'Sometimes I need a revelation...'

It was a beautiful evening in Brooklyn last night, just the perfect weather for an outdoor show at the Bandshell as part of the Celebrate Brooklyn series of summer performances.

And the music was just as beautiful; in fact, it turned out to be absolutely one of the best gigs I've been to for years.

Opening was The Low Anthem, the fascinating group of musicians out of Rhode Island whose latest album, "Oh My God, Charlie Darwin" is intoxicating and compelling. Even though their music has been described as "apocalyptic", there's so much about their accessible melodies that's fundamentally uplifting.

And they also have a saw player, more of which later.

During the intermission, as if the groove couldn't get more mellow, John Martyn's "Small Hours" played over the PA.

He's come a long way from Outspan Foster, but right now Oscar-winner Glen Hansard may well be Ireland's finest singer-songwriter. He certainly brings something of the best of everything to the table: a little of the passion and righteous anger of Christy Moore, a little of the songcraft of Paul Brady or Freddie White, and a lot of the melodic perfection of Van Morrison.

And in collaboration with the beautiful voice and piano of Marketa Irglova - whatever tensions may surround their personal relationship - his own music frequently makes the leap to the heavenly, while his musical references onstage show the breadth of his musical path. Their version of Morrison's "Into The Mystic" was stunning. Exactly the sort of life-affirming five minutes Van always wanted it to be.

In the end, the latest Swell Season album, "Strict Joy" could hardly be better named. But if there's a more perfectly melancholy song than this, I can't think of one right now:



The Brooklyn audience was with them all the way, through the silence and the storm that makes up their brilliant live show. The rest of the band are a perfect complement and it was also a highlight to have Clarence Clemons' son Jake on sax and Curt Ramm on trumpet in a great horn section.

I'd also forgotten what a simply outstanding rock and roll song The Frames' "Revelate" is. Thank God Glen reminded me last night.




***********************************

Two of the world's great annual folk festivals were taking place over the weekend - in Newport, RI and Cambridge, England.

NPR did just a wonderful job streaming the performances from Newport, including, brilliantly, The Swell Season and The Low Anthem.

Cambridge always has a great and varied roster of artists and is always an excellent weekend. You can catch up with podcasts from Cherry Hinton here.

There's a couple of other 'mini-festivals' coming up in New York City this week: for Jazz guitarists in Greenwich Village from Monday, while next Saturday in Astoria, you can attend the the eighth annual Musical Saw Festival.

***********************************

Like, it seems, everyone else in the country I went to see Inception earlier this week. Enjoyed it a lot. But here's something I have to admit I never expected...

'Tilting on my axis, leaning towards the sun..'

It's never easy to play a lunchtime gig outdoors.

Especially somewhere like the World Financial Center plaza. There's the sound of helicopters buzzing overhead, there's bankers having a loud lunch, there's the elegantly-attired nannies of well-heeled local residents killing time with their crying charges; and of course there's the guys with trash carts who seem to need to empty the bins every five minutes.

It must be like playing in a high school cafeteria sometimes.

But rising - no, soaring - above all that today was Chris Velan, a singer-songwriter from Montreal who was playing as part of the River To River Festival.

Velan looks a little like a young John Gorka and rhythmically sounds a bit like Johnny Clegg - understandable since Velan spent some time in Sierra Leone and a couple of his songs might be perfectly at home on Paul Simon's 'Graceland' - or Jon Gomm, because of his use of taps.

His latest album - his third - is called "Solidago", but he's working on a new record at the moment. Some of his songs, like "Same Clothes", "Hunting Season", "Out Of Range" or, particularly, "A Year Can Change A Lot" will just blow you away.

He closed out the set with his song "Oldest Trick" - which has echoes of Mark Knopfler - just as the heavens opened. But by the end of the 90-minute show, the folks who were left didn't care about getting caught in the rain.



The last time I saw a live act - whose music I'd never heard before - that caught my attention the way this guy did today, was in the mid-90's when I saw Ezio open for Shawn Colvin at the Hanover Grand in London. But Velan pressed all my buttons: compelling, smart songs with catchy hooks, nice guitar work, great use of loops - the whole package.

A little bit Jack Johnson, a little bit Ben Harper or Amos Lee - even a little bit Marc Cohn, Velan is a clever songwriter and a very fine musician.

He's playing downtown again tomorrow lunchtime, at One New York Plaza, Baltimore on Sunday, and Cambridge MA on Tuesday, then is back in New York in September for a series of shows at Rockwood Music Hall.

If you get a chance to check him out, you won't regret it.

