Review: Jerry Jeff Walker, Vampire Weekend, etc.

You ever watch football games on TV with the sound off?  I’ve done that for decades, a habit picked up when I was a sportswriter long ago – the announcers really add very little to the game.  And this is a great opportunity for multi-tasking: instead of listening to Al Michaels drone on, I listen to new albums.  So here you go, some new ones for 2010 and a handful left over from late last year.  And they’re all pretty good:

Vampire Weekend is just about the whitest band around, but they sure don’t sound that way.  On Contra, this New York quartet picks up the sprightly rhythms of African music (and on a song like “Diplomat’s Son,” reggae … is this an homage to the Clash?) and swirls them into an intoxicating blend of wordplay and jumpy dance hooks.  If you liked their first record, the boys (led by singer/guitarist/songwriter Ezra Koenig) haven’t strayed far from their roots, and that’s a good thing.

MP3: “White Sky” by Vampire Weekend

Jerry Jeff Walker is one of the legendary songwriters from Texas (although like Vampire Weekend, he’s a New York native) and Moon Child is his latest release.  It’s available only online, at Jerry Jeff’s website and from iTunes and Amazon.com.  Jerry Jeff wrote about six of the 11 tunes here, the rest are by Jimmie Dale Gilmore and others including a version of John Denver’s “Back Home Again.”  Jerry Jeff’s trademark is the bowed-but-not-broken survivor, looking forward with a peppy outlook: “The Poet Is Not In Today” fills that prescription.  Moon Child is a decent dose of sunshine from a Texas treasure.

MP3: “The Poet Is Not In Today” by Jerry Jeff Walker

30 Days Out Exclusive Interview: Jesse Winchester

My first recollection of Jesse Winchester was seeing his picture on the back of a Billboard magazine in the 1970s.  I had not thought about him since until seeing him last month on Spectacle: Elvis Costello with … on Sundance Channel.  My loss.  He brought the house down (and tears to eyes of Neko Case) with “Sham-A-Ling-Dong-Ding,” a track from his latest release, Love Filling Station.

Winchester was born in Louisiana in 1944 and 22 years later, upon his graduation from college, he received his draft notice.   He decided the Vietnam War was not for him and he split to Canada.  As he explained it to Costello, “he hung around hippies and played coffee houses where you had to write your own songs to fit in.”  In 1970, his music caught the ear of The Band’s Robbie Robertson and he produced Winchester’s critically acclaimed first record.  He went on to release a number of records in the early 70s, and is best known for the tunes “Yankee Lady” and “Brand New Tennessee Waltz.”    When Bob Dylan was asked who he thought, other than himself, was the greatest living songwriter, he said Jesse Winchester.

Songs by Jesse Winchester covered by other artists would fill a good-sized songbook.  “Rhumba Man” was covered by Jimmy Buffett on his new album, and Winchester’s tunes have also been covered by Patti Page, Elvis Costello, Joan Baez, Anne Murray and Reba McEntire.  On Love Filling Station, Jesse reclaims “Oh What A Thrill,” which was a hit for the Mavericks.

Winchester was nice enough to answer a few questions for us about his past, his present and his future:

30DaysOut: Tell us how you got your start in music?  Were you influenced by the Memphis scene and its musicians?

JW: I seem to have been a musician from birth. I was very much influenced by Memphis music – gospel, blues, country. I loved the great radio station, WDIA, and also Dewey Phillips, the best disc jockey ever.

Sampler Daze: WB/Reprise Loss Leaders, Part 7

By 1974, radio’s hard rock trend was going strong – Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Humble Pie dominated the FM rock airwaves.  Appropriately titled for the time, Hard Goods arrived in mailboxes with freshly minted rockers like Montrose, covering Roy Brown’s “Good Rocking Tonight” and Foghat, offering its cover of Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be The Day.”  Ted Nugent and his Amboy Dukes show up, and the perfect marriage between glam and hard rock emerges in the then-new KISS (Casablanca Records were distributed by Warner Bros. until about 1976).

The Doobie Brothers were still rockin’ behind guitarist/vocalist Tom Johnston and they were fresh off their 1973 triumph The Captain and Me.  The Doobies’ new “Pursuit On 53^rd Street” had a guitar crunch similar to the monster single “China Grove” but behind the scenes, Johnston’s health was becoming precarious.  He was able to stick with the Doobies through late 1974 even as new personnel were added, most notably ex-Steely Dan guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter.  Finally in early 1975 Johnston had to quit the band, and a replacement was found in another Steely Dan alumnus, Michael McDonald.  The Doobies quickly became McDonald’s franchise, and everyone’s heard the rest of the story – with more than 30 million albums sold, the Doobies are still an active touring band with a rejuvenated Tom Johnston at the helm.