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Levon Helm Was Perfect

Levon Helm wasn’t a flashy player, merely a perfect one. The best musicians often give the impression that they make music conform to their own rules rather than the other way around, bending it to their will and converting the counterintuitive into the suddenly obvious. Watch this incredible performance of Van Morrison’s “Caravan” and pay attention to what happens at around 0:17: The Band start the song just a bit too fast, and three bars in Levon slows the entire thing down, in the blink of an eye, like an expert jockey atop a world-class thoroughbred. By conventional rule, spontaneously slowing down or speeding up a song is a cliché of bad music-making, but here it works. And of course the tempo he slows it to is exquisitely, achingly right.

It wasn’t all mysticism, of course. He was a technically monstrous player of unsurpassed versatility, one who could turn challenging music into something that sounded effortless. Other great bands have played difficult material, but on Steely Dan records the music sounds hard, wearing complexity on its sleeve with a sort of punk defiance. The Band’s “Jawbone” goes through more meters than Con Edison but sounds utterly natural: The Carter Family at a cookout with mid-’60s Miles Davis, everyone getting along, Levon working the grill.

He could sing a little, too. For all of his prowess at the drums, most of the world will remember Levon Helm as the voice of “Ophelia,” “Up On Cripple Creek,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” The Band boasted an embarrassment of vocal riches, and while Levon lacked the extraordinary expressive range of Rick Danko and Richard Manuel, his may have been the most indelible sound of the three. Listening to that worn and cozy voice was like being told a story around a campfire, after the humidity has broken and the mosquitoes have gone to sleep. Come upon “The Weight” on the radio at the right moment, and the entire world stands still.

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Since I’m flying to Texas tomorrow (!!!) I was going to write another pointless essay about a musician born in Texas. Buuuut I found out I got into school (!!!) so instead I spent the whole day planning an impending move to New York City. So, in honor of my two favorite cities let us listen to Jerry Jeff Walker’s immortal “Mr. Bojangles”. 

Mr. Walker wasn’t born in Texas, but he’s lived there for half his life. He helped to kick-start the outlaw country movement in Austin in the 70s, so it’s safe to say he’s achieved honorary status. Before moving to Austin he had acquired some mild success in the folk scene in Greenwich Village. If you want to know more about Jerry Jeff (and Willie, Waylon, et al) immediately go pick up the April issue of Texas Monthly. There’s an excellent oral history of the outlaw country movement that makes me severely depressed that I missed the release of The Red-Headed Stranger by ten years. 

I’m flying to Texas in two days! To keep myself occupied I’m blogging about one Texas musician every day until then. Today we’re relaxing our standards a bit and writing about a man who was born in Louisiana but moved to Texas at the age of five, and spent much of his life around the Lousiana-Texas border. He’s probably more of a Louisiananimal, but he’s Lead Belly and he’s awesome and I feel like writing about him. 

My first introduction to Lead Belly came from my friend Paul. Katherine and I were picking him up on South Congress where he was walking to meet us from his parents house in Travis Heights. He had his headphones in and was smoking a cigarrette, air-strumming his way down the road. When he got in the car he did what he normally does when I haven’t seen him in a while: he asked me what I had been listening to. Then he told me I should check out Lead Belly. I think we were 18. 

Since then, Lead Belly comes up a lot when my high school friends and I are together. Often we find ourselves sitting around some fire, bellies full of beer or Dr. Pepper and Opa’s jalepeño chedder sausages. Someone always has a guitar and eventually they’ll play “Goodnight Irene” or “Midnight Special”. We all sing whatever we think the words are. 

I’ve never grown up in any other part of the country so I can’t be sure, but I’m inclined to think this isn’t an exclusively Texan, or Southern, experience. Lead Belly was one of America’s greatest musical treasures, and I’m sure he’s celebrated by musically-inclined teenagers and adults from coast to coast. During his lifetime his popularity was not geographically limited. He first achieved fame through recordings done for the Library of Congress while he was at Angola Prison in Louisiana. After his release, the self-proclaimed “King of the 12-string” moved to New York City where he befriended the likes of Woody Guthrie and Josh White. 

