My family gets together for Thanksgiving every year with a huge crowd (26 adults and kids this year!) so I like to put together a playlist to keep the cleanup crew moving. I throw in a couple of oldies along with my favorite new songs, some slow ones and lots of rockers. Here's my playlist for this year.
We kicked it off with Layla, the classic from Derek
and the Dominos, with Eric Clapton and Duane Allman on guitars. Can you believe
that I’ve been doing this for over 10 years and haven’t included this one yet?
Then I went to the husband and wife duo of Michael Trotter
Jr. and Tanya Blount, called The War and Treaty for Are You Ready to Love
Me? Last year I included their 5 More Minutes.
Next is Las Vegas’s The Killers’ Quiet Town, a very
Bruce-like song about the effect of opioids on a small town:
When we first heard opioid stories
They were always in whispering tones
Now banners of sorrow mark the front steps of childhood homes
Parents wept through daddy's girl eulogies
And merit badge milestones with their daughters and sons
Laying there lifeless in their suits and gowns
Somebody's been keepin' secrets
In this quiet town
Allison Russell is my singer of the year and Persephone is my song of the year. Russell was part of Our Native Daughters, four Black women led by Rhiannon Giddens (I included their Moon Meets the Sun last year) as well as the duo Birds of Chicago with her husband J.T. Nero. Outside Child (nominated for a Best Americana Album Grammy) is her first solo album. Russell’s back story is compelling (see this NPR story). The album celebrates her survival from a decade of abuse at the hands of a stepfather as well as the survival of enslaved people (she wrote Quasheba about her enslaved foremother for the Our Native Daughters album). More of Allison Russell later.
Brandi Carlile capped a busy few
years with another Grammy-nominated song, Right On Time. (Record and Song
of the year, Best Pop Solo Performance). For you Brandi fans definitely listen
to her new memoir, Broken Horses. It’s like she’s in the room telling you her
stories and then, at the end of each chapter, she picks up a guitar or walks
over to the piano and plays you the songs she mentioned.
We kicked off last year’s set
with Letter To You from Bruce Springsteen’s album of the same name. Here’s
another great one from that album, Power of Prayer:
Last call, the bouncer shuts the door
This magic moment drifts across the floor
As Ben E. King's voice fills the air
Baby, that's the power of prayer
Next is one of my favorite Maren Morris songs, My Church. I wanted to include this last year but we already had all of her stuff with Highwomen as well as her BLM-supporting song, Better Than We Found It (which just got nominated this year for Best Country Song).
When Hank brings the sermon
And Cash leads the choir
It gets my cold cold heart burning
Hotter than a ring of fire
When this wonderful world gets heavy
And I need to find my escape
I just keep the wheels rolling, radio
scrolling
'Til my sins wash away
Then, just ‘cause there’s never enough Chicks, here’s Tonight’s The Heartaches On Me from back in their classic, pre-cancellation phase. Natalie Maines’ vocal rocks!
Jason Isbell promised he would record an album of Georgia music if Biden won the state. The result, Georgia Blue, came out a few weeks ago, with all proceeds going to Black Voters Matter, Fair Fight, and Georgia STAND-UP. I picked his rendition of Otis Redding’s I’ve Been Loving You Too Long. Nobody is going to top Otis’s version, with Booker T, Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn and the Memphis Horns but Isbell gives it a good shot.
So, we need a little Otis. I first heard That’s How Strong My Love Is on Out of Our Heads, the Rolling Stones’ 4th album, in 1965, my introduction to Otis.
Right before the Otis song on that album is The Last Time. My wife Leslie and I saw the Stones two weeks ago in Austin, at their last big show of what may be their last tour. No, they didn’t play The Last Time!
Switching back to some new songs, the Black Pumas are one of Austin’s hottest bands. We were privileged to hear lead singer Eric Burton do a solo on Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car, just him and his guitar, at Austin City Limits Festival this year.
To wrap up the new songs, here’s Allison Russell’s Grammy-nominated Nightflyer (Best American Roots Performance and Song):
Yeah, I'm a midnight rider
Stone bonafide night flyer
I'm an angel of the morning too
Promise that the dawn will bring you, you
Now, a bunch of fun oldies. Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl is a classic.
Written and sung
by band leader Willy Braun, Wicked Twisted Road is one of my favorite
Reckless Kelly songs. Braun and brothers and cousins moved to Central Texas
from Idaho in the 90s and have been local favorites ever since.
My first love was an angry painful song
I wanted one so bad I went and did
everything wrong
A lesson in reality would come before too
long
Yeah, my first love was an angry painful
song
My first love was a wicked twisted road
I hit the million mile mark at seventeen
years old
I never saw the rainbow, much less a pot
of gold
Yeah, my first love was a wicked twisted
road
Next, a really
fun song from the Sir Douglas Quintet, going back all the way to 1969, Nuevo
Laredo. Sir Douglas is Doug Sahm from San Antonio and that’s his buddy, the
incomparable Augie Meyers, on the Vox organ.
In a little border town
Way down there in Nuevo Laredo Mexico
Spied a señorita there
Wind blows through her long black hair
As I cut a trail on the way to Boys Town
Smoke and drink the night away
In a dimly lit cafe
Long hairs were a novelty to the people
that were on the scene
We picked the blues 'til early dawn
Everybody sang along
We had such a ball in Nuevo Laredo
I included
Jerry Jeff Walker’s Mr. Bojangles on last year's set, to honor a great
songwriter on his passing, but Jerry Jeff was also an incredible interpreter of
others’ songs. Here’s his version of Michael Burton’s Night Rider’s Lament.
She asked me
Why does he ride for his money
Why does he rope for short pay
He ain't gettin' nowhere
And he's losin' his share
He must've gone crazy out there
Then they've never seen the Northern Lights
They've never seen a hawk on the wing
They've never seen the spring hit the
Great Divide
Lord they've never heard ole' camp cookie
sing
Sticking with Texas singer/songwriters, here’s Robert Earl Keen’s Jesse With The Long Hair, one of my favorite REK songs. A whole Western movie in a 4-minute song!
Next, to honor the 50th anniversary of Duane Allman’s passing, the Allman Brothers Band’s Blue Sky. This is one of the last recordings Duane played on. Rowland Archer and I saw the band play this great Dickey Betts song, which hadn’t come out on record yet, on August 15, 1971, at the Academy of Music in NYC. Duane died two months later. The interplay between Duane and Dickey's guitars gets me every time I hear the song, even 50 years later. Wikipedia's Blue Sky page breaks it down: Allman's solo beginning 1:07, Betts joining in a shared melody line at 2:28, followed by Betts's solo at 2:37.
This past Tuesday Leslie and I saw Duane Betts, Dickey’s son, play this as part of the Allman Betts Band, which he formed with Gregg Allman’s son Devon and original bassist Berry Oakley’s son Berry Duane Oakley.
George Frayne, leader of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airman, passed this year. He was one of the first guys to do hippies playing country, with Seeds and Stems (Again) the classic from their first album, 1971’s Lost in the Ozone.
And we’re going
to finish with the Storyteller, Tom T. Hall, who also passed away this year.
Here’s one of my favorites, Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine.
