So I Guess I'm Writing a Book On Akron

 

So I'm not entirely sure how this happened, but I think I've started to write a book on Akron, Ohio. A weeks back I was talking to a new editor at Arcadia about possibly doing a sequel to Cleveland Area Disasters, or perhaps finally putting the book on Children Show Hosts in Cleveland together.

There was certainly some interest in doing another disasters book, even turning one of the disasters I wrote about in the past into a full book for The History Press. And I may wind up doing both of those in the future.

But it was when I mentioned I recently moved to Summit County that things sort of took off. Before I know it we are talking about me working on a new book about Akron post 1960 to slot into their new Modern Images of America Series. You know, books with color photos but still about history.

I didn't have quite the contacts in the Rubber City I do in Cleveland, but the past week has introduced me to a fair amount of people that certainly qualify as major contacts.

So Akron it is. Chrissie Hynde to Devo. Joe Jakubick to Lebron. The 1968 Wooster Rd Riots to the reign of Mayor Don.

Should be fun.

What Next?

 

 

After a few quiet months I find myself pretty busy. Not only is our company about to undertake a project with a suburb of Cleveland that seems really research intensive and pretty interesting all the way around, but my two colleagues are just finishing a project with a firm celebrating their 100^th anniversary. A project that will produce Thomas' third book, meaning he is one up on me.

So I have to write a book.

I've been talking to a couple publishers about a sequel to my last book on Cleveland Disasters, a book on a fairly large local city post 1960 and a third flushing out a chapter in a previous book of mine.

So it's off to some research facilities today to look into what might be available.

Wish me luck.

David Baerwald

Yet another post of mine from a UK Music site, this one ran yesterday.

All For You	Bedtime Stories
Good Times	Bedtime Stories
A Bitter Tree	Triage
Brand New Morning	Triage
Ahh, My Baby	Hurly Burly
A Prisoner's Dream	Hurly Burly
A Friend Like Our Dear Stranger	A Fine Mess
Why	Here Comes The New Folk Underground
Compassion	Here Comes The New Folk Underground
Nothing's Gonna Bring Me Down	Here Comes The New Folk Underground

 

More than any other musician I consider myself a fan of, David Baerwald’s career has traveled a decidedly illogical and non-linear path. He came to prominence in 1986 as one half of the duo David + David, whose debut and sole album Boomtown produced three hits singles in the US, two which broke into the top twenty. So of course they broke up afterward for reasons that have never really been spelled out, although there has been some speculation their attempted second album was viewed as far too dark to be commercial by the record company.

After the break up Baerwald focused on writing for others artists, oddly enough under a pseudonym as often as not. Over the years his songs have been recorded by everyone from Waylon Jennings to Luciano Pavarotti and Ashlee Simpson to Japanese classical musicians the Yoshida Brothers.

He did manage to release two albums during this period. Bedtime Stories, which has been described as an album concerning suburban ennui and decay. Which sounds sort of depressing if Joni Mitchell hadn’t played some guitar and sang some backup vocals for it. Baerwald returned the favor to Mitchell on her Night Ride Home album as well. He once said in an interview that he stopped playing new songs for Mitchell because she felt he was “unleashing more malevolent energy into an already malevolent world”. The other album during this period was Triage, an equally upbeat effort about fringe-dwellers of America’s paranoid and disaffected subcultures, done in a narrative song cycle of course.

In the early 1990s he co-founded the Tuesday Night Music Club with producer Bill Bottrell. Eventually this loosely based songwriting collective turned into the group that produced Sheryl Crow’s first album as well as albums by Susanna Hoffs, Linda Perry and Kevin Gilbert. There was of course all sorts of negative fallout concerning the effort as Crow often took full credit for the album in interviews and the rest of the group felt they were often equal participants, some going so far as to say they carried her. Oddly enough David Ricketts, the other “David”, was part of the group and played bass on some tracks as well as getting songwriting credits on four songs that Baerwald also got credit on. You would wonder then, if they were still working together, why not a second David + David album?

In the years following he centered solely on songwriting for others and a large amount of soundtrack work.
In the late 1990s he started recording again and produced three more albums, more or less, before disappearing into other people’s work again. He went back to soundtracks, writing major hits such as Come What May from the film Moulin Rouge and scoring a number of television shows into this decade before vanishing again, seemingly without a new credit since 2012.

There is no Davidbaerwald.com or net although there is a fan run site which isn’t exactly open access, nor is there any social media trying to get you to buy his music. No he just seems to come and go as he pleases and if he feels like creating music he does, if he doesn’t he just disappears on us for a while.
With all that out of the way here is my top ten Baerwald songs taken from his five solo albums.