What is so universally appealing about Lead Belly is his undeniable skill. In fact, his animated tenor and fast-picking would help him to be pardoned by not only one, but two Governors. With a wealth of experience in the fields and prisons of the poor, rural South he mastered the blues, spirituals, folk songs and prison ballads. In other words, he was a baller.

Side note: my friends Molly, Lindsey and I once nicknamed a Teddy Bear “Lead Belly” when we were less than sober one night during our freshman year of college. 

I’m flying home to Texas on Wednesday and until I’ll be blogging about one Texas artist every day until then. Today’s musician is Kenny Rogers because Kenny Rogers is amazing and he’s got one of the most beautiful beards in modern history. He was born in Houston just before the start of the second world war, and achieved success on both the pop and country charts in the late 60s with his group The First Edition. He began his solo career in 1976 and since then has had over 60 top 40 hits, including “The Gambler”, “Lady”, “Islands in The Stream” and countless others that live on in karaoke bars across America and the world.

Yesterday’s Buddy piece exhausted me, so I’ll keep it simple today with everybody’s favorite psychbluesjazzprog-rockers, White Denim. They’ve been around since 2006 and they’ve really made a name for themselves since then. They started out with DIY releases and extensive touring, but they’ve since signed with Downtown Records in the US, and Full Time Hobby for overseas releases.

I’ve got the biggest crush on James Petralli’s voice, it’s such a wail. This song in particular is delightful to sing along to when your alone in your apartment.

In less than a week I’m heading to Texas, and I’ve decided to write about one Texas Musician per day until I get there. So allow me to introduce you to the first tall, lanky, awkward rock musician that ever stole my heart (as if you need the introduction, which you shouldn’t): Buddy Holly. 

This is going to be fun!

You see, Buddy Holly’s always fun. Everybody loves Buddy Holly! In my opinion, anyone who says they don’t is lying to themselves, just holding onto the juvenile idea that anything light-hearted and straightforward is amateur. If you’re a human being, and you have a heart-beat, and you have relationships with other human beings, you can’t not like Buddy. 

So let me tell you an awesome story about a bunch of people who really like Buddy Holly. It’s going to be long-winded, but this is my blog and I’ll do what I want.

Last October two very dear friends of mine decided to marry each other. They live out on a ranch in Columbus, TX, so the ceremony and reception were held in a converted old school house in Dubina. Guests were to camp on the ranch about 30 miles away. More than just a wedding (and what wedding is ever just a wedding?), it was also a reunion of a couple dozen friends who hadn’t seen enough of each other in the past few years. We came from Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, New Orleans, Memphis, Tuscaloosa, Massachucetts, New York and California, but we all had strong ties to each other and to the state.

The reception was unlike anything I’d ever seen. After the ceremony everybody crammed into this old dance hall that the groom’s father used to sneak booze into when he was a teenager. There was barbecue on the grill, Shiner on tap and a live band that could play every song Hank Williams ever wrote. I two-stepped barefoot with the groom’s dad Jim, a cattle rancher and German teacher with a doctorate from The University of Texas. There were bandannas and bolo ties as far as the eye could see. 

At some point someone asked if the band could play any Buddy Holly and before I had a chance to re-hydrate I was twisting and shouting to “Rave On”. Generations of Buddy  fans were with me on the dance floor. I’d dance with my eyes closed for a few seconds than stop and look at whoever was near me. I saw the groom’s youngest cousin, who couldn’t have been older than 12. The bride was nearby, singing along to every word. I’ve known her since we were 15, but I didn’t know she knew all the words to this song. At one point I turned to my right to find Pat, a baby boomer who looks remarkably like a late-in-life Ernest Hemingway. I thought it was neat that he had been alive for Buddy’s brief celebrity in the late fifties. I wondered how many times he had listened to that song, and in what context it had been important to him because it was obvious that he really really liked it.

