Five Records With… Allison Moorer
Posted on | January 29, 2010 | 1 Comment
I had the chance to ask Allison Moorer a few questions about her favorite records. Her new record Crows comes out February 9th. I covered the first single, “The Broken Girl”, here. Five Records is an occasional feature of artists talking about the music that inspires them. Read more of these posts here.
“There are so many great records that have influenced me. Tammy Wynette’s Greatest Hits, but also Willie, Waylon, Jessie Colter and Tompall Glaser’s Outlaws and The Jayhawks’ Tomorrow The Green Grass.
“Neil is just an all-around great artist — great songwriter, singer, player, and does the work to remain vital even after doing it for so long.”
“I listened to this record a ton while I was making Crows.”
“There are many songs I wish I had written! Can we start with the Beatles Help!? It has “Yesterday” on it. I’d take that one…“
“As far as new releases, I’ve been digging this.”
Allison Moorer – Like The Rain
Allison Moorer – “The Broken Girl”
Posted on | January 26, 2010 | 1 Comment
1. Allison Moorer and Steve Earle seem to be a good fit, with Earle’s recent record Washington Square Serenade showed him getting damn near mushy on songs like “Days Are Never Long Enough” and “Sparkle and Shine”. The newfound happiness of the relationship has allowed Moorer, on the other hand, to approach difficult material with unrestrained emotion, even on subjects that strike close to home. “The Broken Girl”, the lead single from her new record Crows, shows her highlighting women who have been victimized for many different reasons.
2. Moorer skips over a whole lot of backstory and jumps right into the character, who has replaced “all the happy” in her head, and whose “every step feels like a mistake.” The implications of what happened are many, from abuse to ignorance, but she shows the confusion of the character by noting that even the omniscient narrator doesn’t know how she got “so blue”, broken into “too many pieces”. Moorer gives a voice to the large amount of women that suffer from verbal and physical abuse but never speak out. The central character gives no reason for not speaking out, but is sure she’ll “never say a word”. In light of Moorer (and sister Shelby Lynne)’s family tragedy, this gains a whole new meaning as well, highlighting victims of tragedy who find themselves unable to speak out.
3. Producer R.S. Field (Shelby Lynne, Hayes Carll) gives the song a jangly, relatively lighthearted touch, with an arrangement that wouldn’t be far off from a Jayhawks song. This treatment makes the tough subject matter go down easier, and stands as a metaphor for Moorer’s increased ability to unflinchingly write on difficult subjects. Whether that is a result of age, experience, or her marriage (and child) with Earle, fans of Allison Moorer are the ones reaping the rewards.
Allison Moorer – The Broken Girl
Owen Temple – “Stranger in a Strange Land” (Leon Russell Cover, Live from Sons of Hermann Hall)
Posted on | January 25, 2010 | No Comments
I shot Owen Temple performing a few songs at the historic Sons of Hermann Hall in Dallas, TX. The hall was built on the eastern edge of Deep Ellum in 1910. I will be posting these videos over the next month or two. Read Owen’s 5 records that inspired him here.
1. I had the chance to talk to Owen Temple a few weeks ago about 5 records that have inspired him over his career. One of the questions involves a song that he wishes he had written, and he chose Leon Russell’s “Stranger in a Strange Land”. Taken from Leon’s 1971 record Leon Russell and the Shelter People, the song finds a man questioning why the world doesn’t go his way. This stripped down version illuminated the eternal search for meaning embodied in the song.
2. Russell lists several unanswerable questions throughout the song that have been shouted at the cosmos by thousands of people:
“How many days has it been since I was born?
How many days until I die?”
He then turns inward to ask himself if he has the ability to make his lover happy, lamenting his failure to do so thus far. He then shares the title line, a choice bit of wisdom known to the infant but elusive even to the wise man. The feeling of alienation expressed in thousands of country songs (perhaps chiefly “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”) is attributed to the fact that maybe we simply don’t belong here. Russell comments on the state of affairs in the world: the money chase, the leaders taking people astray, and people’s unkindness to one another, before imploring the listener to “recognize the bells of truth when you hear them ring.”
3. Leon Russell has written, in effect, an answer to all the songs of loneliness and solitude, attempting to give a reason why man feels so alone in this world. Owen Temple’s version lacks the R&B swagger (and gospel choir) of Russell’s original, but communicates the simple, brilliant message. The fact that Russell manages to fit the words burro and ecology into the same song is just icing on the cake.
Owen Temple – Stranger in a Strange Land (Leon Russell Cover)
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