Lovesong: Stephen Kellogg: Thanksgiving

This is for Toronto Tim and all of his Canadian friends who are celebrating Thanksgiving.
It comes via that Musical Magpie Nick Baker (Macwood Fleet) who never ceases to amaze with his revelations and unearthing of unheard gems.
I've never heard of Stephen Kellogg but I'm raiding Amazon today.
Comparison is the thief of joy but... this reminds me of an impassioned (unedited) Josh Ritter.
Let's give thanks to the wonder of t'internet and the potency of nostalgia...

Hopeland (Notes From Corsica): 4: Max

4. Max

Looking at Max’s puckered eyebrow I was reminded of Hemingway’s hunter, who chased endangered species and exotic beasts only to blast them into oblivion. Hunters’ always prey on the biggest and boldest, assuming that the one with the most scars must be ‘of substance’. Kill the beast and inherit its potent integrity. Not that I saw our new friend as hunter; his were the eyes of the hunted. Max was a coiled spring, fiercely chauvinistic, proud of his Corsican roots, desperate to retain independence from the interfering mainland and keen to propagate his intolerance:
“It is not ‘maquis’ it’s macchia.” he spat again. “ The name comes from the mucchiu, wild rockroses that grow here in abundance. The French bastards took our word to give credibility to their fighters shivering and quivering in the bush. Maquisards? Pah!”
Max was easy company until Paris was mentioned, the tricolour a red rag to his bullish beliefs. It was our second evening in Corsica and we sat, as his guests, in ‘L’Arbre Cotier’ overlooking the glorious scope of Calvi Bay, the slopes beyond awash with the colours of spring.
“Pac. Easter is a fine time to walk the macchia; the winter rains are still feeding the hillsides making the valleys like a beautiful yellow blanket. You can smell the honey and myrtle. Tonight you will eat young lamb, agneu de lait, which feeds only on the macchia and is fire roasted with the branches of that myrtle. And later I will introduce you to myrte our famous liqueur. It removes all conscience, and” he added with a chuckle, “the grass stains that follow.” Our waiter approached us with a sanguine nod before placing a large platter of chacuterie on the table. Here were Prizuttu, Coppa and the lean Lonzu with that never to be forgotten smoky buttery flavour.
“Again, the benefit of free grazing.” Max spluttered through a mouthful of cold cuts. “Our pigs run wild in the forests and feast on acorns and chataigne. We call the chestnut trees ‘u arburu a pane’, bread trees, as they are so basic to our diet. The story goes that in the sixteenth century the ruling Genoese were unable to cultivate our mountains so they decreed that all landowners plant four trees a year; a mulberry, a cherry, an olive and a chestnut. Soon la chataigne reigned supreme et voila, we were self-sufficient. The Father of our nation, Pasco Paoli said, “As long as we have chestnuts, we shall have bread.” Of course the French despised us for this ‘food of laziness’, they saw our easy income as immoral and forbade us to plant new trees. We ourselves started to ignore this bullion and yet it endures.” With that he put his hand to his ear and produced an unearthly warble. The room fell silent and all eyes turned to our table, a few older heads nodding in solemn deference. Max finished his song with an uninhibited, tremulous crescendo. No applause, just a reverent silence.
“That was ‘The Chestnut's Lament’. Max blinked away the mist. “I will translate:
“For generations I have fed you, given fodder for pigs, wood for furniture and fuel, but now you forget me, let the maquis strangle me.”
On your wedding day you would be presented with a feast of twenty-two dishes, all made from the chestnut and its flour. Even Pietra, this beer we drink, is chestnut flavoured. It’s good, eh?” Max was now ahead of us and tucked into his main course, a ragu of wild boar, with almost indecent haste.
“I am late for a very important rendezvous. I wish that I could be more respectful to you and to this sanglier” he dipped his bread, “I will definitely need his strength, for tonight I shall be leading the Good Friday procession, a re-enactment of The Passion of Christ. I will be the penitent. I have sins to atone for”, he added darkly. “Tell no one as only the priest is meant to know my identity. It is a great honour and I have a great cross to bear.” He did indeed. The next time we saw him he was barefoot and hooded, dressed in red robes with that great cross on his broad shoulder, followed by others, the confrere, in white robes and hoods. As Max approached our station he relieved the sinister tension by releasing an almighty belch. “Pietra” he muttered as he passed. There then followed a snail-like coiling and uncoiling of the file of brothers. Now the mood was lightened by a stray dog that comically padded in and out of the brothers’ legs against the tide, a Gay Gordon to their cheerless conga.
“That is the Granitula, an ideological reference to death and rebirth.” Max explained later. We had reconvened to Bar de Golf for a nightcap. A burly barman with dancing eyebrows and a luminous shirt served us tiny glasses of myrte.
“Speaking of rebirth, this is eau de vie, our water of life and this,” said Max with a flourish “this is Maurice, one of my oldest friends. He can swim under water for a quarter of a mile and eat a whole pig in one sitting. He also has the finest collection of Hawaiian shirts on the island.”
“Do you like Disco?” asked Maurice.