I knew when and how that song had been important to me. I knew it reminded me of my mother teaching me how to dance, of working Saturdays at the store, and of sitting shotgun in my bosses car, bonding over a mutual appreciation of rockabilly music. I tripped out on that for a moment. I wondered how many different memories there might have been in that dance hall at that given moment. I did not doubt that we all had distinct personal relationships to “Rave On” and to the man who was famous for singing it. Those distinct personal relationships might have nothing to do with one another, but there we were shaking our asses, creating new memories and adding layers to our own lives. And why? For no other reason than that we’re human, and we care about each other, and it’s fun, damnit.

No one can doubt the influence Buddy had on rock and roll music. For starters he and The Crickets are credited as the first self-contained rock band: two guitarists, one bassist and a drummer, making it possible for a live performance to sound perfectly similar to the 45. Buddy was the first four-eyed rockstar, and I doubt anyone can see a pair of heavy black frames without immediately thinking of him. He was also one of the first in the industry to write his own material (not “Rave On” though, interestingly enough) and he was idolized by some of the most influential musicians of the second half of the 20th Century. Legend has it that John Lennon said “There would not have even been a Beatles had it not been for The Crickets.”. Though his death may have inspired the most aggravating nine minutes in music history (I’m looking at you, “American Pie”), we can’t really fault him for that, now can we?

The course of modern popular culture was certainly altered by this one kid from Lubbock, TX, but even more interesting to me are the imprints he left on the smaller scale. Celebrity is such a fascinating phenomenon, especially when it involves actual talent. The fact that a singular human, isolated by distance or time or even death, can have such an acute affect on the lives of strangers, well, I don’t fully understand how and why that happens. I know it has something to do with the theme of Buddy’s music. The uncertainty of love and the vulnerability associated with putting your heart in the hands of another are universal experiences. What is so powerful about Buddy’s take on the subject, however, is his unwavering optimism. “Oh Boy”, “That’ll Be The Day” and “I’m Gonna Love You To” all present a narrator with enduring self-confidence, even in the face of a lover who either doesn’t know he exists, had told him she plans to leave, or has straight-up rejected him in favor of another man. He sings about heartbreak and fear and loneliness, but not like other important artists like Billie Holiday and Hank Williams who often leave you feeling more desperate than you started. He sings about it with a sense of empowerment that is not only easy to relate to, but easy to embrace. It’s like it forces you to break out of your shell, shake your ass, sing along, and have the best time ever. 

In making himself so accessible, he also provided his fans with a platform through which they could relate to one another. In doing so, this lanky kid from Lubbock with terrible vision, long dead and gone, has no doubt facilitated interpersonal relationships across the world for the past 60 years. When you think of how he influenced artists like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and The Grateful Dead and what affect those artist have in turn had on modern culture, well shit, he’s kind of a big deal. That doesn’t make any sense! It’s a phenomenon! 

Wow. Raise your hand if you had too much coffee and wrote over 1,200 on Buddy Holly just for the hell of it. Oh. No one else? Just me? Okay. It’s safe to say I’m a bit obsessed with Buddy Holly. In fact, I’m kind of embarrassed right now. I know this essay is self-indulgent, but I hope it doesn’t come across completely fucking bonkers. Loved ones, if you are concerned please call me and I will assure you I’ve not had a psychotic break. It’s just that when I think about Buddy Holly, I’m always reminded that no human being is truly isolated. We share experiences and emotions and identities. We share fears and worry, because life is uncertain and scary to navigate. Buddy Holly reminds me that even the scary parts can be fun, precisely because everybody else has been terrified at one point or another. I get overly excited about this, because it’s only recently that I’ve begun to feel this way.

