The late, great Levon Helm of The Band inspired many, including poets. Read below Tracy K. Smith’s poem Alternate Take: Levon Helm, and then watch what Smith meant about Levon in the last stanza of the poem.  Helm passed away 15 months ago and is still sorely missed. RIP Levon.

Alternate Take: Levon Helm
by Tracy K. Smith

“I’ve been beating my head all day long on the same six lines,
Snapped off and whittled to nothing like the nub of a pencil
Chewed up and smoothed over, yellow paint flecking my teeth.

And this whole time a hot wind’s been swatting down my door,
Spat from his mouth and landing smack against my ear.
All day pounding the devil out of six lines and coming up dry

While he drives donuts through my mind’s back woods with that
Dirt-road voice of his, kicking up gravel like a runaway Buick.
He asks Should I come in with that back beat, and whatever those

Six lines were bothered by skitters off like water in hot grease.
Come in with your lips stretched tight and that pig-eyed grin,
Bass mallet socking it to the drum. Lay it down like you know

You know how, shoulders hiked nice and high, chin tipped back,
So the song has to climb its way out like a man from a mine.”

At the year’s mid-point, Stornoway’s Tales From Terra Firma remains amongst the Best Albums of 2013.  Our opinion was solidified when we caught their show in May at the Bootleg Theater in LA.  To get another good feel for the band, check out Daytrotter’s session with Stornoway HERE.  Daytrotter has thankfully pushed the band’s vocals to the forefront of the mix, thus spotlighting one of the band’s best attributes.  If you’re limited on time, click on The Ones We Hurt The Most, one of the Best Songs of 2013.

All photos: Greg Lawler

Scotland’s Belle & Sebastian brought their amiable big band to the Santa Barbara Bowl last night and gave the modest, but ardent, crowd one of the most entertaining and heartwarming shows of the year.  From the moment they walked onstage it was a lovefest between band and audience.  For many, given the band’s scant crossings of the Pond, it was the first time seeing them live.  While the band’s setlist was not a strict “Greatest Hits,” Belle & Sebastian did manage to hummingbird from one melodious album to the next from their deep discography, sampling many of their dulcet songs along the way.  The 13-piece band, led by singer-songwriter-dancer Stuart Murdoch and other core members Stevie Jackson, Chris Geddes, Richard Colburn, Sarah Martin, Mick Cooke and Bobby Kildea (further embellished with a savory string quartet and heavenly horns by Mick Crooke), was in fine fettle throughout despite some of the crew and equipment apparently having a difficult time making it from Austin to Santa Barbara in time for the show.  All’s well that ends well.

Belle & Sebastian opened with instrumental trollop, Judy is a Dick Slap, before segueing to crowd-pleasing I’m a Cuckoo, which set the crowd off into a night of dancing and crowd-singing.

Leader Stuart Murdoch engaged in heartwarming interaction with the crowd throughout the show, at one point requesting a fan apply mascara to him (during Lord Anthony, natch).  At another point, Murdoch invited a fan up to act as audience cue-card girl.  He also made a song-long foray into the Bowl audience, taking a tightrope walk along the Bowl’s stone wall while high-fiving fans and giving hugs to some wheelchaired fans along the way.  The interactive lovefest was capped off when the band invited 40 or so fans up stage to dance during favorite Boy With the Arab Strap (watch the video way below) and then invited them to stick around for Legal Man (during which some of the olders felt vindicated when Murdoch admonished the young dancers to “put down your phones”), before capping matters off by kicking B&S-emblazoned beachballs into the crowd.  In addition to a songwriting acumen that makes him the British-equivalent of Burt Bacharach, Murdoch is a gregariously engaging and empathetic leader in a live setting.

Though clearly the centerpoint, the show didn’t focus solely onMurdoch, as sidekick/guitarist Stevie Jackson took over lead vocals on To Be Myself Completely, and multi-instrumentalist Sarah Martin took a scintillatingly sonorous turn on I Can See Your Future.  After the Boy With The Arab Strap/Legal Man dance-fest, the band went on to close out their set with much-loved Judy and the Dream of Horses before returning for a short encore comprised solely of their hallmark song, the crowd-sing favorite Get Me Away from Here, I’m Dying.  Other song highlights of the show included The Stars of Track and Field (dedicated to Wimbledon-winner Andy Murray earlier in their tour), If You’re Feeling Sinister, and Piazza, New York Catcher (with its San Francisco touchstone references).

At show’s end, the Santa Barbara Bowl and its audience had an unmistakably warm glow about it (having nothing to do with the skunks Murdoch kept smelling).  While we were sad to see their set end, there are murmurings that the band will soon return to the studio to begin work on a new album, it’s first since 2o10.  We look forward, then, to the band returning to California near-term to give its audience continued contentment and joy.  Long live Belle & Sebastian!