***

Catcher caught

The weight of expectation
Is the load of the luckless
I invest in the silence before the bell
And wait
Breathless
For a moment

There it was, did you see?

If you look away they will come
Slipping in unnoticed
From corners that have never been dusted
Knowing they won’t be missed
If you miss them

Try it

Look away

Then

Just out of view

Just beyond the corner of your eye

You’ll sense their shapes shifting

And hear their whispered promises

Of vague possibility

Easter and Raymond Carver: A sermon preached by Dr. Larry R. Hayward: April 8, 2007

“Deep in the human heart is an unquenchable trust 
that life does not end with death.”

Not at all timely I know (other than the fact that it's Sunday) but I just came across this. I'm not a religious man but this is a beautifully rendered piece; a reminder of the importance of self appraisal and self love. Much as I adore my lady, I'm learning that to love oneself is perhaps the greatest love; 'you' are the only person that you can truly trust in a relationship so... you'd better hit the right notes. Of course, it's divine to be loved by others; more likely if you are not consumed by self loathing... The idea of a divine love from Him on high is beyond me. 
I've been accused in the past of over sincerity (by friends) but kindness, trust and loyalty are my only real demands from friendship. 
Call me mawkish, but love and hope remain my touchstones.
They surely endure 'beyond the bounds of vision'...

And did you get what 

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

EASTER AND RAYMOND CARVER

Luke 24:13-35

A sermon preached by Dr. Larry R. Hayward on Easter Sunday, April 8, 2007, at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Alexandria, Virginia

Nearly every funeral I conduct features a prayer from 1946 edition of The Book of Common Worship of the Presbyterian Church. Those of you with Episcopal leanings will recognize it from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, revealing the fact that we Presbyterians are not quite liturgically-minded enough to come up with liturgy of our own. But in the case of this prayer, authorship doesn’t matter; for one sentence of the prayer is particularly beautiful, no matter who wrote it.

The phrase is this:

We thank Thee that deep in the human heart is an unquenchable trust that life does not end with death; that the Father, who made us, will care for us beyond the bounds of vision, even as He has cared for us in this earthly world.

“An unquenchable trust that life does not end with death”: these words lie behind, beneath, and around this sermon this Easter day. “An unquenchable trust that life does not end with death.”

I want us to approach the phrase “an unquenchable trust” first through the writings of a noted author as he lay dying of cancer, then through Luke’s account of two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus and encountering the risen Christ unrecognized. 

In my opinion, both the author and the disciples give evidence of “unquenchable trust” that “life does not end with death.” 

By looking at their trust, I hope to put us in touch with similar trust that lies in our hearts, draw that trust out, and connect it to the resurrection of Christ that it may empower us to live with hope beyond this morning’s lilies and music.

First, the author. 

His name is Raymond Carver. He was born in 1938 in Clatskanie, Oregon. His father was a saw filer in the lumber mills and an alcoholic; his mother, a waitress and retail clerk. Carver lived a hard scrabble life. He worked his way through college, drank his way through low-paying, dead end jobs in his twenties and thirties, and wrote his way to fame in his forties. Along with Chekhov, Flannery O’Connor, and Tobias Wolff, Carver is among the greatest writers of the unique and relatively recent genre known as the short story.

The story of his life is not pretty. 

· In 1976, at age 38, Carver nearly died of alcohol poisoning. 

· After his brush with death, he became sober. 

· He met and found genuine love with fellow writer Tess Gallagher. 

· In the Fall of 1987, Carver was diagnosed with lung cancer. 

· For ten months he struggled with treatment. 

· In the spring 1988 cancer returned as a brain tumor. 

· After a decade of life together, he and Gallagher married. 

· A few weeks later, he died, two months after his fiftieth birthday. 

While creating her own, respected body of writing, Gallagher has spent the twenty years since Carver’s death telling his story. 

What we have of Carver’s writings reveals a man who, in his last few months, sought to affirm life even as he faced death. Gallagher describes his reaction to the return of cancer. 

Much as Chekhov had kept reading the train schedules away from the town in which he would die, Ray kept working, planning, believing in the importance of the time he had left, and also believing that he might, through some loop in fate, even get out of this. An errand list I found in his shirt pocket later read “eggs, peanut butter, hot choc” and then, after a space, “Australia? Antarctica??” 

The insistent nature of Ray’s belief in his own capacity to recover from reversals during the course of his illness gave us both strength. In his journal he wrote: “When hope is gone, the ultimate sanity is to grasp at straws.” In this way he lived hope as a function of gesture, a reaching for or toward, while the object of promise stayed rightly illusory. The alternative was acceptance of death, which at age fifty was impossible for him.

During this time of reaching for hope, Carver read a passage from Chekhov’s Ward Number 6: 

“And do you believe in the immortality of the soul?” [one character asks]. 

“No, [a second character responds]…I … have no grounds for believing it.” 

“I must own I doubt it too,” [the first character admits]…but there is a little voice in my soul that says, ‘…you won’t die.’” 

Carver underlined the words “a little voice in my soul.” 

The frontispiece of his final edition, published after his death, contained this inscription: 

All of us, all of us, all of us

trying to save

our immortal souls, some ways 

seemingly more round-

about and mysterious than others. 

Perhaps, facing death, he began to consider – to hope – that his life might continue after his death. “Deep in the human heart is an unquenchable trust that life does not end with death.” 

~

Once cancer returned, Carver frantically strove to finish his final books. They did not even tell friends his cancer had returned; for rather than face “a parade of sorrowful goodbyes,” they preferred to focus on “the things we wanted to do.” 

One of the things we decided to do [she writes] was to celebrate our eleven years together by getting married in Reno, Nevada, on June 17. 

The wedding was what Ray called a “high tacky affair” and it took place across from the courthouse in the Heart of Reno Chapel, which had a huge heart in the window and spiked small golden light bulbs… Afterwards we went gambling in the casinos and I headed into a phenomenal three-day winning streak at roulette. 

After the wedding, Carver wrote a poem called “Proposal.” In the final stanza, he commented on getting ready for the hastily arranged wedding: 

We were getting ready, as if we’d found an answer to 

the question of what’s left

when there’s no more hope: the muffled sound of dice coming

down,

the felt-covered table, the click of the wheel,

the slots ringing on into the night, and one more, one

more chance…

A few weeks later, he wrote a poem called “Cherish,” in which he describes the warmth of human love he feels watching his new wife out the window, even as he lay inside the house, dying: 

From the window I see her bend to the roses

holding close to the bloom so as not to 

prick her fingers. With the other hand she clips, pauses and

clips, more alone in the world 

than I had known. She won’t look up, not now. She’s alone

with roses and with something else I can only think, not

say. I know the names of those bushes

given for our late wedding: Love, Honor, Cherish –

the last the rose she holds out to me suddenly, having

entered the house between glances. I press

my nose to it, draw the sweetness in, let it cling – scent

of promise, of treasure. My hand on her wrist to bring her close,

her eyes green as river-moss. Saying it then, against

what comes: wife, while I can, while my breath, each hurried petal

can still find her.

