Tag Archives: Stephen Stills

The 10 best for ’09

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Last year I picked five albums I considered the best of the year. This time I’m upping it to 10 with a few bubbling under and some added tidbits.

Derek Trucks Band Already Free1. Already Free, The Derek Trucks Band: Traditional blues with modern sensibilities and influences from jazz, roots and world music, all played by an array of accomplished musicians and one of the best slide players of our time.

2. The Deep End, Christine Ohlman and Rebel Montez: Stellar songwriting, impassioned vocals and infectious grooves highlight Ohlman’s fifth album, which also features an impressive roster of guests. Her best yet.

3. Electric Dirt, Levon Helm: On this electrified followup to his comeback album Dirt Farmer, Helm blends traditional roots music with elements of folk, blues, soul and gospel. The mix of new original material and classic covers works perfectly. The arrangements are clean and to the point and musicianship impeccable.

 4. Middle Cyclone, Neko Case: A wonderful concoction of folk, rock, country and pop interlaced with enigmatic lyrics and penetrating melodies. All topped with Case’s crystal clear voice.

bebel-gilberto-all-in-one5. All In One, Bebel Gilberto: Her best since Tanta Tempo in 2000, this work is alive with beautiful songwriting and Gilberto’s gorgeous, hushed, cool vocals. Aided by her pals Carlhinos Brown and Didi Gutman among others.

6. Soul On Ten, Robben Ford: A ripping, rocking live set with two live-in-the-studio cuts, filled with Ford’s interesting blues-based originals, some classic covers and his unique take on blues, rock and jazz playing.

7. The List, Rosanne Cash: A love letter to her father Johnny and her audience, giving back songs from his list of 100 that he gave to his teen-age daughter. Arrangements and execution by Cash and husband John Levanthal are enthralling. Continue reading The 10 best for ’09 →

Track of the week: Bonnie Bramlett

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Bonnie Bramlett came back to singing in earnest in the early 2000’s after years of pursuing an acting career.

bonnie-bramlett-roots-blues-jazzShe started as the first white Ikette with Ike and Tina Turner in the mid-1960s, then played a big role in the highly influencial Delaney & Bonnie and Friends with her husband at the time Delaney Bramlett. The group featured some prominent members over the years, including Eric Clapton, Dave Mason and even George Harrison. Members of the band went on to play with many other groups, including The Stones, and three — Bobby Whitlock, Jim Gordon and Carl Radle —wound up with Clapton in Derek and The Dominos.

This track is a cover of the Stephen Stills classic Love The One You’re With from his first solo album. It was also a sizable hit for Stills as a single. Bramlett brings a funky, groove-oriented reading to it with jazz substitution chords in place of the heavily suspended sound of the original.

It’s amazing that Bonnie didn’t sing on the original with Stills because the sound of that chorus with Rita Coolidge, Priscilla Jones, Graham Nash, John Sebastian and David Crosby had Delaney & Bonnie written all over it. This track is from Bramlett’s 2006 album Roots, Blues & Jazz, which shows off Bramlett as a proficient jazz singer as well as a queen of blue-eyed soul and R&B.

Pieces of Stephen Stills

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One of the most talented musicians and songwriters of the late 1960s and early ’70s, Stephen Stills is also a confounding one.

manassas-piecesIt’s hard to think of an artist who had a better streak of songwriting from 1966-73 while playing with Buffalo Springfield, Crosby Stills & Nash and CSN & Young, followed by a stunning first solo album, an almost-as-good second and a year-and-a-half with the eclectic rock-country-Latin mix of Manassas.

Then decades of ups and downs, a few hints to rival past triumphs but mostly downs. Unfulfilled promise? Perhaps that’s a little harsh. Stills did give us a wealth of creativity during that roughly seven-year span.

Since 2007, Stills has released three albums from his vault, most recordings about 40 years old. And all three are better than anything he’s produced since. First Just Roll Tape, an extraordinary demo of songs he dashed off following a Judy Collins session in New York, several to appear on the first CS&N album.

Then Demos, in a similar vein, from CS&N, with his contributions undoubtedly the highlights. And now Pieces, early Manassas tapes, with some solo work and early jams with members of The Flying Burrito Brothers mixed in, a collection so good it makes one wonder why it’s taken so long for this material to see the light of day.

