organ, wurlitzer, piano
Alex Acuña - percussion, shekere, hand drums
John Hiatt - vocals
Jim Keltner - drums, percussion
Levon Helm - vocals, mandolin
Mitchell Froom - harmonium

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.

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.