The hope for “one more chance,” the eternity of “cherish”: “Deep in the human heart is an unquenchable trust that life does not end with death.”

~ 

In another piece written during those last few weeks of his life, Carver seemed to accept his imminent death. This piece is entitled “Gravy.” 

No other word will do. For that’s what it was. Gravy.

Gravy, these past ten years.

Alive, sober, working, loving and

being loved by a good woman. Eleven years

ago he was told he had six months to live

at the rate he was going. And he was going

nowhere but down. So he changed his ways

somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?

After that it was all gravy, every minute

of it, up to and including when he was told about,

well, some things that were breaking down and

building up inside his head. “Don’t weep for me,”

he said to his friends. “I’m a lucky man.

I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone 

Expected. Pure gravy. And don’t forget it.”

~ 

The final piece Carver wrote, before he slipped into the silence of death, is entitled “Late Fragment.” 

And did you get what 

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

Of this piece, Gallagher writes: “Ray…knew that he had been graced and blessed.”

“Deep in the human heart is an unquenchable trust that life does not end with death.”

By all accounts Raymond Carver was neither a believer in God nor a Christian. Once, when asked if he were religious, he replied: “No, but I have to believe in miracles and the possibility of resurrection.” It is as if Carver believed in resurrection but not in God. 

So why am I spending so much time in an Easter sermon on his writings? 

I do so for this reason. 

· I believe Carver’s sense that at the end of his life he was “beloved on the earth” reveals a sense that he was loved not only by himself – which as an alcoholic he struggled to achieve – but that he was also loved by a power higher and larger than himself. 

· I believe as the cancer gnawed away at his body, his heart became focused on something larger than the fifty years of his life. 

· And I have a hunch that this focusing on something larger than himself marked the beginning of a belief in God, the beginning of a belief in life after death, the beginning of a belief in resurrection. 

· I am willing to say that his writings reveal not only “an unquenchable trust that life does not end with death,” but also one way such belief can materially alter the quality of life, leading to greater commitment, greater acceptance, deeper love, and most of all, hope. “Deep in the human heart is an unquenchable trust that life does not end with death.”

Hopeland (Notes From Corsica): 3: Not France Then?

3: Not France Then?

It started with an argument.
I’d insisted that the quickest route from Whitby to London was via Norfolk. That way I could meet Reddyhoff to endorse his cover design for my new album ‘Alaska’. The sub title for this latest folly would be ‘Anywhere But Here’. The dye was cast. Di wasn’t happy to be cast as chauffeur. We never argue. We argued. During that journey off the beaten track, her sister, Hilary, replaced me in Di’s holiday plans, and if she was going to run for the hills Di would choose the most beautiful that the brochures had to offer. Her finger came to rest on Corsica.
“Trev, they’re the most beautiful hills you’ve never seen. You’re going to love it”. The phone crackled; she sounded like she was shouting at me from 1933. Hilary was equally enthusiastic: “The hotel used to be the home of the Michelin family. Funny, as the fabulous food has got us working on our spare tyres!”
On her return Di remained keen: “You’ve got to come and see. It’s a dreamland; like something out of a perfect past”.
We’d been together for many years and this was a first; we’d never returned to a holiday destination, however much we loved it. The rule was always to keep moving, keep looking for something new.
“I feel like my heart has found a home.”
What was it about Corsica that had Di ranting like a Mills and Boon heroine? She was smitten. I was intrigued and a little jealous.

