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Old Folks Night At The Bluebird

May 15, 2022

Under the Neon Bluebird: On the left, Don Henry;
hiding under hats L-R: Tom Kimmel, Dana Cooper and Michael Lille

The Bluebird Cafe figured pretty prominently in my early days/years in Nashville. I went there a lot. I don’t go there as much as I used to. Since the venue was a featured location in the TeeVee show Nashville for several seasons, it is near the top of most visitors’ ‘must see/do’ list when they come to Music City – which means reservations are very hard to come by unless you jump on the website within minutes of tickets going on sale.

It’s kinda like Yogi Berra once said of a popular club in New York,

Nobody goes there any more – it’s too crowded.

I don’t monitor the Bluebird schedule like I used to, and if Dana Cooper hadn’t called me and let me know this show was happening, I would have been kicking myself if I heard about it after the fact.

Because all of these guys – especially Michael Lille and Tom Kimmel – played a pivotal role in those early years.

I think I first heard Michael Lille at the Commodore Club on West End in 1994. The first thing I noticed about Michael was his approach to the guitar, it had a very ‘Michael Hedges/New Age’ quality to it – very unlike the shredding metal sound I heard from most plugged-in acoustic guitars (I still hate that sound). Then he performed a song called ‘Life On the Run’. The song describes a trip Michael took to Indonesia, and waking up to the sound of “laughing children at the edge of the sea” – and contrasts that to his (our) lives in Western what–we–call ‘Civilization.’ I’ll put the only recording of the song in a playlist below, here’s the chorus:

They kneel on the ground
And raise their heads up to the sky
And thank the lord for another day begun
The wheel goes around
Far away on the other side
You and I live life on the run

To this day I cite that as the moment I realized that there was more to Nashville than the popular perception (think Hee Haw) that most people outside the 440 beltway have of the city – that there is a deep well of talent that flourishes just beneath the thin crust of mainstream country music business. That was one of the two primary motivations at work when I started to ask the people I was meeting ‘what would you think if I tried to sell some of your CDs on the Internet?’ This was 1995, so a common answer was ‘what’s the Internet?’

Unity: April 10, 1865 – 2015

April 10, 2021

Paul Schatzkin

Digest, music, photography

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April 10 – 1865 / 2015

People who know their Civil War history recall that Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant when they met in the parlor of the McLean House near the village of Appomattox Courthouse in Western Virginia the morning of April 9, 1865.

Less known is the story of their second ‘interview’ the following morning.

Grant knew that Lee only had the authority to surrendered his own defeated Army of Northern Virginia, which had been the primary military force of the Confederacy. Lee did not have the authority to surrender any of the other armies still in the field or, for that matter, the Confederacy itself.

The morning of April 10, 1865, Grant summoned Lee to a second meeting. They met on horseback for roughly a half hour, on a ridge surrounded by the mist of a cool spring morning. Grant urged Lee to use his influence on the other generals to likewise surrender and put down their arms.

That moment was recreated – at the exact time, in the exact spot, and under very similar conditions – 150 years later as part of the Civil War Sesquicentennial.

I spent a fair amount of time over those four years working with @Thomm Jutz @Peter Cronin and @Karen Cronin and many of Nashville’s finest singers and songwriters on “The 1861 Project” – a collection of three CDs of original recordings about the Civil War.

I did all the photography for that project, and went to several re-enactments over those years – Fort Donelson and Bull Run (among others), and finally Appomattox. I had hoped to photograph the recreation of Lee’s surrender and perhaps recreate the paintings that have survived that period, but alas, that task fell to a photographer sanctioned by the US Parks Department.

But somehow, I managed to get myself in the right place at the right time for the re-enactment of that second encounter, and got this shot, which I still consider one of the defining moments of the Civil War Sesquicentennial. In post-processing I have rendered the original as a ‘digital tintype’ – a type of photography that was popular in the 19^th century.

I submitted the photo to the Parks Department to consider for merchandising at the gift shop at the Appomattox Courthouse National Park.

A few weeks later I got their reply: “The horses are too fat.” Jeezus.

If the horses aren’t too fat for you, you can order prints – and read the rest of the story – from this website.

Or visit Spotify to listen to the recordings from The 1861 Project:

And see the rest of the photography here:

I Made A Music

March 17, 2020

Paul Schatzkin

Digest, music, personal

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Like the rest or the country/world right now, I’m trying to make meaningful use of the abundance free time that fate and the Coronavirus has bestowed upon me/us.