Check out more photos from the show below, a video of the band performing Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie, the fan-dance video, and the setlist.

Setlist

Judy Is a Dick Slap
I’m a Cuckoo
Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie
The Stars of Track and Field
Dirty Dream Number Two
To Be Myself Completely
Lord Anthony
If She Wants Me
Piazza, New York Catcher
I Can Your Future
If You’re Feeling Sinister
Your Cover’s Blown
I Don’t Love Anyone
The Boy with the Arab Strap
Legal Man
Judy and the Dream of Horses

Encore:
Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying

All photos: Greg Lawler

Mikal Cronin has finally escaped the clutches of Fuzz-Boy Ty Segall and is making his name known in the musical world with this year’s album MKII. Check out below his performance of Change last night on Conan.  We could still go for less fuzz-guitar (which is wasteful, overbearing and obfuscatory in the middle of the Conan performance).  Make sure you hang in for the post-fuzz string-embellished finale!

Moby has today released a haunting video for new song A Case For Shame, which is the first track to be released from his impending new album Innocents (releasing on October 1st).  Both the song and video involved collaboration with the multi-talented Canadian Cold Specks.  The video is Moby’s directorial debut and was shot by him at his home in Los Angeles. It features the masked characters from the album cover, Cold Specks and Moby himself under water.  Moby writes further about the song and video as follows:

“the video has a specific meaning for me, but i’m hesitant to say what that is, as it might have a very specific meaning to you, and it’s completely open to anyone’s subjective interpretation. just because i made it doesn’t mean that my interpretation of it is the right one. i’d love to hear what you think of it and what your interpretation is.

oh, and it goes without saying, but it’s certainly not a big, commercial video… it’s an experimental video, inspired by some of my early heroes of experimental film, like jack smith (who also inspired fellini and andy warhol, so i guess at the very least i’m in good company in citing jack smith as an inspiration, even if i’m clearly not fellini or andy warhol…)”

Bodes extremely well for Innocents, which you can pre-order HERE.  In addition to Cold Specks, other collaborators on the new album include Wayne Coyne, Mark Lanegan, and Damien Jurado.

The song’s lyrics follow the video.

Lyrics:

“Cut off your nose
To spite your face
Slowly send your palms away

Draw fire crawl out
And seek the shade
Slowly send your palms away

A fine line will set you apart
Swallow my name, swallow it down
Sing me a song

Shoot the breeze
Shake my hand
across the fire, I caught your stare

Sing me a song
you today

A beacon will send you home

A fine line will set you apart
Swallow my name, swallow it down
Sing me a song.
Shoot the breeze
Shake my hand
across the fire, I caught your stare
Sing me a song
You today
Cut off your nose
to spite your face
Slowly send your palms away
I heard you say
I will not shame
You today”

As we reported last week, LA’s Rhye is garnering gobs of deserved attention for their song Open and their debut album Woman.  Neo-soul/jazz at its finest.  Now comes a video of the band performing Open live at the Fortress studio in Los Angeles, but mixed with a video montage from their recent tour overseas.  Check it out below.  Rhye will play the following West Coast shows in August: Aladdin Theater in Portland on 8/7 and San Francisco’s Outside Lands Festival in Golden Gate Park on 8/9.

Up-and-coming Seattle band Pickwick brings their subversive-soul sounds tonight to Soho in their Santa Barbara debut (courtesy of Club Mercy). Pickwick is out touring in support of their critically-acclaimed first album Can’t Talk Medicine. Erudite and aspirational songwriter-singer Galen Disston heads Pickwick’s modern soul-rock review, and is rightly renowned for the intensity of his stage performances.  To get a better feel for the band, check out below various vignettes of them this year from Hear Ya and the Lawrence High School Class Room Series.  And then get yourself on down to Soho. And see if you can clap along as well as the Lawrence High School students in the second video below.  Hot fun in the summertime indeed.  Get your tickets HERE.

Last night LA’s The Neighbourhood showed up on Conan and played their break-out track Sweater Weather (off their debut album I Love You).  Check it out below, but hold the sweaters.

One of our favorite soul-revivalists, Charles Bradley (aka “The Screaming Eagle of Soul”) and the stalwart Extraordinaires (formerly the Menahan Street Band) recently checked in to KUTX Studios and performed new song Confusion.  The beauty of Bradley is he may look and sound throwback (James Brown the most obvious touchstone), but he brings a uniquely keen sensibility and a hard-fought hardness to the musical surroundings, and never keeps you in the dark as to where his heart and soul lie.  Confusion is from Bradley’s new critically-acclaimed album, Victim of Love.  The song obviously has roots in The Temptations’ 1970 hit Ball of Confusion, (which you can listen to at bottom), but Bradley gives the state of affairs a more personal spin that is unrelentingly captivating.  Bravo Mr. Bradley!