Charles Hardin “Buddy” Holly was killed almost 40 years before I was born, but I know that he’s played a significant role in my life. If nothing else he’s given me something timeless to enjoy, countless moments of unadulterated fun. He even provided me with an awkward spiritual awakening at a Texas wedding. I came home to California and tattooed the shape of Texas on the inside of my left ring finger because I don’t ever want to forget just how much fun that was. Who knows what any of that means. All I know is that I’m going to listen to Buddy Holly on my bike ride to work today and that I look forward to one day teaching my children how to dance and sing along.

Just remember all birds and bees go by two through life’s mysteries…

An extremely drunk Canadian man sings the entirety of Bohemian Rhapsody in the back of a police car, which almost makes up for how shitty Canadian Bacon is. 

For our next artist, let’s look to someone significantly less depressing than Townes Van Zandt: Mr. Joe King Carrasco.

I once describe Carrasco to an uninformed Yankee friend of mine as the border’s answer to Jonathan Richman, only less talented and even weirder. The self-appointed inventor of “Tex-Mex Rock N’ Roll” was born in Dumas, Texas but he drew much of his inspiration from the beaches of Southern Mexico. His band Joe King Carrasco and The Crowns achieved some commercial success in the late 80s with hits like “Party Weekend”. He even played SNL and was photographed with Michael Jackson.  As much as I love to make fun of him, I actually really dig the man. It’s like he took all the best songs from all the jukeboxes in all the dive bars in the state of Texas and combined them into one high-energy and highly-entertaining sound. 

You should check out his personal website here. It’s pretty ridiculous and completely awesome. 

One week from today I’m flying home to Texas (because it’s Easter and because I want to catch the bluebonnets before they die). Let’s do another countdown! Last time I wrote about one historically relevant Texan per day, but this time let’s go back to musicians. That’s the most fun anyway. 

We’ll start with the incomparable Townes Van Zandt: the myth, the legend, the man I will one day name a dog after. Here is the classic “To Live is To Fly”, which is a pretty great example of everything I love and hate about Townes Van Zandt. For Townes Van Zandt, life is repetitive and fleeting. Day’s fall like “raindrops on a Conga drum”, some good, some bad, but all passing or past. Acclimate yourself to the up and down, he says, and enjoy the present moment. These are philosophies I share with Mr. Van Zandt, although he expresses himself with a poetry I can’t hope to emulate. 

“To Live is To Fly” isn’t just about cherishing the moment, it’s about freedom: the freedom to live, to fly, and to fly in an out of other peoples lives. You don’t take life too seriously, and you don’t take people too seriously. That’s when I get annoyed with Townes. Let me put it this way: he’s like the reverse of Paul Simon. Both are amazing songwriters and both write about how quickly days pass and how we’re all on this trajectory or something. But where Simon fixates on the magical evolution of lives and culture (I’m thinking of “The Obvious Child” and “The Boy in The Bubble” right now), Townes seems more interested in floating and in merely withstanding the monotony, boredom and occasional pain that defines the human condition as he understands it. It’s whiny, and if you’ve seen Margaret Brown’s awesome Documentary Be Here To Love Me you know that this attitude produced a life that was brief and tumultous, and that Townes left behind all kinds of wreckage, including three pretty fucked up kids. He had decades and a million chances to get his shit together and he never did, I imagine only because he couldn’t stand the boredom, and he couldn’t see himself as anything other than the hard-livin, heavy-boozin blues guitarist that he had wanted to be since the first moment he felt uncomfortable in his own skin.

Wow. I did not intend to write that much, which just goes to show you how passionately I feel about Townes Van Zandt. It’s a love-hate relationship, mostly love. I rotate the songs on my Iphone but there’s always something by Townes, and he inspires a lot of of my inner monologue. Like I said, my next dog’ll be named after him. A bloodhound, I think. Something with sad eyes that can really croon.