What to do… what to do…

This morning I picked up my electric guitar for the first time in… well, months. It’s a Gibson ES-335 – the electric guitar that I had wanted for decades but only finally got about 8 years ago (but that’s a whole other story.)

It had been so long since I’d played it, it took me a couple of minutes to remember how it all fit together, to get the amp set up and the guitar plugged in and tuned. Then I tried to recall what I used to play on it – really, it’s been that long.

Then I remembered Albatross. Except I didn’t really remember it. I just recalled that it was something I learned from Nashville Guitar Guru David Isaacs when I took a workshop with him a couple of years ago (January, 2018).

Albatross is a dreamy guitar instrumental first recorded in 1969 by an up-and-coming little band from England called Fleetwood Mac. Maybe you’ve heard of the them? Probably so, but you probably haven’t heard Albatross, which was composed by the band’s lead guitarist at the time, somebody named Peter Green (click the link if you want to know more about his brilliant/tragic story).

OK, I thought, let’s see if I can remember how to play Albatross. So I went digging around in my hard drive to find the file that Dave had given us for the workshop.

Thinking I had found the original recording, I listened to an MP3 file that I found. It was the right tune but… it didn’t sound like I remembered the original. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what I was listening to or who was playing the layered guitar parts.

Until it finally dawned on me: it was me.

I slowly recalled that I’d been dorking around with GarageBand at the time. There are a couple of sections of Albatross that feature bendy melodies played on two guitars a third apart. I’d completely forgotten that I played and recorded all the parts on my ES-335 over a backing track that Dave had given us to practice with.

And as I’m listening to it for the first time in two years, I’m thinking, “damn, that sounds pretty good!” (except for one slipped-string clam somewhere in the middle).

So here, use this to fill up about 3-1/2 minutes of your quarantine time. It’s the first music I’ve ever recorded and put online.

It only took 69 years (OK, only 25 years since I got on the Internet…but… that, too… is a whole other story).

Podcast Review:
The Long Ride w The Wild Ponies

January 13, 2020

Paul Schatzkin

Digest, music

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Clearly there are not enough podcasts in the world, so what’s not to like about just one more?? (#sarcasm)

Funny thing is, despite the virtually infinite selection of podcasts available nowadays (which nomenclature I find ironic, since who uses an actual iPod anymore?) it can actually be hard to find a new one that you want to subscribe to.

The vast universe of podcasts is perhaps rivaled only by the vast universe of independent singer-songwriters, so I guess it makes some kind of Ven-diagram sense that I would actually find a lot to like about a new podcast created by a couple of singer-songwriters.

I am speaking of “The Long Ride with The Wild Ponies.”

Hosts Doug and Telisha Williams (aka “The Wild Ponies“) have come up with what seems like a fairly original format. The first episode features a solo performance by singer/songwriter extraordinaire (really) Will Kimbrough, peppered with conversational breaks about life as traveling and performing artists. I can’t say whether it’s because Will is such a tremendous (phenomenal, really) solo performer, or because the hosts do such a great job of keeping the conversational interludes brief and on-point, but between those elements the whole format just sorta works.

Since the profusion of podcasts offered up lately are mostly just two people talking and pretending to laugh at each other’s lame attempts at humor, this format is a welcome relief. I found it thoroughly engaging from start fo 46-minutes-later finish – although Will Kimbrough – have I mentioned how exceptional he is? – has placed a rather high bar for future guests to rise to.

Of particular note is the “Speed Bump” segment near the end where Doug and Telisha ask a series of quick either/or questions, like:

Telisha: “Sunrise or sunset?”

Will: “Sun Ra. “

Such depth of insight is rarely found this side of Malcolm Gladwell. And Gladwell can’t sing or play guitar.

So get ye over to your Podcast app and listen to “The Long Ride.” It will make your next long ride go faster.

Aso: H/T to Laura Schneider, who had to mention this several times before I finally took the hint.

Tim Buckley: Morning Glory

June 3, 2018

Paul Schatzkin

Digest, music

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For your Sunday listening pleasure:

I started thinking of this song yesterday after Stacy Widelitz posted a link to the first Blood Sweat & Tears album, “Child is Father to the Man” as his first entry in that “10 most influential albums” thing that seems to be making the rounds lately…

I thought of this song because that album was one of the few (only?) albums that delivered a cover of a Tim Buckley song, “Morning Glory.” I think the only other time Tim Buckley made it into “pop” culture was when the song “Once I Was” played near the end for the Vietnam War film “Coming Home” with Bruce Dern, John Voight and Jane Fonda. I’ll share that clip at the end for this post.

