I had the good fortune to photograph Rachel Ries when she opened for Melissa Greener at Douglas Corner in Nashville last month:
Originally from South Dakota, Rachel has a very interesting background:
Daughter of Mennonite missionaries, Rachel Ries hails from the inspiring, vast expanses of South Dakota, by way of Zaire. Her formative years were filled with Congolese spirituals, Mennonite hymns, Suzuki violin and The Carpenters. Currently splitting her time between rural Vermont and New York City, Rachel crafts sly and compassionate songs for the crooked hearted. With an electric guitar, clear voice and steady hand, she pulls the listener into her world of city grit, country dirt, and her open-eyed search for redemption and reason. Her songs are fine-tuned delicacy with a snarl and disarming candor. Proudly carrying the torch of her love for the domestic arts, Rachel’s homemade preserves and hand-stitched notebooks can often be found at shows, nestled amid the 180 gram vinyl, cds and t-shirts.
She also has a cool new album, Ghost of A Gardner.
And good as her music is, I think this album cover art may be my favorite so far this year: I
I’ve known Melissa Greener since she first arrived in Nashville (from native Detroit) about five years ago. We have traveled in familiar circles all that time, but I think I have actually heard/seen her perform just once, when she sat in for a few songs amid somebody else’s set… somewhere. The details are fuzzy, all I remember is she played a “fan fret” acoustic guitar – an instrumental choice indicative of a woman of some distinction, even if I can’t remember now what exactly she played on that exotic instrument.
Well I sure remember her material now.
Last Friday, Melissa performed a set at the Douglas Corner Cafe in Nashville – which she mentioned from the stage was her first full show here in the entire time she’s called Nashville home.
It was worth the wait. Boy, was it worth the wait.
For this show, Melissa assembled a full band (sorry, I don’t know the name of all the players – will update when that info comes across my transom). The stage was filled with keyboard, bass, drums, lead guitar and two harmony vocalists. And despite all that personnel, this was the blessed (i.e. rare) show where the quantity of sound did not drown out the lyric content.
Melissa Greener proved to be an incredibly compelling performer. Start with deft, intricate guitar figures played on both acoustic and electric guitars (no fan frets); add rich, thoughtful lyric imagery (that you could actually hear!) sung with a solid, soaring alto and joined byroof-raising harmonies from Kira Small and Vicki Carrico, and you’ve got the makings of one of the most outstanding shows I’ve seen in Nashville in quite a while.
The house was full, no doubt a testament to the many friends that Melissa has made over the five years she’s been among us.
But what was really impressive was the response when the show was over: these jaded Nashville audiences rarely rise at the end of a club show by a local; but this night, as Melissa Greener wrapped up her final tune, the audience was on its feet.
Or as one observer from the audience commented after the show, “we knew that she was good… but we didn’t know that she was that good!”
Melissa pours her heart and soul into every note and word. Hopefully these photos catch some of that spirit.
Listen to the opening track from Melissa’s 2013 CD “Transistor Corazon” while the slide show plays. When it’s over, click the Spotify link below to listen to the entire album. And when it’s over, don’t be surprised if you feeling like playing it again (as I am doing as I finish this post…)
Sometimes, when I’m on a location and shooting the sights, something will light up in my mind’s eye… an idea for a treatment of the scene in front of me that will have to wait until I can get it in front of me on a screen, in Photoshop.
I had a lot of moments like that during the day I spent at Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire, England, last October.
The idea for reflecting the “night sky” in pools of water around the abbeys first struck me that night as I was leaving Sweetheart Abbey in Dumfries/Galloway Scotland, and I saw the lamp post reflect in a puddle.
After that, I kept an eye out for similar situations at other locations. And since then, I’ve given a great deal of thought to how I would make the starscape reflect in the puddles. I knew I couldn’t just replace the water with an inverse of the starscape; I’d have to find someway to make it look like it was really reflected in the water.
So it took a lot of trial and error with countless layers, but I think I’m finally seeing what I imagined that afternoon in Yorkshire:
See more from this series at PortalsOfStone.com
Nothing is more
beautiful than a guitar,
except, possibly, two.
— Frédéric Chopin
Last Wednesday night offered a stark contrast to the night before.
Where Tuesday night’s performance by the New Dylans at the Belcourt Theater was nearly an hour of screeching instrumentation and unintelligible lyrics, the following night at the Station in was a perfect example of how beautifully crafted songs played with exquisite instruments can produce a totally satisfying experience.
Thomm Jutz and Craig Market actually wrote together for the first time while Thomm was producing The 1861 Project. They co-wrote two songs for Volume 2, including “The Old Songs:”
Thomm and Craig kept writing after that, and over the past couple of years assembled a collection of co-writes that they’ve now released in a collection called “Nowhere To Hide.”
I was called in to shoot some promo stills late last year. The slide show above features a few of those shots and some from the CD Release Party at the Station Inn.
On stage, Thomm played a 1948 Martin D-18, and Craig played a 1937 D-18. It’s hard to describe how beautiful those two guitars sounded together. That quote from Chopin will have to suffice.
Or just listen to the CD and hear for yourself:
