Bob Weir on singing Jerry Garcia's songs, 2008

From my interview with Weir in the August issue of Acoustic Guitar, available here. (Photo by Anne Hamersky) He was so extraordinarily generous with his time and his insights into the guitar and songwriting. I was lucky enough to meet Jerry for a long interview with David Grisman in 1993, and it was so gratifying for me to have a chance to learn more about Weir's point of view. Here is his closing thought on singing Jerry's songs with RatDog these days...

"I love singing and playing them mostly because they're great songs. I also feel something of a duty to keep them alive and growing. I was there when they were born, watched them grow, and had a hand in their development. I think I know where they live. Every time we play one, it grows, evolves a bit—shows us a new facet. Needless to say, that can be pretty rewarding.

"The music we played was of an intimacy that perhaps can only occur in a long, heavily improvisational relationship. We learned to intuit where each was headed, and then tried to be there with some kind of meaningful counterpoint. That required a lot of careful listening and feeling. After Jerry checked out, he didn't exactly leave: when I'm playing, I can still feel him—" Nah, nah, don't go there… yeah, there, go there." I can still hear the harmonics of what he's up to and react as I always would. I can still feel his sense of character development as the song tells its story. Maybe I should be telling someone this in a quiet room while lying on a couch, but it's real for me."

Lineup for Taste of Syracuse festival

The Post-Standard's website has a rundown of the artists (including yours truly) performing at the Emerging Artists stage on June 6--check it out here.

I'm looking forward to playing this great downtown festival and checking out many area bands...

RIP Utah Phillips

Just received the sad word that this great folksinger, storyteller, and rabble rouser left us over the weekend. Back in 1997, I had a memorable conversation with Phillips and Ani DiFranco about music and politics--the full story is included in my book Rock Troubadours. Phillips had just received a lifetime achievement award from Folk Alliance, and I loved this little fable he told onstage when accepting the honor. Later he retold it to me on the phone, as follows...

"The only problem with being made top folkie is the young ones--they come looking for you.

"I walked through the swinging doors of my local music store, my 1935 Gibson slung low on my hip. And there he was in the street, waiting for me: the kid. He plugged his Ovation guitar into his effects box, leveled it at me, and sprayed me with a burst of highly autobiographical, metaphorical verbiage. I flinched. Slowly I raised my 1935 Gibson and plugged him with the first two verses of 'Red River Valley.' He fell to the ground, stunned by the simplicity of an authorless folk song. I looked at him, lying there in a widening pool of angst. I slowly lowered my 1935 Gibson guitar and muttered under my breath, 'OK, who’s next?' as I turned and stalked into the postmodern deconstructionist night."

Utah, you will be missed.

Humming My Way Back Home now at Amazon MP3 shop

Downloads of the new solo record have landed at Amazon.

CDs and downloads are also available direct from me, and from CD Baby, iTunes, and other online stores.

KT Tunstall on discovering the loop pedal and writing "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree," 2007

From my interview with KT Tunstall, just published in Acoustic Guitar (read it here). This is the second in a run of three cover stories I've just done for the magazine (last month was Keller Williams, next up Bob Weir).

"It was after the first record was made. A few months before [the record was due out in the UK in 2004], I was going on a solo tour of coffee shops in Scotland. I'd just made this album and it sounded like a band, and I couldn’t face just going out with a guitar and being that girl in the coffee shop who sings about being dumped. I wanted to do something different. I'd seen this brilliant guy called Son of Dave, who beatboxes or uses a shaker or harmonica and then sings crazy old blues music. It was just brilliant what he did using this loop pedal. And then I saw Jim White, the American singer-songwriter, using it--sometimes with his voice and sometimes with his guitar but never together. My friend helped me work out how to put both of them through the same pedal, just by mixing them in a remote desk.

"I wrote 'Black Horse' while I was trying to learn how to use the pedal. Tom Waits was an early inspiration for me, and I used to listen to a lot of James Brown. I was really envious that these songs were over a constant groove, and singer-songwriter stuff was always reliant on constant chord movement. I really wanted to write a song over a groove that didn't change, and the pedal was obviously perfect for that."

New video: the Grateful Dead's "New Speedway Boogie"

Just sat down today and knocked this out. Can't seem to get enough of this song lately...

Keller Williams on songwriting, 2008

"I’ve always tried to put myself in the place of an audience member, mainly because I was an audience member for so long. I can totally relate to the songwriters who’ve had pain and are going through hard times, and I can totally relate to how that comes out in their music. But as an audience member, I didn’t want to hear about people’s problems. When I went out I wanted to be entertained, I wanted to be taken away from my problems. So I always try to stay on the lighter side of things.

"I’ve been extremely lucky in my life and my career. A lot of good things have happened to me and have made me extremely happy. So I haven’t really 'lived the blues.' I’ve definitely lived in a bunch of cars and rest areas and truck stops and campgrounds and cheap hotels, but I’ve enjoyed that. What I planned on doing was playing music no matter what the cost. I guess the lightheartedness of my lyrics is just a representation of me and my life."

From a cover story in Acoustic Guitar, June 2008. I met up with Keller in Nashville this winter for the interview. Read the story, and see my video footage of him playing excerpts from songs, at the AG site.

New York Times songwriting blog

Some interesting thoughts here on the music life from Rosanne Cash, Suzanne Vega, Andrew Bird, and Darrell Brown...

http://measureformeasure.blogs.nytimes.com/