I started thinking about “Morning Glory” because there is something about it’s soothing, plaintive tone that just seems like a necessary antidote to the tone of these tumultuous times (personally and generally).

So this morning as I was driving into work I asked Siri to “Play ‘Morning Glory’ by Tim Buckley.’

I was a little miffed at first when Apple Music pulled up this live version of the song, its algorithms apparently confusing it with the studio recording from Buckley’s breakthrough 1967 album “Goodbye and Hello.” But as I listened to it, I was grateful for the cross reference.

For starters, this live performance demonstrates the pure, brilliant clarity in Tim Buckley’s vocals even more than the studio version. I like the instrumentation too: the elaborate piano, strings and vocal chorus of the studio version on “Goodbye and Hello” is replaced here by Buckley’s Guild 12-string, and the simple bass, vibes and electric guitar that Buckley drew on for what I consider his best record, 1968’s “Happy Sad.”

So there ya go. I gotta get this posted and get to the store…

And here is “Once I Was” from “Coming Home,” released in 1978 – 4 years after Tim Buckley’s untimely demise, from an overdose at the tender age of 28 in 1974 (yes, the same age that his son, Jeff Buckley, died at in 1997).

“Guitar Mash” = “Music 3.0”

April 10, 2018

Paul Schatzkin

Digest, JOYMM, music, music 3.0, photography

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Remember when I was writing about “Music 3.0“?

Of course you don’t, that was almost 10 years ago, before I folded “celestialjukebox.org” into one of the archived elements of this CohesionArts website.

My idea of “Music 3.0” (there are others, but they’re not nearly as prescient or comprehensive… 😜) was the culmination of what I still occasional refer to as my “Grand Nebulous Theory of The Future of Music” – a concept both “grand” and “nebulous” because, while I think the historical trajectory offers some useful clues, I don’t really have a solid grasp of the ultimate destination.

Whatever the ultimate destination, I think I walked into a fresh landmark along the route this past Saturday when I spent the afternoon at the City Winery in Nashville for something called the “Guitar Mash.”

The concept is hard to describe, but is summed up in the project’s stated mission to “change the way you experience music.” Follow this link to get a better idea of the concept (simplified version here).

As I wrote in a Facebook post the following day:

I got to be present for – and photograph – a rather extraordinary event yesterday at City Winery.

It’s called the “Guitar Mash.”

It starts with a “house band” of A-List musicians – like Jerry Douglas on dobro, Mark Stewart (musical director for Paul Simon, among other things), Victor Krauss on bass, Larry Atamanuik on drums and John Deaderick on keys.

As the afternoon unfolded, the band was joined on stage by featured players including the likes of Brent Mason, Keb Mo, and John Oates.

But the really unique feature is: the audience is encouraged to bring their own instruments and… ohmigod… play along with the stars! Chord-and-lyric charts are displayed on the video screens and “Chord Coaches” (from the W.O. Smith School) wander the audience helping the guests suss out what they’re trying to play.

There will be more to come after I’ve sorted through all the files, but this morning I want to share this one shot of MV Gauthier, as she performs Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” and looks out at a venue full of people playing and singing along with her. Her reaction here captures the entire essence of the event. Long story short, it was a blast for every one.

While technology continues to disrupt the “virtual” music business, I felt like this was an indication of what’s possible in the “real” world of music: empowering more people to make music themselves. I kinda think Mary is catching that spirit in this moment and realizing what a wonderful thing that could be.

It oddly frustrates me sometimes when I go to a concert or a club, and there is so little for the audience to do. The performers put their best effort into a song, and the rest of us sit there and repetitiously flap our hands together in appreciation. Rinse and repeat. I don’t know that there is any viable alternative to that, but here’s a venue full of people doing something other than waiting for their chance to applaud:

Digital Caveats re: the above slideshow: I’m having some issues with ZenFolio – my web gallery/service provider – over their continued reliance on Adobe Flash for these slide shows. 10 years after Steve Jobs wrote the epitaph on Flash, ZenFolio only lets me create an “embeddable” slideshow if I use Adobe Flash. HTML5 has been the de-facto standard for nearly a decade, but when I try to embed the HTML5 version of this slideshow in my WordPress post, only half of the images appear in an otherwise half-black screen. I love ZenFolio, but this one rates a big WTFF? I don’t have Flash on my new MacBook Pro, so I have no idea if the embed above works or not. If not, follow this link to see the entire gallery; there is a button to display the HTML5 slideshow in the upper right corner of the gallery page.