***

As sea became land I peered out of the window for my first glimpse of the island. Mountains threw themselves into the sea with dramatic certainty. Between the granite peaks, green valleys arose elegantly and unchallenged but for the occasional shimmering of pink and white villages. To my right I could see the tiny port of Calvi, fronted by its proud citadel. This ancient stronghold had been the focus of many an envious eye; indeed Nelson had lost one orb here during his unsuccessful bombardment of the fort from the hills above. There was a permanence that permeated the vista; this place wouldn’t suffer fools and wasn’t for the changing. As we stepped off the plane the warm air offered a pungent peppery aroma akin to rosemary and cat pee.
“That’s the ‘Maquis’. It’s a brush like heather and is the main vegetation of the Balagne. The Balagne is the name given to this northwest region of Corsica. The people of the Balange are fiercely protective of their land and its traditions and are regarded by many to represent the true nature of Corsicans; proud, belligerent and chauvinistic.”
Di had swallowed a guide book whole and couldn’t help but regurgitate. We dragged our luggage to the Avis Car Hire desk. This would give me a chance to practice my rusty French: “Bonjour monsieur. Nous voudrons louer un voiture pour…”
“Ay up mate” interrupted Avis Man “You’re from Yorkshire, non?”
How had my northern roots been identified from my fumbling French? Avis Man introduced himself as “Tony from Sheffield, non”. He had joined the Foreign Legion here fifteen years previously “escaping a dodgy past, non”. The Legion’s legendary 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment was based just outside of Calvi. He’d survived the whole experience intact. The only apparent damage was his insistence on putting a ‘non’ at the end of every English sentence. Was this negative twitch a result of sharing shower and shelter for a decade with a band of burly brothers deprived of female company? I kept that thought to myself. With his time served and his past forgotten Tony had fallen for a local girl and stayed on. Although we only ever saw him from the waist up, he became a firm friend and the first face we’d look for on future visits, always guaranteeing air conditioning and an upgrade.
Our second encounter was another face that would become familiar to us.
“You are for ‘La Signoria?” A heavy hand was on my shoulder. A mess of black buccaneer hair fringed a thick mono brow that strained to support the weight of the magnificently meandering nose beneath. An unkempt beard split into a kindly smile. A Moor’s head tattoo on his forearm revealed the man to be Corsican, a ‘Corsican Places’ badge revealed him to be Max, the local travel rep.
“Welcome to La Corse, my island. An island oui and remember, not France.” Did he really spit? “I will take you to your hotel. I think you must be ready for a little luxury, non?”



Grace Note

Sometimes the space between notes
Can leave you teetering
On the edge of something holy

I never arrive where I hope to be led
But, on occasion, a half heard promise
Is repeated and I recognise a gift

The shock of the new is only bettered
When you get exactly what you were hoping for
What you needed to happen

So, I sit here on the edge of something sacred
The embellishment of desire
Scared to breathe should I miss
The whispered promise
Of a grace note

Hopeland (Notes From Corsica): 2: Abide

2: Abide

Abide, a strong word with a true meaning.
Be.
Live.
Endure.
Endurance was never one of my strong suits. I’d always craved more than the ‘making do’. I needed to find the best view of the finest sunset and then share it with someone. No selfless act, more a need to have a ‘moment’ endorsed. The pleasure would be in the sharing.
My childhood was transient, always movement, activity, fresh pasture, and new challenge. I developed the outgoing nature of a vagrant. I could hang my boots anywhere but nowhere was ‘home’. Later, the discipline of a boarding school would redefine the broad and delicate vagaries of character; survival was paramount and a uniformed thick skin the perfect cover. I could punch my way out of a corner and kick a ball further than most. If I could tolerate, I would be tolerated.
After the routine and discipline of a grammar school education, college offered too many freedoms. I forwent study to pogo with punks. Music became my meat. Drink became my drink. I bought a guitar. I talked other feckless fools into joining me and I had a band. My future was defined: I was lost to music. I developed an insatiable appetite for sad songs, melancholy my thing. I needed to be moved. I needed to understand why I was moved. As I began to decipher the language of loss I started to write my own songs. Things didn’t begin well. My first ditty went by the title of ‘I Think I’m Going to Kill Myself’. The title was the best bit. Gradually I honed my craft and learned to love creating something from nothing. Having an untidy mind I soon came to realise that by mining my memories and placing them in song I could put my past in order, even edit out unsavoury moments. I found myself. I reinvented myself, polished my little gems of self-indulgence and waited for the world to beat a path to my door. Thirty years and a hundred songs later I was still waiting. As I came to recognise the limits of my talent, a malaise, a diffident need to be elsewhere, overcame me.
I longed to be anywhere but here.

