Thoughts on music: Third Man Records

Showing posts with label Third Man Records. Show all posts

Saturday, February 27, 2016

New Music 2016 - Part 15 - Margo Price - Midwest Farmer's Daughter

The first I heard about what is to follow was just a song. Three things struck me about it all at once:

The vocals - my first thoughts were Melanie and Lindi Ortega.
The lyric and attitude - reminiscent of those of Loretta Lynn, not to mention the above.
The falling-scale slide guitar arpeggio.

'Desperate and Depressed', for that was clearly its title, is not perhaps the most welcoming of introductions but that wasn't going to evince anything other than an immediate need to find who was singing and what is going on here. A fourth thing and an assumption, which turned out to be correct, was that it wasn't a cover of a song that I simply hadn't heard before. If it had been such then it was certainly due some time in the sun anyway...

Let us start with the lyric, if only because I haven't featured them so much of late.

Desperate and Depressed

I'm pissed off at the number of people that I meet

Who go to shake my hand with a viper up their sleeve.

They freeze me out in winter, burn me up all summer.

Try to take my money when I'm desperate and depressed.

Ain't it a mess.

I've played for free and paid for the miles on my truck.

Got no sleep in motels cause the worry keeps me up.

It almost drives me crazy thinking about my baby

And how he's gonna love me if I'm desperate and depressed

Can't get no rest.

Momma never told me that things would be this way.

Daddy tried to warn me that there'd be hell to pay.

If I can't find the money then I can't buy the time.

I'm stuck here making someone else's dime.

We busked in Sarasota. I made twenty-seven bucks.

I wept for Richard Manuel thinking I might have his luck.

You talked behind my back but only stabbed me in the front.

But don't think you can hurt me cause I'm desperate and depressed.

Ain't it a mess.

Please, somebody tell me how to make it stop

This world feels like a roller coaster I just can't get off

Tried rehab and probation, tried self-medication

But none of that can cure you when you're desperate and depressed

Ain't it a mess

Momma never told me that things would be this way.

Daddy tried to warn me that there'd be hell to pay.

But if I can't find the money then I can't buy the lie.

Oh, ten percent of nothing ain't a dime.

So don't you try to sell me back what's mine

I'll be desperate and depressed until I die

This song is the b-side of a vinyl 7".

You can give it a virtual spin here...

...but this track didn't make it on to the LP.*

The a-side is Hurtin' On The Bottle (a co-write with Caitlin Rose and others) and the single was released in late 2015 to promote the soon-to-be-released début LP, Midwest Farmer's Daughter, by East Nashville's Margo Price.

Midwest Farmer's Daughter - Margo Price (Third Man Records, 25 March 2016).

A point that is worthy of note is that this LP was recorded, mixed and mastered before it was presented, fait accompli, to would-be labels. Most of them simply said "no" or, if not exactly that, wished to mould it to the sensibility of their perceived market; in other words suck all the originality out it.
This is the track-listing:

Margo Price - Midwest Farmer's Daughter

Hands of Time
About to Find Out
Tennessee Song
Since You Put Me Down
Four Years of Chances
This Town Gets Around
How the Mighty Have Fallen
Weekender
Hurtin' On the Bottle
World's Greatest Loser

Taken from it is this, recorded live:

Since You Put Me Down

Note added 8 March 2016:

Margo Price was today confirmed as appearing at End The Road Festival 2016.

Writing in The New Yorker last month, this is what Sarah Larson had to say about Midwest Farmer's Daughter:
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/sarah-larson/listen-to-margo-price

Note added 15 April 2016:
* Desperate and Depressed was, in the event, added to the UK release of Midwest Farmer's Daughter. At least on Spotify about five minutes after it's release there.

Monday, May 12, 2014

Thoughts On Music - plans for 2014 and beyond.

I have taken a fortnight-long break from posting, something I just need to do from time to time. In the meantime I have still been listening and reading, no doubt about that, but also doing a little plotting and planning. It is now a few years since 'Thoughts on Music' has had anything other than organic changes, some of which simply reflect my interests in that time. Well, while there is nothing wrong with that I think it might not be all that is worth changing.

The first change is actually a reversion to something I did for a long time until the feature became frustratingly unstable.
As of about five minutes ago you should see the return of the "link list" to the top of the side bar. It has been a "simple list" for a year or more and, while I'm quite sure you can use well known search engines every bit as well as I can, this reinstates my ability to link to the particular reason I am listening and therefore a quick route to the stuff of the moment that is catching my attention. If I haven't provided a link to an item in this list you will see <about: Blank> and should hit the 'Back' button. I'm currently unconvinced that running two lists, one for items with links and separate one for those without, would be any more helpful. If I can find a way of combining the two, along the logical line of 'if no link given then don't try to go there' then I will and all hints and suggestions to that end are welcome!

