Throwback Thursday – John Hartford – “Gentle On My Mind”
Posted on | September 24, 2009 | 1 Comment
1. “Gentle On My Mind” (which won two Grammy awards in 1968 for John Hartford’s folk version and Glen Campbell’s pop version) was written after Hartford attended a screening of Dr. Zhivago. Not that the song has anything to do with the film, it just happened to come out right after that event, or so said Hartford. Whether there was a subconscious inspiration or not, a classic film begat a classic song, one eventually covered by Johnny Cash, Dean Martin, Aretha Franklin, and Elvis Presley.
2. Hartford expresses the peace and serenity that his lover provides him in a charming, down home way that reveals a little bit about the man he is:
“Just knowing that your door is always open and your path is free to walk/
that makes me want to leave my sleeping bag rolled up and stashed behind your couch”
We get a sense of the rambling man who wants to stick around. The second verse zooms in a little more to reveal that he is unable to resist the pull of the road, traveling by railroad across the country. Hartford elaborates on this in the third verse, when he reveals the true distance between the faithful lover and the rambler, who places himself at fault for leaving. Nevertheless, no amount of hardship can remove his memory from him, as even the loss of his sight wouldn’t take away his comforting mental picture. Finally we see the man around a fire in a railroad yard imagining that his cup of soup is his lover, and he pulls it close and imagines himself home.
3. The version of this song that struck me most was Lucinda Williams‘ take, which played over the credits of Talladega Nights and stopped me dead in my tracks until it had passed. Her cover musically evokes the peaceful feeling that Hartford’s rambling man carries in his mind, with her band’s restrained vamp and her cracked, near-crooning vocal track. Robert Earl Keen has said this to be his favorite song, saying in a recent Texas Monthly article that “You know how how a great book is like a tight bud of a flower that blossoms when you get to the part that’s really good? It’s the same with this song.”
Throwback Thursday – Lucinda Williams – Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
Posted on | September 4, 2009 | No Comments
1. Hard to believe it has been almost eleven years since Car Wheels on a Gravel Road came out. Lucinda had been better known for writing “Passionate Kisses”, covered by Mary Chapin Carpenter, until this bombshell hit stores. Seeming to sum up all the heartbreak Louisiana could hold, Lucinda’s landmark album immediately entered the canon of all-time great roots records, while getting plenty of mainstream attention as well. For roots fans, this was no surprise, as Lu had been putting out great records like Happy Woman Blues and her magnificent self-titled record for more than a decade. For all of it’s successes, this record had a hard time making it to the shelves. After tossing out the original recordings done in Austin with Morlix, she went to Nashville to try it out with Steve Earle and Ray Kennedy, his production partner. Earle managed to rough up the tracks a bit before becoming increasingly unreliable due to substance abuse, at which point Lu took the tapes out to Los Angeles to record with longtime E Street piano whiz Roy “the Professor” Bittan. I managed to find the alternate versions in a Nashville used record store and took it to be the record, which I liked. Once I heard the version she released, all the songs bloomed into Technicolor and I was hooked.
2. Opening with the stunning trio of Right in Time, the title track, and the surprisingly-not-a-Prince-song “2 Kool 2 B 4-Gotten”, Williams swaggered with all the energy and rumble of a Lake Charles juke joint. I remember hearing her moan “Oooooohhhhhh my baby” from the opening track, knowing I didn’t know many women who made noises like that. The primal instinct is what makes this record – the stomping, self-loathing “Cant Let Go”, which features slide from both Gurf Morlix and Johnny Lee Schell has a jilted, guttural drawl to it, though it is the only song Williams didn’t have a hand in writing. Using imagery like the “big chain” around her neck and being shot but she “didn’t fall down”, Lu doesn’t attempt to cover her wounded heart. In the swinging “Still I Long For Your Kiss”, she admits “I know I shouldn’t but/ I want you so bad”, exuding all the rough-around-the-edges honesty of a Larry Brown heroine.
3. The cover of this record sets the landscape Lucinda describes in the title track, rolling out the Southern countryside like a Flannery O’Connor novel. She pieces together the memories like a child who can’t quite see over the car seat, hearing the “low hum of voices in the front seat” and “Hank’s voice on the radio”, while Buddy Miller’s mandolin and background vocals give this track a certain amount of bounce, like driving down a barely paved street. For someone who grew up in the deep south, Lucinda has managed to epitomize the experience of growing up in an oppressively hot, slow moving town and the very real, albeit universal feelings of longing that come from a one-sided love.