The Beatles: Eight Days A Week

September 17, 2016

Paul Schatzkin

commentary, Digest, music

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This past Thursday night I attended the sold-out opening screening of “Eight Days A Week” – director Ron Howard’s ode to The Beatles that focuses primarily on their touring years, from 1962-1966.

It is hard now not to think of The Beatles as anything other than a phenomenon – Beatlemania! – and an iconic force of musical nature. They were all of those things, but what this movie so effectively reminds us – as John Lennon famously said somewhere in the “Beatles Anthology” – is that they were “just a band.”

But oh my, what a band…

With vintage photos and film clips from the late 1950s and early 60s, “Eight Days A Week” shows us four guys who grew up together (OK, maybe not so much Ringo, who joined The Beatles just as they started their recording career, but he shared their scrappy Liverpool origins). It was essentially John’s band from the beginning, but part of his gift was his ability to recognize in Paul and George talent and ambition equal to his own.

The mission of the documentary is to trace the full arc of their years as a touring band: from the clubs of Hamburg were their sound was forged, to the Cavern Club in Liverpool where they found their audience, and eventually around the world, where their concerts were drowned out by screaming fans. Throughout the arc we are watch as the role “pop music” in the cultural firmament is transformed in front of our eyes and ears.

But the full power and sheer artistry of The Beatles is more fully conveyed in the 30 minutes of concert footage that follows the documentary.

Here are The Beatles in a truly epic setting: Shea Stadium in New York – the first performance of their final tour in 1966. They dash out on the field and climb atop a stage that looks like a boxing ring erected over second base, in the middle of the vast expanse of a baseball field, 50 yards away from the nearest fan, some 56,000 of whom are screaming their heads off through the entire show.

Still, you can’t help but be impressed with the quality of the performance. The set includes both covers and originals, opening with “Twist and Shout” and ending with “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help.” Showing the complete concert after the documentary is its own tour-de-force; it reminds us what the phenomenon was really about: the sheer power of skilled musicianship, the intensity of accomplished artistry.

The documentary is a 90 minute setup; the concert footage is a 30 minutes payoff – the undeniable proof of everything postulated in the film.

Ron Howard’s film also reminds us just how much “Beatlemania” was a reflection of the times. In America especially, The Beatles arrival in February 1964 was the medicine a grieving nation needed after the shock of the Kennedy assassination. Their appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show carved the opening cracks in what would eventually become the “Generation Gap.” We are reminded of the tumultuous history that The Beatles were part of, from the conflagration in Vietnam to the Civil Rights movement.

One detail in the documentary that surprised me addressed the matter of race as it is uniquely experienced in America: The Beatles had a clause in their contracts that declared that they would not play for segregated audiences. A voice over from Paul McCartney explains how foreign the whole idea of segregation and Jim Crow was to their experience in England.

Howard deftly gives all four Beatles nearly equal screen time for retrospective commentaries. The surviving Beatles, Paul and Ringo, appear on screen several times in their current incarnations; There are equal amounts of archival footage of John and George looking back on their years as Beatles. Their commentaries lend a “Rashomon” like perspective to the whole experience.

The Beatles 1966 tour ushered in the era of the stadium concert – despite technology woefully suited for the purpose; George explains how Vox built amplifiers especially for this tour: “I think they were a hundred watts…” – and much of the audio was piped through the crackly stadium PA system: “Now playing at second base… The Beatles!”

I think it was Ringo who described the aftermath of what would history would record as The Beatles final live performance, the last concert of the 1966 tour at Candlestick Park in San Francisco: After the show the band was raced out of the stadium grounds in what Ringo describes as “a meat wagon” – a bare metal armored police wagon, the kind that ferries convicts to prisons. It was pretty much within those lurching steel confines that all four Beatles decided “we’re not going to do this any more…”

Freed from the demands of a touring schedule, The Beatles dedicate themselves to the studio. There is footage from the EMI studio at Abbey Road of audio tape loops strung between tape machines… and then there is “Sergeant Pepper.”