* UPDATE: Friday's show at One New York Plaza was even better - nicer weather and a good, appreciative audience with some enthusiastic dancers of all ages. Only different song from yesterday was a very cool version of "Billie Jean" - if Carlos Santana had recorded it - which made me think of the great cover of "I Want You Back" by KT Tunstall.

The song that got people moving today was "Inez" - a melody Velan says he got from working with the Sierra Leone Refugee All-Stars. It's simply a great groove.

Here's a clip of a new song called "You Don't Know What You're Asking Me":

'Here's hopin' we all pull through..'

Today's slice of brilliance from the legend that is Pete Seeger.
(Via Folk Radio UK)

'Raise your voice, make a joyful noise..'

Went to the Lower East Side last night for a "secret" show by one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Marc Cohn, thanks to some imaginative advance work on Twitter by his management.

Turned out it was a beautifully intimate performance at The Living Room, maybe forty people in total, and it was a nice ambience for him to run through some of the songs from his newly-released album "Listening Booth - 1970", a collection of covers of songs from that year.



Flanked by his longtime collaborator and producer of the new record, John Leventhal, and by the brilliant former Springsteen sideman Shane Fontayne, Cohn tenderly re-invented classics like McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed", Cat Stevens' "Wild World", and Badfinger's "No Matter What" - strangely, one of the first songs I ever remember hearing on the radio.

I'm a couple of years younger than Cohn, and although I obviously came to the same music at a tangent geographically - I guess Belfast and Cleveland aren't that far apart in the grand scheme - I can totally relate now to the importance of that particular point in time, and exactly why that year is so noteworthy.

There were just some truly game-changing albums released that year: "Bridge Over Troubled Water", "Tea For The Tillerman", "Layla", "Deja Vu", "After The Gold Rush" and "Let It Be" among them.

1970 is the year of the Beatles' break-up and Hendrix and Joplin's deaths, of My-Lai, Apollo 13, Joni Mitchell's environmental shout-out in "Big Yellow Taxi"; the Kent State shootings and social unrest (although "Ohio" didn't appear on a CSNY album until the following year. Likewise, Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" was recorded in June of 1970, but not released until the following January).

And it's the year Belfast's own Van Morrison released his classic "Moondance", which Cohn acknowledges was hugely influential in his own musical development. (Of all the tracks on Cohn's album, "Into The Mystic" is probably the most faithful to its original.)

What Cohn's getting at is that songs from that very specific period, while they may have been tremendously important and socially relevant when they were first heard, are simply timeless as music and deserve to be re-imagined, and continuously celebrated.

His versions last night of "The Only Living Boy in New York" (which maybe owed a little more to Everything But The Girl's arrangement than Paul Simon's original) and, especially, Burt Bacharach's "Close To You" were so perfect for his voice they could even have been his own songs.

In a couple of weeks, rather amazingly, it'll be five years since the incident in Denver which - thankfully - led to Cohn's resurgence as a songwriter with "Join The Parade" and his rediscovery of the sheer joy of making music.

In a way, with this retrospective album - just his fifth - he's also celebrating songs that are still as vibrant, still as alive as when they were first heard. It's like making a full circle connection, a pause on the path to look back at how far we've come before stepping out again on a new trail.

On NPR, you can listen to a one-hour show Cohn did recently for Mountain Stage here; and a previous WXPN live show to promote "Join The Parade" here.

And he's playing two shows later tonight, Weds 28th at Le Poisson Rouge on Bleecker Street before heading out on tour. If he's coming to your town, please don't miss him.

'I'm young again, even though I'm very old..'

So... I recently started writing songs again, maybe ten years after doing it seriously last time. I'm still re-learning the process - and obviously it's different for everyone - but I'm finding that more than anything it reflects how focused my mind is on any given day.

For example, I sat down the other morning determined to finish one song by the end of the day, but because I couldn't really concentrate I couldn't close it out. My head was all over the place and I ended up with melodic structures for four others. And no lyrics for any of them.

Lyrics used to be what came easy to me. When I played in bands in the past, I ended up one of the main songwriters by default because I wrote lyrics, but anytime I brought a melody idea to rehearsal it always turned out to be a collaboration, with everyone else throwing in ideas on tempo, key, rhythm of the lyrics, whatever. Very often by the end of a couple hours rehearsal, the only thing that would be the same might end up being the title. And the song was better in the end because of it.

There are two big things that are different now from the last time I sat down to seriously write a song. The first is GarageBand. My God, where were you when I really needed you thirty years ago?

At the moment, my relationship with Apple's app is very much more love than hate. The great thing is it lets me collaborate with myself; it's like having another guitar player there who knows exactly what I want on a particular track. The slightly less great thing is it's been stalling out on me and I've lost a couple of tracks I was trying to save. But overall it's just amazing for laying down live demos and then revisiting them days later.