Beyond that all feedback, positive and negative equally, is very welcome and so are suggestions. I have some other changes in mind but they will take more expertise in the way of implementation than I currently have, and so may take more time. There is nothing wrong with planning or dreaming and I'm quite sure that there are plenty of ideas that have never even occurred to me at all.
The only constant remains, as I said at the start, that I shall only review music that I like. I will not wallow in destructive criticism: I shall use negativity very sparingly, so as to make a comparative - there is too much to like for me to spend resources of whatever kind in doing otherwise. You might very well persuade me to try new music, and I hope you do just that, but you will almost certainly fail to dissuade me from that which I already do, even if it is done differently...

For some reason I have recently given much thought to the subject of cover versions and what I think they might add to the canon. My view on this has evolved very much over time and not least because I am now far more aware of songs that are actually cover versions but that I didn't realize previously!
This is one, that I did know from the original, and that I had the good fortune to see live, in 2010 when it was one of the first times they played it. Somewhat later, with Jack White and Third Man Records, it was recorded live.

I don't actually buy many 7" singles these days but this is the latest addition to my collection.

I'm not saying that this a blueprint for a new direction, radical or otherwise. The many shades of transatlanticism has possibly already told you that.

This evening, whilst thinking some more, the theme continues, about how much traditional music Europe exported to the US, then Canada and elsewhere directly or otherwise, over the last four centuries. It is important - we would have lost much had that not happened and that is why Cecil Sharp (1916-18, in particular) and others headed west across the Atlantic in the early 20th century. On the other hand it would be astonishingly vain not to admit that what we have received in return is every bit as generous, and quite as remarkable...

Then there are the influences that came from the east and particularly from Asia Minor via south-eastern Europe. That all started with the Celts themselves a couple of thousand years ago because it is thought that they expanded west and north; only subsequently to be marginalised in the far west of Europe.
Much more recently the bouzouki took a similar trajectory: it had certainly reached Greece, again probably from Asia Minor, and was common there by the start of the 20th century. Sixty years later and it was widely used in modern Celtic folk music in the UK and, particularly so, in Ireland.
Of course all these things intermingled over time, and in vicarious ways, before some of it was than taken, in a many-stranded form and over a long period, to the Americas by people of diverse origins. What we tend to forget is that the interesting muddle that is English folk music has age-old influences but it too incorporates influences that more recent immigrants bought with them and once again from eastern Europe: Romani and Klezmer are just two that come to mind.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

New Music 2011 - Part 3 - The Duke Spirit, Laura Marling, &c.

The Duke Spirit is one band my love of which pre-dates my days as a blogger. They are a five-piece and are well advanced in the recording of their third album. They are also awesome live and this is just how rock should be...

The Duke Spirit live in New York last weekend.

Too much reliance on the, albeit marvellous, digital age can have its downside! Still there is solace to be found in things thoroughly analogue... FM radio and a pile of vinyl recordings.

While what I am to mention next actually belongs in 2010 its inclusion in prospects for 2011 is also apposite. Since she appeared on the new folk scene in 2006, most notably then as part of Noah And The Whale, barely a few months have gone by without her releasing something to delight us.

She recently apologised for the delay in the release of her third studio album (now due "sooner rather than later" in 2011) but instead consider it in this light. In these days a gap of at least two years between studio albums is now quite normal due in large part to the more profitable touring commitments that might follow: her second album 'I Speak Because I Can' was however released on May 3, 2010. That is not to say that she has stinted on the latter front and for those lucky enough to be attending the Crunch Festival, Hay on Wye next weekend you are in for a treat not least because she is headlining the music aspect on Friday evening: There are still some tickets left if you have a gap in your diary.

I saw Laura Marling live at Latitude 2010 and the performance was flawless even in the rather wide expanse of the Obelisk stage. As well as the obvious highlights of her own song writing there is the ease with which she interprets and incorporates cover versions into the proceedings. If you can find a recording of her recent performance at Cecil Sharp House (for BBC Radio 1), with Mumford & Sons and covering Dolly Parton's 'Jolene', then I suggest you do so. Her latest release, vinyl 7" (TMR044) physically, but also available to stream from Spotify, is another pair of covered songs recorded at Third Man Records' studio in Nashville by, label founder and analogue addict, Jack White.

The a-side (it is so good to write that and really mean it) is 'Blues Run The Game', written and recorded by Jackson C. Frank (1965) and from the album of the same name, which was to be the only one from someone stalked by misfortune from a young age.

The b-side is more a reflection on the misfortunes of others by one whose career has lasted decades, is very much ongoing, and in the current musical climate increasingly influential. 'Needle and The Damage Done' saw Neil Young tackling such territory and it was originally released on the 1972 studio album 'Harvest' but it was performed live somewhat before that and I have an admission to make. 'Harvest' was something of a joke in the days when I first started to appreciate vinyl and it always seemed to be in the 'bargain bin' - "Any 3 for £1" - and guess what? I'm listening to 'Harvest', quarter of a century later and on original vinyl, while writing. I paid over the odds for it too - it cost me £0.50 in December 1986 - and I know that because I made a note of it inside the sleeve!