A Brief Musical Interlude

Patty Griffin @ Gruene Hall
The Ballerina and I went to see the Queen of the Known Musical Universe back in late April at legendary Gruene Hall. It was a great Father/Daughter date. We saw the show from several different angles and at one point even wandered outside where the Ballerina danced on a picnic table under the colored lights strung across the courtyard. Magic.



Brandi Carlile @ Gruene Hall
One month later I was back at Gruene Hall to see Brandi Carlile and The Twins strut their stuff. I'm not a huge concert-goer, nor do I stray too far off my personal beaten path (in the past 17 years, I've seen 6 shows - U2 and Patty Griffin three times each) so I felt just a little dangerous. Two shows in one month. Oh my! The video below was shot the same week as the Gruene Hall show but it is from Birmingham. This song was the highlight. The twins (the one on the left looked exactly like my friend Scott Carow) unplugged their guitars and she stepped out in front of the microphones, so the whole thing was acoustic. At the show I was at you could have heard a pin drop, everybody was leaned forward and straining to soak it all in, and when the song was over the place just exploded. It was interesting to watch my two favorite female singers back to back like that. Patty Griffin makes you want to lie back in a gondola on a darkened waterway in Venice and look up at the stars as God's grace falls upon you. Brandi Carlile made me want to smash beer bottles and dance a jig on the picnic tables.



Steve Earle @ Austin City Limits, 1986
As long as I am posting music videos, I've got to throw this one in here too. I have watched all 3 of these videos so many times, my kids probably know the words to all these songs. Steve Earle is amazing, this is not even close to his greatest song, but it is a riveting performance. I love the bass player in the background. Probably one of the greatest sad songs of all time and my favorite from Steve Earle is "Goodbye" If you've got 99 cents burning a hole in your pocket - you can't go wrong with that one on iTunes.

The Story - Brandi Carlile

Jen introduced me to this gal and we cannot get enough of her music. Jen still gets goosebumps everytime she listens to this song. One of the first albums we've bought in a while. Definetely worth the cash.

"All of these lines that cross my face
tell you the story of who I am
So many stories of where I've been
and how I got to where I am."

-Phil Hanseroth

Talkin Bout Country

Here's a video from country legend Waylon Jennings. This is from back when it was about the music and not the market. Just a good ol' sweaty jam.

PATTY GRIFFIN!

Patty Griffin @ Gruene Hall

Last night, Patty Griffin opened a brief tour in support of her new album children running through at the beautiful and ancient Gruene Hall. It was a rare cold and rainy night here in South Texas that amplified the warmth and beauty of Patty's voice. The roughly three to four hundred people crammed into the hall soaked up every note, screaming for two encores. Unfortunately, I was not among them. Despite the fact that Gruene Hall is only two miles from my house I was unable to score tickets to the concert. But that didn't stop me from listening to the entire show, standing on the lawn outside the venue, in what turned out to be one of the neatest concerts I've been to.

Built on a bluff overlooking the Guadalupe River sometime in the 1880's, Gruene Hall looks as if every piece of wood in the place is original to the structure. On warm nights large wooden shutters are opened and standing out on the lawn you can see in through the chicken wire that covers the open windows and watch the show going on inside. When it's cold and rainy like last night they close the shutters but the building is so rustic and porous that in addition to hearing the music at concert decibels, occasionaly through large gaps you can see parts of the stage. In a rare stroke of bad luck, a speaker blocked my view last night so that all I could see on the times I tried were the bass player and Patty's mic stand. But, I was not there for the view, I was there for the music and it was outstanding. Unless you have one of those quirky college stations in your town you will never hear Patty Griffin on the radio despite the fact that she is the greatest female singer on the planet right now. Slightly raspy, melancholic, lyrical, angelic - Jen describes her voice in the following way, "I can see her singing on a dirty street, and fitting in there, yet somehow rising above, transcending it." A brilliant songwriter, she has written songs covered by the Dixie Chicks, Emmylou Harris, Martina Mcbride and several others. And I can attest, her voice in person loses none of the power that comes through in her recordings.