From there the documentary quickly traces the remainder of The Beatles recording career: 5 albums in three years, from “Magical Mystery Tour” to the “White Album,” “Abbey Road” and the “posthumously” released “Let It Be” (which was released after the band announced its demise early in 1970).

The movie ends with the most footage I have ever seen from The Beatles last-ever ‘concert’ – that day in January 1969 when they set up on the roof of the Apple Corps headquarters in London and played to the people on the street below. It’s more than three years since the last time they performed “live” together, and the footage proves, once and for all that The Beatles were still, and always were, a great fucking band.

“Eight Days A Week Is” playing at The Belcourt. Info and tickets here. It will also be released to streaming video via Hulu next week. A subscription will be required. So go see it in a theater with good surround sound.

They Said “No Photos!”

August 17, 2016

Paul Schatzkin

Digest, music, photography

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… but when has that ever stopped me?

File this one under the hashtag: #OnlyInNashville:

I went to the Ryman Auditorium last night for the “Guy Clark Celebration” – a tribute concert for one of Nashville’s most revered songwriters, who went on to the great writing room in the sky back in May.

The tone for the evening was set early on by host Vince Gill, who promised “three hours of music an no shitty songs.”

And no shitty singers, either. I’ve been going to stellar shows in Nashville for more than 20 years now, but this was a lineup like you’ll never see again.

How’s this for name dropping: Jerry Jeff Walker, Vince Gill, Terry Allen, Shawn Camp, Verlon Thompson, Sam Bush, Bobby Bare, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, Joe Ely, Steve Earle, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Robert Earl Keen, Ricky Skaggs and Sharon White, Chris and Morgane Stapleton, Rodney Crowell, Lyle Lovett, Gary Nicholson, Delbert McClinton, Radney Foster and Bill Lloyd.. (thanks to Jim Moran for posting the cast of characters on Facebook).

You really can’t see ’em, but that’s who all is in the photo at the top of the post.

As I posted myself last night “I don’t need to go to any more concerts this year, I’ve already seen everybody…”

The Ryman was insistent throughout the evening that there were to be absolutely no photos of the show. Every time somebody in the audience pulled out a cell phone, an usher showed up to point an admonishing finger at them.

But when that stellar ensemble gathered on the stage for the last two songs, there was no way I was not gonna record that moment.

I got out of my seat (near the back of the upper deck, aka “The Confederate Gallery”) and went to the very back of the venue, got my iPhone out, discretely got it ready, and then brought it up to eye level and grabbed the ONE shot above.

Then the photo-Nazi usher ran up to me and said “No photos!”

And I said, “OK…” and went back to my seat.

If you were not fortunate enough to be present for last night’s tribute concert, consider going over to iTunes and investing in the tribute album that Tamara Saviano put together back in 2011, “This One’s For Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark” – which includes performances by a lot of the artists who appeared last night. Or if you still believe in plastic delivery, you can get the CD at Amazon (it does not appear that the collection is available thru Spotify).

Then listen to it and give yourself a master class in songwriting.

“This One’s For Him” – the Guy Clark Tribute album.

What Ever Happened to
The Age of Aquarius?

August 16, 2016

Paul Schatzkin

commentary, Digest, music

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The Oracle of Facebookistan has reminded me that this week is Woodstock Anniversary Week. It’s some odd anniversary, like 47.

I have already composed and posted my recollections and reflections on the subject.

This is an excerpt from a book (or maybe it’s a one-man show?) that I was working on earlier this year. I kinda hit a wall with it, and then life happened. I’ll get back to it one of these days…

Whatever Happened To The Age of Aquarius?

That’s the first of three installments, just follow the links at the bottom of each to get to the next.

Have You Ever Felt Like This?

April 15, 2016

Paul Schatzkin

"industry", commentary, Digest, music

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I was just text-messaging with a friend about the music business.

He said “What the hell do I know?”

I replied, “What the hell do any of us know?”

I wish I could remember where I first-ever saw this cartoon. I know nothing more about than it was drawn by a cartoonist named Ron Cobb.

But I think of it often, like when ever I think of a foreign landscape (like the “new” digital music business) and how we often try to get “plugged in” with obsolete ideas and technologies. The metaphor seems apt.

If that doesn’t make the point, then there is always this reliable chestnut that is often attributed to Hunter S. Thompson:

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”

Of course, that could probably be said about a lot of businesses…