Bruce Cockburn Cuts a Slice O’ Life

Canadian political music icon Bruce Cockburn is releasing his first live solo album after a 39 year career that has seen him produce 34 albums of music, travel in Africa, Latin America and Asia with groups such as OXFAM and Amnesty International, and win a huge amount of national and global awards for his music and activism.

The double album, Slice O’ Life, released on Rounder Records, features 24 tracks recorded during his Spring 2008 tour of mainly the American Northeast, including one new song, City Is Hungry.  The personal and playful anecdotes as well as his interactions with the audience between songs give us some perspective on Cockburn as a person. Some highlights are the guitar performance on the opening track World Of Wonders and the audience participation on Wondering Where The Lions Are.  Also included on the album are hits such as If I Had A Rocket Launcher and If A Tree Falls as well as lesser known material.

There’s a hint of strain in the 63 year old’s voice but in general the performance is overwhelmingly strong.  He plays and sings with a lot of passion and conviction. Without any backing instruments, we get to see just how much sound he’s able to produce on his own: his guitar playing is at once solo, chordal, bass and percussion.  The effect is remarkable and it feels somehow as if this is the way his songs are meant to be heard.

Slice O’ Life is officially out on March 31st.  He’s touring this year as well, check out the following extremely complete fan sites for information:
brucecockburn.org
cockburnproject.net

Tracy Chapman, Our Bright Future

Tracy Chapman’s new album, her first in 3 years, opens with an incredibly catchy song called Sing For You.  Lyrically it lacks a bit of substance. Even so I couldn’t help but listen to this song four times before moving on to the next song on the album.  Here she is playing it on Jay Leno.

The album, tinged with elements of country, folk, pop, and jazz, has been criticized for being too mellow and for being under produced.  And while I feel that mellow and under produced have their place, and while I generally appreciate Chapman’s music and political statements, I do feel that an album touted as having political content should make more of a splash. These days I often find myself thinking about what it is exactly that makes a successful political song.  Is it enough for it to just confirm peoples’ already existing beliefs or should it actually be able to to change peoples’ minds? Our Bright Future speaks very softly.  Too bad.  I guess I’m still waiting for someone to come around with a big stick and make some kind of a difference.

For more info about Tracy Chapman, go here

Images from The Bread and Puppet Theater

Other than the Dixie band that accompanies them, the largely volunteer-run Bread and Puppet Theater is not really about the music – but we’re giving them a mention here on the site because of their talent at expressing political ideas through art. In this case the art involves not music, but puppet-making and theater performance.

We went to visit Bread and Puppet at their farm in Glover, Vermont recently and were inspired and awe-struck by their creativity and their dedication to educating people about human rights issues, social issues, environmental issues, and war, through grassroots techniques and by celebrating the idea of living simply. Bread and Puppet was started in the 60s by German immigrant, Peter Schumann, whose background was in dance, sculpture and music. Schumann continues to perform as part of the group, and is known to be an especially accomplished stilt walker.

For more information about this amazing group, visit their site and or check out this special report (complete with pictures) on the CBC program Ideas.

New Album From Sheryl Crow

Sheryl Crow’s new album is a clever tour de force that deals with issues like the environment, gasoline/oil, war, diamonds, peace and love. The opening song, God Bless This Mess, is performed solo and paints Crow initially as an innocent, young, folky singer-songwriter. But don’t be fooled, the album quickly shows it’s true colors as a slick and complex construction – both musically and in message.

The songs are expertly produced by Bill Bottrell (producer of Crow’s first album, Tuesday Night Music Club), with multi-layers, recording techniques, and sounds that refer (at least to these ears) to Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds (Love is Free), Rolling Stones (Gasoline), John Lennon (Out Of Our Heads), Beatles (Drunk With The Thought of You) and R&B music. The songs are mostly uptempo, dance-able, very catchy (Shine Over Babylon, Love Is Free, Peace Be Upon Us, Gasoline), and manage to get serious messages across without compromising musicality (or the messages themselves for that matter).

Vocally, Crow is at the top of her game, showing off a variety of qualities, at times sounding like her contemporaries Madonna, Alanis, and Gwen Stefani. Peace Be Upon Us, in which she duets with the wonderful Arab singer Ahmed Al Hirmi, is quite a beautiful piece, and is actually slightly reminiscent of Madonna’s Beautiful Stranger.

Crow also works with global warming environmentalist Laurie David. She’s also teamed up with “Rock The Vote” for a special promotion.

Visit the Sheryl Crow web site for more info.