I love the roar of the crowd when the first notes of an old favorite begin to play. Standing outside, a large grin slowly spreading replaced a scream when I heard favorites like Making Pies, Kite Song, Truth No. 2, and Top of the World. She sang a few from her new album including the brilliant, Heavenly Day and one I'd never heard before Re: Mary, that I looked for but couldn't find on iTunes when I got home. In the beginning I was joined by a couple slow dancing in the rain, but they left after a few songs and I was alone until the first encore when I was joined by a carpenter from San Antonio who was recently turned on to Patty Griffin by a friend, and a tennis instructor from South Africa (living in Texas) who had a couple of CD jackets he was hoping to get autographed. We had a great conversation about our mutual love for Patty's voice before somehow the conversation turned to Bob Dylan. All in all it was a great night, spent alone and then with fellow diehards listening to one of the special voices of our time in a truly historic setting. It will be a long time before I forget, if ever, standing outside under the water tower watching smoke curl up from the chimney of that old wooden dance hall into a night sky heavy with mist as an angelic voice sang out "strange how hard it rains now, rows and rows of big dark clouds, when I'm still alive underneath this shroud, rain." Alive, yes, very much so.

Twilight in the Dallas Railyard

The second annual Wilson family Christmas CD should be hitting mailboxes this week. Here is the album cover which I am posting here rather than printing 50 times. Maybe by next year I will have advanced to cover art and jewel cases. I realize that our CD and Christmas letter are being delivered in January, that the album cover doesn't look like Dallas, and that you are probably confused by the eclectic mix of music streaming through your speakers, but I promise you I'm not trying to be difficult, it just seems that way. Two more quick notes before I explain the music; if you did not get CD and would like one after reading about it, just shoot me a note and I'll send you one pronto (with 120+ on the mailing list, I had to draw the line somewhere), and technically it's not The Dallas Railyard, but rather, a Dallas Railyard, but it's the only one we work at, so to our crew it is The Dallas Railyard.

Shuffling Down the Tracks

The Dallas Railyard is a large storage area for sand and gravel that arrives by railcar and is dumped in large piles before being distributed throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth area for various construction and road projects. It sits on a former landfill in a large marshy area that is surrounded by a shooting range, golf course, and a small amusement park (Speedzone). Our company visits it three times a year to take inventory of the various stone, gravel, and sand piles that fill it to overflowing. From atop these 30 to 40 foot piles you can see the skyline of Dallas nine miles to the southeast, the roof of Texas stadium, downtown Irving, all the planes landing at Love Field (and some headed for DFW), Interstate 35, as well as the aforementioned golf course, shooting range, Speedzone, and marsh. And as if that were not enough life and motion, you can also watch wild dogs fighting and the occasional hobo shuffling down the tracks headed only God knows where. With planes roaring just overhead, the Interstate humming and trains clickity clacking down groaning tracks, the ground literally shakes with movement. Movement creates possibility, possibility creates hope, and hope sets the imagination ablaze and nowhere is this more true than in the railyard at twilight. Watching hoboes shuffle down the tracks you wonder, could I pull it off? Could I ride the rails, watching life through the open doors of an empty boxcar? What would I eat? As the planes roar overhead, you think of businessmen with plans and important things to do, lovers full of sadness at loved ones left behind or full of anticipation at their reunion now only minutes away. The pop pop pop of gunfire from a nearby range brings thoughts of men sighting in the rifles as they dream of that upcoming hunt for____ out in ______. As the wild dogs chase each other far below, you wonder if the situation called for it could I beat them off with this four foot survey rod?

There is no sweeter time to be there than at twilight, when the sun's own movement is exaggerated and seems to be both moving swifter than usual and suspended, caught up in it's own beauty, all at once. The lights on Reunion Tower come on and as the sun heads for daybreak in Japan, the sky in Dallas slowly transitions from blue to orange to a pale shade of pink and for a few fleeting moments made sweeter by their brevity, the whole world seems to stop (or at least the whole world inside of me stops) and I feel peace. Surrounded by millions of people, I am on an island of solitude shared with wild dogs and hoboes. I wish you could see it, but since you can't, this cd will have to do.

Twilight's Sonic Wine Cellar

I am a big believer in music fully coming alive in the proper context. For every time and every place there is a song and vice versa. When you find the right song for the right time, something happens, sometimes the clouds part and you get a small taste of that which is ineffable. Think of this cd, eclectic as it is, as twilight's sonic wine cellar, a storehouse of songs that go well with twilight and just may part the clouds. This disc, inspired by the Dallas Railyard, is as full of contrasts and surprises as the yard itself. From blues to pop to gospel and opera, to country and back to the blues again, this CD will take you on as many journeys of the imagination as its inspiration. If you were to compress and distill all of the emotions in this CD and bottle them up, the time to drink that tasty brew would be just after the sun slipped over the horizon at the Dallas Railyard. The 21 songs on this CD will take you in 21 different directions, but they all lead to one place and one time--Twilight in the Dallas Railyard. But, and this explains the album cover, it goes down pretty smooth just about anywhere, so long as the sun is slipping over the horizon.

1. Night Life - B.B. King "When that evenin sun goes down..." and it is ON!
2. Lovin in My Baby's Eyes - Shannon Mcnally
3. When the Stars Go Blue - Ryan Adams
4. Life For Rent - Dido I love the laid back, sleepy, great power under restraint vibe to Dido's voice. Great lyrics too.
5. Love Gonna Walk Out On Me - Toots & The Maytals
6. Beautiful Stars - Isaac Freeman Beautiful song.
7. Painter Song - Norah Jones The accordion is a twilight instrument
8. Romanza - Andrea Bocelli I guess people think of opera type singing as being very highbrow but I really feel like it is blue collar music. I get the mental picture of a slightly overweight, balding man in his early 50's who just got home from work at the factory listening to this song. He's standing in the kitchen in his t-shirt with his suspenders hanging around his waist drinking milk from a cardboard carton. It is spring and the window is open. He doesn't really like the music, but the voice, the voice!
9. Whom Have I But You? - David Ruis An honest love song of faith by one of my all-time favorites.
10. Happy - Bruce Springsteen
11. 5:15 - Chris Isaak
12. Donegan's Gone - Mark Knopfler
13. Constellations - Jack Johnson The lyrics.
14. The Wild Card Spot, you got one of the following here: Heartland - U2, or Hard Times - Ray Charles, or For All the Right Reasons - The Jayhawks, or This Heart of Mine - The Wailin Jennys, or Many Rivers to Cross - The Five Blind Boys of Alabama. Some people got a song by Neko Case, either Hold On, Hold, On or I Wish I Was the Moon Tonight. If you got one of the Neko Case songs, it will show up after song 16. I couldn't put Neko Case and Patty Griffin back to back. It would have been the musical equivalent of two women showing up to the same party wearing the same dress.
15. Rowing Song - Patty Griffin I have a road trip mix on my iPod that has quite a few Patty Griffin songs on it. Whenever one starts playing I am compelled by the angelic qualities of her voice to scream, "Patty Griffin I love you!" at the top of my lungs every single time.
16. Rambling of a Beggar - Shawn McDonald
17. Heart of Gold - Neil Young For the rest of my life I will associate this song with my friends and former coworkers in Kansas City who introduced me to Neil Young. Harmonica = twilight.
18. Girl From the North Country - Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan
19. Slow Dancing - U2, Mickey Raphael & Willie Nelson
20. Abilene - Waylon Jennings I love the way this song sounds like it is being sung over a loudspeaker at a lumber yard or something. Like shortly after it's over the next thing you would logically hear would be "Carlos, please pick up... Line 1."
21.It's Bad You Know - R.L Burnside When my father-in-law, Bob, and I finally work up the courage to hop a freight train and ride it west, this is the song that will be running through our heads.
"It's bad, you know"
"Yup, shouldn't be doin this."
"Nope, shouldn't be doin this."
"Think they'll get our note?"
"Dunno."
Clickity-clack, clickity clack.

Fools That Dream

This modern world just fills your head with fears and doubts.
We'd end it now if we were smart.
Cause the only ones that make love last forever
are fools that dream.
C'mon baby let's risk our hearts together.

If we all walk through this world afraid to take a chance,
just imagine where we'd be.

It's always dreamers that teach us how to dance,
and I want you to dream with me.

from Fools That Dream by Radney Foster (a country song)