Spirit Level

Looking for a true surface
I check my balance with a spirit level
Stare unseeing at the mark
Take another mouthful of apricot wine
And try to find shapes in the dark

What stops me?

I have too much to lose

Hopeland (Notes From Corsica): 1: Hopeland

OK, so I'm trawling the back pages, but judging from the sales of 'Hopeland' and 'Keepers' this is probably new to a lot of folk. 

This comes after the release of 'Ghost of Song', an album of selected songs from those two albums, an attempt to kindle some interest in the material; I'd hate for it to be buried. 

Rereading these notes from the island I can see that I do come over a bit earnest but I think that was a reaction to the austere beauty of the place; I hope that you'll indulge my affectation. I'll try and sneak in a few jokes just to lighten things up a bit; see if you can spot them.
So, here's a reminder of the stories behind 'Hopeland' and 'Keepers', my 'Notes from Corsica':

           1: Hopeland

 “In short withdrawals from the world there is to be had unfailing refreshment. 

When his spirit is burdened or lightened, the natural movement of a man’s heart is to lift upward, 

and this is more readily done in the wild, for there it is easy to be still.”

W. H. Murray

There is a house on a hill that sits beneath a mountain that overlooks the sea. 

This past year I retreated there, more in hope than expectation. The hope was that I could integrate 

with an environment, have a daily purpose, however mundane, and to somehow reflect that in my writing.
The ripe confusions of London had rendered me emotionally barren; I needed to connect with 

something real, something fine. I wanted to tell the story of how I came to be there. 

Unburdened, I started to write:

I see a blue tractor, my first memory.

Then blue sea, white dog, a red sand filled bucket.

Now I have the taste of metal in my mouth.

Why is that memory tainted with sadness?

There’s my mother in a headscarf, wiping ice cream from Gareth’s mouth. 

Dad is doing the same for Katy who is too young to do anything but gurgle up at us from her pram.

‘The dog went to you, not to me” Kerry jabs her finger at me accusingly and my knees start to sing.

I look down and they are covered in red magic.

I turn to face the wind and, opening my mouth, taste the sea.

                                                ***

This is no autobiography or travelogue, just the story of what happened to Di and I and how it changed our view of the world where a life touched a life and then took on a life of its own. They say that stories only happen to those who can tell them. It seems to me that if we want our stories to endure they must be well crafted and durable. For any songwriter there is a peculiar endeavour involved in committing words to song, and then in the recording of that song. This labour can do nothing but alter the initial perception or idea. The joy of committing words to a page is that you can narrow the distance between the seeing and the writing. You can better capture the vividity of a feeling without memory’s intrusion. Writing is something out of nothing; now when I have nothing to say, I watch and I listen. There’s an undercurrent of meaning to everything; you could call it ‘sadness’ or find brightness there, depending on your disposition or how sharp your eye is.

Here in Corsica time moves so slowly that I can see the changes, and ask ‘what is the difference?’

Here, atop the mountain I have become less desperate for certainty and more open to possibility.
I have real thirst, real hunger.
I taste the water.
I taste my food.
I hear the music.
I sleep on books.
There is time enough for tomorrow.

Hopeland: The Britsound Interview

I'm about to publish the book of 'Hopeland' on Kindle.
Before I do that I need to read through it again.
Seems like I shouldn't have to suffer alone, so I'll be posting it here, a chapter at a time.
Let me know if you see typos, etc.
If you'd like to hear about the thinking behind the words you can find the horse's mouth here. 
(I hope that you get the right end...)
This is me chatting (stammering and stumbling actually) about 'Hopeland' at the time of release.
Never trust a man who overuses the phrase 'to be perfectly honest'. 
I gave up counting once into double figures...
BritSound is a radio station based in New York. Along with the very best in new British music and CLASSIC British music, Britsound is the show to listen to for Anglophiles in America.
The show is presented by award-winning radio veteran Rob Quicke, a prince...