The group Manassas grew out of Stills’ frustration with CSN&Y and his contacting ultimate rock ‘n roll sidekick Chris Hillman (Byrds, Burritos) to get together and jam in Miami with members of the Burritos post-Gram Parsons.

The tracks from these sessions are mostly at the tail end of Pieces, Panhandle Rag, which shows off Byron Berline on fiddle and Hillman’s blazing mandolin, Uncle Pen — a Bill Monro tune on which Berline takes the vocals — Do You Remember The Americans and Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (And Loud, Loud Music), a Burritos live staple. Continue reading Pieces of Stephen Stills →

Furay’s little bit of magic

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I expected to see a good performance from Richie Furay Friday night at Stage One in Fairfield, but I was taken back by just how good.

richie-furay-live-2-small1With a five-piece band that includes multi-instrumentalist Scott Sellen and Furay’s daughter Jesse Lynch, Furay played a set that traveled from his past to the present, playing many songs that helped lay down the country-rock tradition, leaning heavily on rock, and are rarely played by any band today.

This is not just an aging musician running through songs with which he is associated. This is an extraordinary band.

When the opening song started with drummer Alan Lemke laying down a beat on his tom toms, I asked myself is that what I think it is? It was. This little band was playing Crazy Eyes, a Poco epic from the album of the same name from 1973. And the arrangement didn’t lack one bit.

Furay’s voice was full, clear and able to scale the heights he has always been known for on a song that demands it from the start. Every time I looked to the left of the stage Sellen was playing a different instrument. First electric piano, then banjo, then lap steel guitar and electric guitar. Continue reading Furay’s little bit of magic →

Stripped down Crosby, Stills & Nash

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Usually when demos make up an album or are included as bonus tracks, you can often expect rough sonics, less than perfect performances and songwriting that is evolving. On Crosby, Stills & Nash’s recently released Demos, produced by Graham Nash and Joel Bernstein, that’s not the case.

csn-demosThe sound is pristine, the performances near flawless and the songs are fully formed in almost every instance. It’s an easy and pleasant listen. What it lacks is a hint at how most of these tunes changed from the early demo stage to the finished product.

All but one are simply acoustic versions of the songs with basically few changes from the end result. One track by Crosby, Music Is Love from his solo album If I Could Only Remember My Name, is actually the mono log tape of the master take lacking only overdubs.

That’s not to say Demos is of no interest, just not on the level of understanding how the songs came about and evolved.

Each musician has four tracks, with Neil Young contributing to Music Is Love, but the standouts are all by Stephen Stills, who at the time — late ’60s to early ’70s — had to be considered one of the great creative forces in rock. He certainly was the acknowledged leader of CSN and taking into account his output in Buffalo Springfield, CSN&Y and his first two solo albums it begs the question: Whatever happened to Stills? But more on that later. Continue reading Stripped down Crosby, Stills & Nash →

Neil Young’s Archive: Buffalo Springfield

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In addition to the three Topanga discs and Early Years (1963-65), I’ve been listening to the Buffalo Springfield disc quite a bit from Neil’s Young’s recently released Archives Box Set.

ny-archive-springfield-coverDisc 1 in the 10-disc set, which I have in DVD format, is titled Early Years (1966-68) and is dedicated to the mid-to-late ’60s group that many of its fans lament over for its short tenure on the rock scene, about two years.

The Springfield were truly one of the great rock groups of the ’60s, but let’s face it, it had too many creative forces within, if that’s possible: namely Stephen Stills, Richie Furay and Young. It made for a powerful combination — but only for a while.

The Springfield made two memorable albums, their self-titled debut and Buffalo Springfield Again, during which the group started to fracture. As Young says in a radio interview included on the disc, the third record Last Time Around was not a Buffalo Springfield album at all. It does contain two notable songs from Young, I Am A Child and On The Way Home, which he doesn’t sing lead on, but it’s disjointed.

It’s kind of amusing hearing Young rip Jim Messina, the Springfield’s second bass player, for ruining the mix on the album, since he would shortly use Messina and George Grantham, both of Poco, to record his first solo album. And Young adds that he and Stills really had nothing to do with the album at all. So Disc 1 is culled mainly from the first two Springfield albums with I Am A Child the only track from the third. Continue reading Neil Young’s Archive: Buffalo Springfield →