If the melodies still "work" a couple of days on, they're worth persevering with.

Over the past week I've recorded seven or eight raw demos on GarageBand, out of which I might end up with two or three decent songs. But just being able to pick up a guitar and click a button when inspiration strikes is simply priceless.

There are other technologies, of course, that make writing and collaborating easier - SoundCloud, for example, which I've signed up for but haven't uploaded anything to yet.

But the second, and infinitely cooler, thing for me that's different is that my stepson plays guitar and - assuming I can distract him from his XBox - I can always jam riffs with him whenever I feel like I need to work something out and see if it plays ok.

He's actually a much better guitarist than I was at 16; he has an excellent one-on-one teacher, and it's only a matter of time before he finds a band that he can have some fun with. But the fact that I get to jam with him and watch him develop is just great fun for me.

So for now, songwriting's a puzzle and I'm just enjoying trying to put the pieces together. It's time to start thinking about lyrics again. That will be interesting. I realized today that the last time I wrote lyrics that got performed in public, I was 20 years old.

I might be the same person, but my idea of what makes a "good song" has probably moved on.

We'll soon find out.

***************************************

Talking of songwriting, one of my absolute favorite songwriters is the late John Martyn. And now it turns out there's going to be a tribute album later this month. Although the list of artists sounds great, I have to admit I'm nervous about hearing some of my favorite songs "re-interpreted".

But maybe I'm just being too precious. For example, there were some tracks on this I could have done without, but then again, some others were magical. If the songs are strong enough, they'll hold up no matter what anyone else does to them.

And deep down, to keep a songwriter's music relevant and meaningful beyond the moment it was written, it should be constantly covered by new artists.

***************************************

Happy Birthday to one of Rock's most charismatic figures, Sir Michael Philip Jagger, who turns 67 today. And if you believe the papers, he may be close to calling it quits on the touring front. Not sure I buy it. As the piece says, the Stones' first "farewell tour" was exactly 39 years ago.

And the public's demand for Mick and the band seems as strong as ever.

This is one of the first rock autographs I ever collected, about 25 years ago. I'm sad to say I didn't get it in person, but rather through a dealer. I just knew I wanted a Mick Jagger autograph, and this is a great photo of him (it wasn't signed contemporaneously).

I've only seen the Stones play live once, at Wembley Stadium on the Voodoo Lounge tour in July 1995. Great, great show. I also saw Mick sing at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary show at Madison Square Garden, where he just blew the house down.



But since we're on a songwriting theme today, and thinking about the merits or otherwise of cover versions, here's what might well be my favorite Stones song to play live, covered the other night at the Stone Pony by two of my favorite artists.

'When you see a chance, take it..'

Back up to Caramoor last night for a performance of 'Maria di Rohan' by Donizetti. Really nice work again by conductor Will Crutchfield and the excellent Orchestra of St Luke's.

And there was an unexpected bonus - the chance to witness an emotional performance by a last-minute stand-in lead. Jennifer Rowley took over the role and despite having just one full rehearsal handled the occasion with confidence and grace.

It wasn't the easiest of circumstances to be thrown such an opportunity. It was just unbelievably hot and humid, while the cicadas - or whatever knee-rubbing insects they are - were at their noisiest.

But Rowley's fellow performers, the orchestra and, especially, the crowd responded to her; and at the end of an extended ovation after the opening aria, I'm sure I noticed her wink at the conductor before continuing. She was more than entitled to do so. She was tremendous.

The AP thought so too.

The other principal singers were also excellent - particularly Scott Bearden and Luciano Bothelho as the love rivals. Needless to say, the story doesn't end well, but you kind of already knew that. Nice touch to finish when Crutchfield held up the score during the applause.

Stepdaughter was again in the chorus, and also had a chance earlier in the evening to take part in one of the young artists' pre-performance contextual concerts, held in the lovely little courtyard.

She's had a terrific time at Caramoor this year, and her poise and confidence as a singer has clearly improved as a result of being around other talented and committed performers. What a great way to spend a summer.

I rode up to Westchester on the 'Caramoor Caravan,' the - thankfully - air-conditioned coach that runs there and back from Grand Central.

On the way back, the orchestra's bus broke down so they had to ride with us in the seats available on the three other buses. Some of them sat behind me and it was great fun listening to their banter about the show and other gigs they've played.

I miss hanging out with musicians. There's no substitute for passion. It's times like this that I really miss being in a band and feeling that beer and adrenaline-driven high that comes inevitably at the end of any performance.

Yeah, I really miss being in a band. Maybe I should do something about that...