You know those times when you hear a voice that you don’t recognize but it reaches out and just grabs ahold of you. One of those voices that you can’t get out of your head. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it’s magic. Sometimes when I’m shopping, checking out the music bins and I don’t have any particular cd or person or group that I’m looking for, I’ll just stroll through the bins, skipping around and looking through names that I don’t recognize or sometimes finding a name that I vaguely remember reading something about. I was at Borders one day, doing just this, when I came across a cd by a group called the Waifs. No idea who they were. Now I do a lot of reading about music and musicians, so I generally have some clue to a lot of names in the record bins, but there are still some out there that for one reason or another has escaped my eye. This group called the Waifs was one of them.
I was looking at a double album, a live album by them called “A Brief History.” They got marks for having a Dylan song on the album. The price was good for a double album. I didn’t have anything else to buy, nothing else reached out and spoke to me, so I decided to give this album a chance. After getting in my car and fighting with the packaging (why do they make cds so hard to open?) I finally managed to get the cd out and in the player. The last time I was so moved by a new voice that I didn’t know was when I heard Joss Stone. The sound coming out of my car stero captivated me. The voices did more than just reach out to me, they reached out and shook me. I didn’t just like this cd, I feel in love with it. There was something in the music, something in the voices that sang it, that just made me want to listen to it over and over.
The Waifs are Donna and Vikki Simpson and Josh Cunningham. They are from Australia and sing folk rock. The two sisters started singing as a group called Colours. After they met Josh and he joined the duo they changed their name to the Waifs.
In Australia they built up their fan base until the release of their fourth album Up All Night in 2003 which debuted at number 3 in Australia and went double platinum in their home country. Later that year Bob Dylan toured Australia and the band opened for him. Dylan was so impressed by the band that he offered them the opening spot for them on his U.S. tour.
The single for this week is “Bridal Train” and tells the story of Vikki and Donna’s Grandmother, a war-bride of a U.S. sailor during World War II.
After the release of their double live album in 2004 the Waifs have been quiet on the album front. The two sisters have been busy having children and getting on with their lives. But this month the group released a new album entitled Sun, Dirt, Water.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Song of America
This week’s Voices to Hear is going to be a bit different than pervious ones. Instead of one voice to highlight in this week’s column we’re going to talk about an entire album’s worth of voices. The album is Song of America and it features 50 artists different artists. (What? You didn’t think an album would have a MySpace page? Everyone and everything has a MySpace page nowdays.)
If you’ve heard of this album at all it’s due to the identity of the executive producer of the record, Janet Reno. Yes, that Janet Reno, the former Attorney General of the United States. Most of the press has focused on that point, which at least gives it a chance to get out there and maybe be heard.
The genesis of the album started ten years ago when Ed Petterson, a singer-songwriter from Brooklyn New York wrote a song about the American cowboy. He brought the song to his Aunt to listen to. His Aunt just happened to be Janet Reno. She liked the song, but suggested that he should go farther than just one song about one point in America’s history. She suggested that he record a collection of songs that would reflect American’s history.
What they ended up envisioning was a collection of songs that would trace the events that shaped our nation’s history. The album became a collection that could be used as a tool to help teach the youth of our country about their history through song. The album was divided into five broad themes from America’s history:
The performers interpreted these songs in their own style for the listeners of today. In some ways it was the same idea that was behind Wilco and Billy Bragg’s updating of Woody Guthrie song’s from Mermaid Avenue. They took the words but made the music their own.
The performers came from all sorts of musical genres. The album opens with a Lakota Indian song and ends with a Woody Guthrie song. To list all the performers on this album would stretch this column out too long, but such performers as The Blind Boys of Alabama, John Wesley Harding, Freedy Johnston, Marah, Janis Ian, Elizabeth Cook, John Mellencamp, Old Crow Medicine Show and a host of others. In keeping with the theme of this column almost all of the performers were not well known. John Mellencamp is probably the biggest name on the album.