Billy Bragg Survey

On June 18th (2008), we interviewed members of the audience as they came out of a Billy Bragg show at the Club Soda theatre in downtown Montreal. We got 55 respondents within about 15 minutes. In general the people were very open to talking to us about politics and music and we believe that we collected some interesting data. Here are the initial results:

Breakdown:

55 respondents
Nationality: 43 Canadian, 8 American, 2 Australian, 1 Italian
Sex: 29 Male, 26 Female
Age: 1 teen, 22 20-somethings, 16 30-somethings, 11 40-somethings, 3 50-somethings, 1 60-something

The responses:

When responding to the question of how political they (and others) consider themselves to be, 19 respondents answered: Politically Aware, 18 answered: Politically Aware and Active, 16 answered: Somewhat Politically Aware, 1 answered: Not Very Politically Aware and 1 answered: Completely Apolitical. Based on these results, only 2 people out of the entire group considered themselves to be either not very politically aware or completely apolitical. Those who considered themselves politically aware and both politically aware and active made up the two largest groups and a slightly smaller group considered themselves to be only somewhat politically aware.

A large group (25) responded that they attended the Billy Bragg show for both his political ideas and his music, a slightly smaller group (23) responded that they came for the music but also like the fact that he’s an activist, 2 came only for the music, nobody responded that they came for his political ideas only, and 4 responded that they came for reasons other than those offered.

When asked whether they had learned anything at the show related to politics or political ideas, a large group (27) responded “No”. A slightly smaller group (23) responded “Yes” and a small group of 4 responded “Maybe”. Based on the dialogue during the answering of this question, at least part of the “No” group responded that way because they were already quite knowledgeable about the politics that Bragg talks about.

A majority of respondents (38 – no) did not believe that the night’s performance had influenced their opinion about any political issues. Two smaller groups of 9 each responded “Yes” and “Maybe” respectively. At least two people who had responded “No” mentioned that the show had only confirmed their already existing opinions.

An overwhelming majority of respondents (47) answered that in their opinion, music has more impact when heard live than when it is heard on a recording. Smaller groups of 4 each responded “No” and “Maybe” respectively.

When asked if they had been inspired at the show that night to get involved in political activity of any kind (ie: join an organized political group, send a letter to the gov’t, start a blog, talk to friends and family), the “Yes” (21) and Maybe” (22) responses were pretty near even. 12 people responded “No”. Out of the “No” group, at least one person explained that they were already inspired before attending the show.

When probed about whether they thought they would actually get involved, the largest group (21) responded with a conservative “Maybe”, while 15 said “Yes”, and 14 said “No”. Out of the “No” group, at least four respondents said that they had already begun to get involved prior to the show.

Thanks to Solon M. and Sophie H. for helping with the data collection.

© 2008 Alison Notkin

Rod MacDonald, Revivalist Songster

We were happy to hear from Florida-based songwriter Rod MacDonald, who recently sent us a copy of his most recent CD A Tale of Two Americas. Influenced by artists such as Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs, MacDonald has been playing music professionally since the 1970s and was a proponent of the Greenwich Village Folk revival movement in the 80s. His background in Law and Journalism has contributed to his talent at turning facts into songs. MacDonald (guitar, vocal, harmonica) is joined on the 2005 album by Mark Dann (bass, guitar) and Steve Eriksson (guitar, mandolin, dobro.)

Stylistically, A Tale of Two Americas alternates between folk (complete with fingerpicking and harmonica), country, and rock ‘n’ roll, and is sometimes infused with other musical flavors, such as in the vaguely La Bamba-esque Treat You Right or the Latin riffs in the tongue-in-cheek My Beloved Enemy. Also notable on the album are the opening track Ray and Ron, a cleverly constructed song that compares the careers of Ray Charles and Ronald Reagan (who died six days apart in 2004), Governator, a song about Arnold Schwarzenegger (and melodically a bit reminiscent of Steve Goodman’s City of New Orleans), and the more driving True Love. MacDonald writes with passion and knowledge about such topics as politicians, war, terrorism, peace, hope and love.

Smithsonian Folkways honored MacDonald in 2003 by including 27 of his songs in their Fast Folk music collection. He has also been featured in Sing Out! Magazine (Summer 2003 and Winter 2006).

In 2001 MacDonald wrote My Neighbors in Delray (click link to watch his performance of the song), one of the most sensitive and powerful songs about the events of Sept 11th that we have come across. The song can also be found on his 2002 album “Recognition,” which can be purchased here.