Mawkish Mule: Marc Cohn: Walking in Memphis (1991)

"Now, Muriel plays piano

Every Friday at the Hollywood
And they brought me down to see her
And they asked me if I would
Do a little number
And I sang with all my might
She said, "Tell me are you a Christian, child?"
And I said, "Ma'am, I am tonight!"

This comes off the back of my recent post on Marc Jordan's 'Tears of Hercules'.
Call me mawkish but, regardless of genre or lack of 'cool' there are some songs that just hit the sweet spot, songs that I'd defend to the death.
There'e been a whole spate of stuff about 'Guilty Pleasures' and I guess that this series would nestle there. The two bleeding obvious ones in my collection are too bleeding obvious to post but I'll reference them as a starting point: Glen Campbell's 'Wichita Lineman' is oft quoted as inspirational. It's just too good for categorization. "And I need you more than want you/And I want to for all time" just kind of speaks for itself. T'ain't just the genius of Jimmy Webb's composition, it's the arrangement and performance that renders it beyond reproach, uncriticisable.
And then there's the guitar solo on The Carpenters 'Goodbye to Love'. Two solos actually, don't forget the fade. Tony Peluso first played something soft and sweet, but then Richard Carpenter said "No, no, no! Play the melody for five bars and then burn it up! Soar off into the stratosphere! Go ahead! It'll be great!" John Bettis, who wrote the lyric tells that Richard Carpenter kept calling him, raving about the guitar solo and backing vocals. The lyricist said he cried when he first heard the song because he had never heard an electric guitar sound like that. He said Tony Peluso "had a certain almost cello sounding guitar growl that worked against the wonderful melancholia of that song. The way it growls at you, especially at the end" is unbelievable."

Anyway, my first 'Mawkish Mule' post is one of those songs that is so familiar that you almost don't hear it. It came on the iPod this morning as I sat in the Cinnamon Chair nestling my first cup of coffee and... it was a perfect moment. I'd forgotten the unforgettable piano intro, that wonderful moment 50 seconds when the rim shot and Hammond organ enter the fray. I'd forgotten what a fantastic vocal it was. The chicken skin twitches on the line "She said, "Tell me are you a Christian, child? And I said, "Ma'am, I am tonight!"...
Here, reacquaint yourself with the joy that is Marc Cohn's 'Walking in Memphis'.
22 years old and still sounding as fresh as this cup of java...

Lovesong: Amos Lee: Man Who Wants You

Amos Lee is a fine singer and songwriter; his last album was a fine thing. 'The Mission Bell' was produced by Joey Burns the leading light with Tuscon's Tex-Mex indie rockers Calexico. Burns added some much needed mescal addled grain to Lee's previously meat and potatoes R&B outpourings. Albums 1-4 are great showcases for a fine voice, but on Mission Bell Amos found a sonic landscape that provided an edgy ambience to this previously straight ace. For his 5th album 'Mountains of Sorrow, Rivers of Song' Lee took his touring band into the studio.

"I wanted to play these songs with people that I trust musically, and stay open to where it took us. The touring band works really hard, they're really musical, they're a good hang, so it was cool to hole up for a few weeks and experience it together. In the singer-songwriter world, it can be sort of a solitary creative process, so it's good to collaborate with people and bring songs to life together. It's a bunch of songs from 1 to 12 you can listen to together. That notion of an album may be antiquated, but as someone whose mind has always been set to that, as a performer and as a listener, I still feel inclined to do it."

You can hear the whole album free for a couple of days here on Amazon.

Meanwhile, here's Amos Lee performing ... ahem... a groovy track from the album.
This is 'Man Who Wants You'.

Lovesong: The Barr Brothers: Beggar in the Morning

The Barr Brothers are from Montreal.
That's it; all I know about them...
I've just ordered their eponymous debut album on the strength of this video and song.
It's quiet strength and dynamic restraint is captivating.
Have a listen...

Mawkish Mule: Marc Jordan: The Tears of Hercules

What's schmaltz and what is genuinely moving?

When does 'MOR' become something MORE?

Ask Jimmy Webb.

Ask Glenn Campbell.

Sometimes it's simply about the mysteries of a song...

And the quality of a performance...