The album is divided into three cds: red, white and blue. The red disc starts with songs from the American Revolution and each disc moves the songs through the history of our country. Some of the songs on these two discs you’ve probably heard a million times and may not have thought of since you were in school. Harper Simon (Paul Simon’s son) does a version of Yankee Doodle, The Mavericks do Dixie, Joni Harms does Home On The Range. The blue disc brings us up to the modern era and has songs that most listeners will be more familiar with, at least from radio. This disc has Kim Richey doing the Rascals “Get Together,” Anthony David doing Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” Martha Wainwright doing Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman.” Only one artist is represented by two songs on the album, Bruce Springsteen: Matthew Ryan does “Youngstown” and Bettye LaVette does “Streets of Philadelphia.”
This is one of those albums that I was absolutely fascinated with, after listening to it it will make you proud to be an American. And it does it without resorting to the sort of jingo posturing you usually find in these type of projects.
As one final note, with the kind permission of Miss Heather, I’m going to include two songs with this column. There was so much great stuff to chose from it was a really tough decision, but I went with both ends of the timeline. The first song is Harper Simon’s “Yankee Doodle” and the second song is a heart breaking rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia” by Bettye LaVette. But I could have easily picked any of the other forty eight songs to showcase, they’re all that good.
Harper Simon "Yankee Doddle Dandy"
Bettye Lavette "Streets of Philadelphia"
If you’ve heard of this album at all it’s due to the identity of the executive producer of the record, Janet Reno. Yes, that Janet Reno, the former Attorney General of the United States. Most of the press has focused on that point, which at least gives it a chance to get out there and maybe be heard.
The genesis of the album started ten years ago when Ed Petterson, a singer-songwriter from Brooklyn New York wrote a song about the American cowboy. He brought the song to his Aunt to listen to. His Aunt just happened to be Janet Reno. She liked the song, but suggested that he should go farther than just one song about one point in America’s history. She suggested that he record a collection of songs that would reflect American’s history.
What they ended up envisioning was a collection of songs that would trace the events that shaped our nation’s history. The album became a collection that could be used as a tool to help teach the youth of our country about their history through song. The album was divided into five broad themes from America’s history:
United We Stand, Divided We Fall
War and Peace
Work
Families at Home and on the Move
Faith and Ideals
The performers interpreted these songs in their own style for the listeners of today. In some ways it was the same idea that was behind Wilco and Billy Bragg’s updating of Woody Guthrie song’s from Mermaid Avenue. They took the words but made the music their own.
The performers came from all sorts of musical genres. The album opens with a Lakota Indian song and ends with a Woody Guthrie song. To list all the performers on this album would stretch this column out too long, but such performers as The Blind Boys of Alabama, John Wesley Harding, Freedy Johnston, Marah, Janis Ian, Elizabeth Cook, John Mellencamp, Old Crow Medicine Show and a host of others. In keeping with the theme of this column almost all of the performers were not well known. John Mellencamp is probably the biggest name on the album.
The album is divided into three cds: red, white and blue. The red disc starts with songs from the American Revolution and each disc moves the songs through the history of our country. Some of the songs on these two discs you’ve probably heard a million times and may not have thought of since you were in school. Harper Simon (Paul Simon’s son) does a version of Yankee Doodle, The Mavericks do Dixie, Joni Harms does Home On The Range. The blue disc brings us up to the modern era and has songs that most listeners will be more familiar with, at least from radio. This disc has Kim Richey doing the Rascals “Get Together,” Anthony David doing Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” Martha Wainwright doing Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman.” Only one artist is represented by two songs on the album, Bruce Springsteen: Matthew Ryan does “Youngstown” and Bettye LaVette does “Streets of Philadelphia.”
This is one of those albums that I was absolutely fascinated with, after listening to it it will make you proud to be an American. And it does it without resorting to the sort of jingo posturing you usually find in these type of projects.
As one final note, with the kind permission of Miss Heather, I’m going to include two songs with this column. There was so much great stuff to chose from it was a really tough decision, but I went with both ends of the timeline. The first song is Harper Simon’s “Yankee Doodle” and the second song is a heart breaking rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia” by Bettye LaVette. But I could have easily picked any of the other forty eight songs to showcase, they’re all that good.
Harper Simon "Yankee Doddle Dandy"
Bettye Lavette "Streets of Philadelphia"
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