Reminds me. I updated the "this week" page. Remind me to remind Jeff
Hart to post another nice long thing about this month's Songwriters
Alliance, only he better do it a week or two in advance, since it
sometimes takes that long to get to everybody. That's why 3.2.3 missed
the Treva/Brad version last month. I hear our own Heather Russell will
be up this time around. Then again, Van Vleck likes her. Talk about yr
mixed blessings.

Last night I went out. Too late. My fingers are asleep as I type this.

But so: Brewery. 

this is what I want to say: WAtching Whiskeytown slog their way through
what was, for them, another in a long line of fucked-up half-assed shows
which was still more entertaining than most shows by most bands I've
seen lately, I thought about Pop Muzik. And it occurred to me that one
of the primary weapons of great pop songwriting is the ability to
unselfconsciously repeat word or words about 100 times more in a row
than one's common sense would normally allow.

This is of course Ryan Adams's great strength, or one of them. He
recognizes, whether consciously or not, the music which comes pouring
out of words once some of the meaning has been beat out of them.

see also Van Morrison, of course.

So that explains some part of it in some abstract sense. The thing,
though, which kept a bad night for Whiskeytown still above a good night
for another band was this: they know what drives a song. Last night they
took some song or another (and sleeplessness has taken specifics from
me, dammit), a slow slow one, and they rocked it up, made it swing.
These three chords, that particular chorus remain. The rest is mutable.

I was watching this process, thinking about so many bands I know who
learn songs linearly: first comes the intro, then we perform these chord
changes and sing, then so-and-so solos, then we finish. Somebody writes
this down or memorizes it, and then shows the rest, and it gets
practiced until everybody's playing the same thing.

What Ryan has done, ever since I've known him, is to remember most of
the words, and the chord change, and then over the course of six months
or a year he'll try a half-dozen different arrangements out. Mostly,
he'll try 'em out onstage without really giving the rest of the band
much warning.

So yr average Whiskeytown show will consist of 2/3ds songs which have
been played the same way for long enough for the band to really know how
to rock on them, and 1/3 songs that are being altered in progress.

Usually, actually, it's either a set of rockers or a set of experiments
or, like last night, a couple of each plus about half just general
fucking up. Like I said, it wan't their best.

But it makes for fun fun listening when it works out.

The Backsliders have pretty much perfected the songs on their records,
plus a half-dozen others. Of course, they've been playing most of them
for going-on three years now. I myself would like more new ones. And
please, can we retire "dead flowers," all of us, collectively, forever?

Hey I've seen C. Wiley Riser cover that song, non-ironically,
non-po-mo-ly, non-pine-stately. We all make mistakes.

Six String Drag, though my legs literally gave way beneath me halfway
through, are one of the five best live band experiences in the state of
North Carolina. There's a category for you, Jenno, and all the rest of
you as well. Who consistently, time after time, blows yr head off in a
live setting?

Or: if X band were playing 2 shows 2 weeks apart, would you go to both?

Six String Drag. My Sunday morning began with The Band, courtesy of L&S
brunch (ohmygawd Brunch, just go, okay), and ended with Kenny Roby,
onstage with his leg-kicks and his inexplicable gulf-coast-ness. There
is much of the New Orleans and the Sir Douglas and the, yes, The Band in
that young man, and it shows up in the cadences.

Or, as I was trying to explain to Kenny in my dream last night (no
shit--I fucking critique in my sleep. How did I reach this lamentable
state?), he writes songs with lots of stops in them, a lot of blats in
unison, as if he's hearing horns in his head even on those songs which
don't receive horns in real life.

Last night no horns at all. I'm hoping this is a temporary phenomenon
and not some newly-congealed permanent hornless lineup. Also new to the
lineup, relatively, is what appeared from across the bar to be Scott
Miller, who has led a half-dozen short-lived Raleigh rock combos in the
time I've lived here, including most recently Econoline but also
Available Jones (with Chip Robinson on vox, no less) and, um, some band
called the Sundowners or the Landlubbers or something. On guitar. Big
fat hollowbody electric guitar.

Anyway. Six String Drag. Have an EP in the can with their label honcho,
one Steve Earle (memo to the Into the Groove guys: that's the big news
in country this year, Steve Earle's current comeback), producing. Watch
for it.

Kenny Roby writes gospel songs called "When you Reach the Top of the
Mountain Keep Climbing to his Side," which is (now that I think about
it) the tune which segues effortlessly, non-cornily, into "When the
Saints Go Marching In." And you'll have to see/believe that one with
your ownself.

Me, I'm going to bed.

Ross
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