Only in Los Angeles.
It was the anti-Spotify Top 50. Working musicians, most sans mainstream fame, all on the same stage performing the songs of one of America’s most revered songwriters.
Or to paraphrase Max Yasgur, it was five hundred people getting together for three hours of fun and music and nothing but fun and music. As opposed to the trappings, the outfits, the controversies, the social media posts, the endless hype and sell.
It’s hard to be a musician. Sure, you get some attention, but oftentimes what money you make is burned up in travel and other expenses. You may want to be a star, but most people never get there. In other words, you’ve got to really love to play music to stay at it. It takes dedication. And oftentimes the only payout is the applause you get on stage. Then again, you can’t get that applause anywhere else. It’s a calling.
Now the show began with the Blind Boys of Alabama singing “Loves Me Like a Rock.” Utterly astounding, with the energy and bounciness and sheer joy of the original recording. Rarely do shows start on such a high note. I would have enjoyed a few more numbers by the Boys, but everybody got just one song, and one thing was for sure, the show didn’t drag.
Now if you’re not a member of the scene, you might not know who Molly Tuttle is, but when she was picking the leads and her male compatriot Ketch Secor was playing the rhythm it was an exciting role reversal.
And speaking of role reversal, seventeen year old Grace Bowers positively wailed on the electric guitar, the most rock and roll element of the evening.
But the peak, once again, like last year, was Dwight Yoakam.
Now unlike so many musicians, Dwight is very verbal. And he takes the stage and starts talking… It’s not exactly a story, it’s more conversational, more intimate, more between him and the audience, but then…
I’m tingling thinking about it. Dwight is so regular, but when he starts to sing… You could release Dwight’s performance of “The Boxer” tomorrow and it would be a hit, it was just that good. He said he hillbillied it up just a bit, and that changed the accents to great effect. And as I was listening I was thinking to myself I LIVED THROUGH THIS! These are classics, but I was around when the “Bridge Over Troubled Water” album came out. I saw Simon & Garfunkel live in the interlude between their initial hits and “The Graduate” comeback. I feel privileged. Albeit closer to the end.
But the big surprise, was Mexican chanteuse Silvana Estrada. Unknown by most in attendance, she took the stage and sang “El Condor Pasa” and…
This was the only performance wherein the audience hooped and hollered during the song, Estrada was just that good. And only Dwight got an equal amount of applause at the end. If Silvana did the same thing on tonight’s Grammy telecast she’d be a star overnight. She brought gravitas, but without heaviness. She respected the music but not to the point where it was living in a museum. It was contemporary. And with her crystalline voice… You had to be there.
And there were surprises, like Brett Dennen singing “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.” I’ve seen this guy a number of times and never gotten it. But last night… He personalized the song just a bit, and he physically swung with the music, he added an extra element, to a song I don’t love to begin with.
Rufus Wainwright did a great “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” but what I marveled at most was this is a guy who’s a star who has never ever had a hit. Which is quite an achievement if you think about it. Rufus did it his way. And fans came to him.
The Larkin Poe sisters locked in on “Paranoia Blues,” from the unjustly forgotten first solo album. All the focus is on the “Graceland” era, the quiet debut and the as good as it gets “Rhymin’ Simon” have been pushed into the back seat, but they’re absolutely stellar. Stefan Grossman plays bottleneck on the original and I’ll say Megan Lovell trumped it last night. The two women energized the number, added a zest absent from the recording, lifting it to a higher, more intense level.
And Amanda Sudano of Johnnyswim was singing “René and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog after the War,” from “Hearts and Bones,” a favorite of the cognoscenti, and then her beefy husband Abner Ramirez opened his mouth and this mellifluous sound came out…I was positively stunned. It was so sweet, the opposite of his look.
And the way Abner treated Jackson Browne as a compatriot during the encore, putting his arm around his shoulder, unburdened by Jackson’s image, lightening the Southern California bard…
Yes, Jackson, who has allowed himself to age, whose hair is gray and was wearing glasses, gave a long intro to “I Am a Rock,” talking about the three minute limit of the singles of the sixties, and then he sang it. Everyone is so worried about their image, trying to look thirty when they’re seventy, it endeared me to Jackson, he was owning who he was, what was on the inside was what counted. And when he got to the lines:
“I have my books
And my poetry to protect me”
I was brought right back to the sixties, the pre-internet era, when we’d be home, in our cocoon. I never wrote poetry, but people did. We all read books, like Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle,” we were living in our heads sans exterior stimulation so much of the time. And we could feel outside. I resonated with the bygone paradigm.
Paul Simon left Columbia for Warner Bros. because the company promised him a movie deal. And a film ensued, “One Trick Pony.” It was not instantly forgotten, like the small films of today, but it was not a hit, yet I did see it on opening night and bought the soundtrack, with its opening song “Late in the Evening,” cut with New York cats different from his usual players. It had a stripped-down feel, there was room around the instruments, its magic grows on you over time, and I was surprised to hear Gaby Moreno do it last night. She was wearing a delicious silver suit, and nailed the rhythm of the original.
And Rodney Crowell did “Graceland” and then most of the assembled multitude came out and performed “You Can Call Me Al,” a surprising choice if you ask me. More about rhythm than melody, meaning it’s not easy to deliver live, never mind in an ensemble. But they fell into the groove and the horn came in as an exclamation point and all was well.
Now I didn’t mention everybody…then it would just be a laundry list. As it is the above reads so much like a recitation of what was. But that’s the kind of evening it was, one performance after another, all interesting, not only because of the playing, but the underlying material.
Yes, I pondered how they’d do the same with today’s artists twenty or thirty years down the line. In today’s 808 one chord culture. But there are people taking the road less traveled, like those on stage last night. And they are not only the heart and soul of Americana, they’re the heart and soul of America. Yes, living, breathing. Machines don’t do that. I’m not saying you can’t make good music on a computer, I’m just saying it’s not alive, not breathing the same way as people playing acoustic instruments and singing sans effects. That’s what touches you.
So I could have been at Clive Davis’s party last night…actually, no I could not have, not with all the negative things I’ve written about the man. Clive needs the attention, he’s trying to be remembered, but it’s the music that lasts, if it’s lucky. And usually it’s not the hits that enter our bodies and never leave, that make our lives worth living, but the album tracks, the left field stuff, the more human stuff, the stuff with less of a sheen.
And we had a whole night of it yesterday. The stars of the Americana world, even number one, Jason Isbell, all together on stage. Because when it comes to music in America…you can play it anywhere, but there are few meccas. Not only the poor people have been squeezed out of Manhattan, but the middle class too. The musicians are now being squeezed out of Brooklyn. So if you’re a player, you end up in Nashville or L.A. Not only for the business, but the cross-pollination with other singers and players.
You can live in the hinterlands and the acts last night will come through your town, but only one at a time, they all won’t be on the same stage on one single evening.
But they made the pilgrimage here for Grammy week. Or already live in SoCal. Such that they could get together and create magic last night. Not for the money, but for the joy. As Joni Mitchell would say, they were playing real good for free.
