Spins: Ben Harper meets "Michelle"

This Bird Has Flown, a 40th anniversary remake the Beatles' Rubber Soul by various roots and rock musicians, includes a sweet cover of "Michelle" by Ben Harper. Who would have guessed that a touch of reggae would suit "Michelle" so well? Sont les mot qui vont tres bien ensemble...

You can hear the full track at the NPR site. See the link at left, under the heading "Yesterday and Today."

Chris Smither on music downloading, 2003

My audience is expanding in two directions, and I think it probably has a lot to do with the access to the music on the Internet and people looking for things, not waiting to be told what they should listen to. When MP3s and Napster copies first came out, I was outraged--I felt like I was being burglarized. But I've come about 180 degrees now and realized that, at least at this level of music, it's helping me. It's helping me a great deal.

I can’t tell you how times I've had people come up to me and say, “Hey man, I downloaded three of your tunes off the Internet. Give me everything you've got.” And they buy all the records. The only people who download and don't buy are the kids, and they never had any money to buy with in the first place. So it doesn't matter. As soon as they have money, they are buying it. So what happens is the kids come to the shows now because they have heard it on the Internet. It's gratifying to see people in their late teens and 20s in my audience.

Outtake from a story on the indie music business for NPR's All Things Considered

Spins: Skip Gorman and His Waddie Pals, Dogie Music

I'm no diehard fan of cowboy music, which often strikes me as a bit hokey. But something about this collection of cowboy songs and old-time instrumentals has kept it in regular rotation in my house for months now. Gorman is a fine fiddler, guitarist, and singer, and he and his band just get right to the heart of these tunes. Read my full review here.

Spins: Lhasa, The Living Road

I first heard Lhasa years ago at Lilith Fair, and her music has held a special place in my collection ever since. A dreamy mix of Mexican folk, Billie Holiday-esque balladry, and indie-rock atmospherics, all delivered (in Spanish and, on the new album, English and French too) in a gorgeous, sultry voice. If I had to choose one disc, I'd still opt for Lhasa's La Llorona (1998), with its strong flavors of Spanish guitar. But The Living Road is still well worth taking.

David Bromberg on Mick Jagger, folksinger, 1990

My favorite folksinger today, the guy who's most in the blues/folk tradition, who does it best, is Mick Jagger. If you think about it, there's a direct line from Charlie Patton to Mick Jagger. Mick Jagger has recorded quite a few Robert Johnson tunes, two or three anyhow. They don't sound the way they did when Robert Johnson did them, but he did the same thing with them that Robert Johnson did: he took the song and adopted it and made it his own.

John Mayer on blues guitar, 2003

There was a certain time that I got to in my playing where I shut off my ears to superfluous blues playing. The thing about blues is that the minute it becomes self-indulgent, the minute you repeat yourself, the minute you are just doing it because you love doing it, everybody can hear it--and I don’t ever want to hit that point. There’s nothing I’d love more than to solo all night--it would be great. But it doesn’t hold people, and the last thing I want is to have people refuse that trust.

From an Acoustic Guitar magazine cover story

Spins: Chris Whitley, Soft Dangerous Shores

I met up with Whitley last summer to talk about this haunting CD for an All Things Considered profile, and you can listen to the result here. Malcolm Burn, who produced Whitley's still-fresh debut Living with the Law, is responsible for the otherworldly electronic elements behind Whitley's raw National guitar and deep-soul vocals. Very hard to pigeonhole, very hard to forget.

Jerry Garcia on improvisation, 1993

If you've got a recognizable style, that's really your limitations, you know what I mean? Basically, you play what you know how to play. And then within that, sometimes in moments of great clarity, you are able to see stuff that you don't know how to play, but it's close enough to what you do know how to play that you might try for it, and sometimes you might hit it. I tend to do that more often than is probably safe, because I frequently fuck up. Sometimes it works, and if you keep on trying at it, eventually your percentages do improve; but then it just becomes new stuff that you do know how to play.

From the book Rock Troubadours

Chrissie Hynde on learning to write songs, 1995

I can’t say I’m the most disciplined writer. It’s probably like anyone writes a song--where you might know two chords, but every time you pick up your guitar you hum this little melody because you can’t play anything else. And that’s how I started: I was just trying to learn how to play the guitar, but I couldn’t play any songs because I didn’t know how to play, so I’d kind of make up my own tunes. I never really played along with records, and I never played with other guys because they were guys and I was far too shy to pull out my guitar and play barre chords.

From the book The Complete Singer-Songwriter: A Troubadour's Guide to Writing, Performing, Recording, and Business

Bruce Cockburn on truth telling, 2003

One of the things a songwriter gets to do--I suppose it's true of any artist--is you get to take your inner feelings and fling them out at the world and say, “Here, buy this!” [laughs]. So there's a certain luxury about being a songwriter and being able to do that stuff. But it's really about sharing. On the one hand you can see it as self-indulgent to want to share things like rage or pain, but it's really in the sharing of those things that humanity improves, in a way. The laying out of truth, whatever the truth is, is a positive thing, and other people can benefit from it.

There was a guy in Sweden, for instance, who came up to me one time and told me the song of mine called "All the Diamonds in the World" had prevented him from committing suicide. The last thing I thought about when I was writing it was keeping anybody from committing suicide, including me. It was an expression of something I was feeling. But for this guy, it touched his life in some way that really changed the direction he was going in. That is a very humbling experience, and it's a good example of how the sharing works. I guess it's possible that you could influence somebody for the worse as well, and I feel a certain sense of responsibility to avoid doing that--but not at the expense of telling the truth.

Outtake from Bruce Cockburn profile on NPR's All Things Considered

Spins: Nickel Creek, Why Should the Fire Die?

The music of this young string trio keeps getting deeper and better. High points: the acoustic rock heaviness of "When in Rome," the blazing instrumental "Scotch and Chocolate," and the sweetly sung cover of Dylan's "Tomorrow Is a Long Time."

Read my Acoustic Guitar cover story on the band, from December 2002, here.

Utah Phillips on building a career in music, 1997

What’s the work of a poet? To write poetry. What’s the work of an artist? To paint. What’s the work of a singer? To sing.

Fasten totally on the work. Give yourself completely to the work, till you can do it as well as it can be done, and then people will come looking for you. But forget the rest of it. That will happen if you’re completely fixed on the work. It's a superstition, I know; I believe it.

From the book The Complete Singer-Songwriter: A Troubadour's Guide to Writing, Performing, Recording, and Business