MacDonald continues to perform and tour extensively. For more information, visit his web site.

Child Soldiers No More, Benefit Concert

Bruce Cockburn and General Romeo Dallaire are planning a benefit concert to raise money for Child Soldiers Initiative, a group organized by researchers at the University of Victoria School of Child and Youth Care dedicated to the elimination of the use of child soldiers in Africa. The group is also working on developing a program to re-integrate these children into their communities.

“Removing all children from combat is an essential step to end cycles of violence,” says Dallaire, “and having Bruce Cockburn’s important support on this mission enables many more people to learn of the initiative”

The concert is scheduled to take place on October 4th at 7:30 pm at the University of Victoria’s Farquhar Auditorium and will consist of an evening of spoken word and songs. Tickets are on sale now and can be purchased at the auditorium’s web site.

Pete Seeger Embarks on Short Benefit Tour in Canada

Pete Seeger has teamed up with USC Canada to raise money for its Seeds of Survival Program, a program that “promotes long-term food security for marginal farming communities in developing countries.” The eighty-nine year old folk icon, along with grandson Tao Rodriguez-Seeger and New York folk/blues musician Guy Davis, started the tour in Montreal on July 5th and will play in Toronto, Kingston, and Ottawa, Ontario over the next week.

The sold-out Montreal matinée show, presented by local Hello Darlin’ Productions, was held at the River’s Edge Community Church in Montreal’s West end. The group opened with the traditional folk song Midnight Special followed by Seeger’s Turn Turn Turn (popularized by the Byrds in 1965). The set also included If I Had A Hammer, Sailing Up, Sailing Down, Sticking With The Union, I Don’t Want Your Millions Mister, Guantanemera, Take It From Dr. King, This Little Light of Mine, and She’ll Be Coming Around The Mountain, among other songs.

Despite his years and failing singing voice, Seeger’s spirit and energy shone through as he encouraged the crowd to sing and harmonize and spoke with conviction about his music and politics. His banjo and guitar playing were confident and musical, albeit a little shaky. Rodriguez-Seeger supported his grandfather with sensitivity, and proved himself to be a strong vocalist, guitar player and banjo player in his own right. Multi-instrumentalist Davis took center stage several times, and also supported the other two on guitar, mandolin and percussion, even pulling out a banjo at one point near the end of the show.

Born in 1919, the youngest son of musicologist Charles Seeger, Pete Seeger proved to the world that songs have the power to not only “help distract you from your troubles”, but to “understand your troubles, and do something about your troubles.” Blacklisted for seventeen years during the prime of his career for Communist sympathies, Seeger nevertheless became an international symbol for peace and resistance through music. He was a folk revivalist, a songwriter, and an activist working for labour, civil rights, anti-war and environmental movements. He played with (among others) Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, The Almanac Singers, and The Weavers.

His many awards and recognitions include Cuba’s Felix Varela Medal for humanistic and artistic work in defense of the environment and against racism (1999), induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1996), The National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts (1994), and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement award (1993). There is a petition to have Seeger nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, a documentary, will be released this year as part of PBS’s American Masters series.

Seeger resides in Beacon, New York with his wife Toshi where he continues to write topical songs, educate children through song, and do work to help solve local environmental and social problems.

Woodstock in the News

A multimedia museum honoring Woodstock is opening in neighboring Bethel, NY. The goal of the museum is to document the Woodstock event and to put it into historical and political context, helping to show the impact that it had on music, politics and American society.

Read some articles about it:
AFP (Agence France-Presse),
Time Magazine,
New York Times

or visit the museum’s web site

Grammy Win for Steve Earle

I had the chance to see Steve Earle play at the Théatre Outremont in Montreal this past March. He was on tour promoting his latest album Washington Square Serenade. The album, his first in 4 years, was written as a tribute to New York City and the protest movement of the 1960s. Earle is known for his political songwriting, and this album is no exception. Some of the best tracks are “City of Immigrants” (a defiant response to CNN anchor Lou Dobbs’ views), “Satellite Radio”, and a remake of the Tom Waits song “Way Down in the Hole”.

The live show was unfortunately not as a strong as the album, due in part to the fact that he chose to perform the songs pared down from a full band setting to just Earle, his wife Alison Moorer singing back-up on a few tunes, and a DJ.

Washington Square Serenade won a Grammy earlier this year for best contemporary folk/Americana album. Check out Steve Earle’s myspace site to hear some of the tunes.

Or watch the video for “City of Immigrants” featuring New York Brazilian band Forro in the Dark.