He started his solo career with the lines “Lucas Riley came to LA, from a dying English town/With his nineteen year old wife/Who swore she’d try and settle down”. In All For You, the first song of off 1990’s Bedtime Stories, Baerwald established himself as a story teller. And a good one. It’s an oddly upbeat song about misguided notions, infidelity, and possibly murder for hire. Who doesn’t love that genre.

The second song off the album, Good Times, is just as strong again; in an oddly upbeat way he relates how confused and fearful the protagonist’s life is but he thinks he still might be experiencing the good times. Not really a pleasant thought.

A Bitter Tree, from 1992’s Triage, is another feel good song about seeing your father laying drunk on the floor with a strange, actually peculiar, woman. Brand New Morning from the same album sort of sounds a little more upbeat given the title but not really as it’s about “I’ve got no sorrow; I’ve got no war/I can’t go through that nightmare anymore/I don’t like weapons; I don’t like drugs/Maybe it’s time to be settling down.”
Then came a six year hiatus from recording that sort of ended with Hurly Burly, which is really a soundtrack album but one where every song is performed by David Baerwald & the Palindrome Floating Band. Eleven songs, nine of them being instrumental. But the two that aren’t are wonderful. Ahh, My Baby puts forth that rarely uttered sentiment that “I love you when you drink”. And not in an ironic way. A Prisoner’s Dream is about just what it says it is.

Around this time Kevin Gilbert and John O’Brien, both friends and members of the Tuesday Night Music Club, died. Shortly after those deaths the seven-year old son of Bill Bottrell, another Tuesday Nighter and the guy whose house they started meeting at, also died. David Baerwald coped by going into the studio with some other musicians and recording about 30 songs that he felt sounded like a wake just for himself. According to him he never had any intention of releasing them It seems the studio he recorded at would stamp music recorded by artists not intended for release NFU. Not For Use morphed into the New Folk Underground as the assembly of musicians’ name for their group.

Then things got even odder. In the late 1990s a fan put together a Baerwald website for other fans of his music to talk with each other. A website which was discovered by Baerwald’s mother. After that Baerwald started posting on the site now and again and actually conversing with fans. He told them about NFU and the 30some songs. Surprised by the interest he put them together on an album he called A Fine Mess, and produced 500 copies for the people on the website at a $20 price tag. Released, more or less, in December of 1999 most were stamped and signed by Baerwald. A handful of the songs showed up on his next, and til now last album, and a few were songs he had done before. But it’s 28 great tunes he released to some people on a fan site dedicated to him his Mom found. That’s just weird enough to be really cool.

During that time he gave an interview in the Austin (Texas) Chronicle where he made very clear what his artistic vision was. “I felt that I was watching evil triumph, hypocrisy and propaganda ruling the airwaves, and the death of rock & roll, a medium that I felt really strongly about. The death of a lot of people that meant a lot to me in my personal life. So whether I was this successful L.A. shithead or not, I was in pain. I didn’t have a way to express it, yet I was attracted to these acts that were so naked about it and unbeaten by it. That became my definition of what folk music is: It’s of the people. Music unbowed, sprung from an acceptance that life is difficult.”

There are several songs from this album I could have included. It’s Hard To Give A Damn and Black Mamba Kiss are standouts, as are four songs that wind up on the next album. A Friend Like Our Dear Stranger though does as well as any song at portraying the feelings he expressed in interviews, although somewhat metaphorically.

In 2001 he more or less hit it big by composing the international hit Come What May for the film Moulin Rouge. And on that wave he released his, up to now, final album Here Comes The New Folk Underground. Now to be fair my favorite three songs were also on A Fine Mess. Why is a great tune where Baerwald tells you not to ask him why, because he doesn’t know. The why of course is why does life suck. In Compassion though he tell us “Tolerance lives/It’s a gift you can give.” The protagonist believes that the reason he still may be standing is he has learned to forgive and forget and live and let live. Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down seems to finish the message of the first two songs. “Sometimes It gets so ugly/All you can do is crack sick jokes/a little cyanide humor.” But as the songs says, Nothing’s going to bring him down.

Of course he hasn’t recorded under his name since then. He scored a number of American television shows, as well as co-produced an album dripping with A-Listers for the film The People Speak in 2009. In 2012 he scored the television show The Client List, but did not return for their second season in 2013. Nor has he turned up anywhere with credits, unless of course some movie or television show uses one of his old songs. He is still out there though, occasionally popping up on the fan run site I mentioned but with no new music.

An enigma really, but an amazing talent

 

The Blue Dogs

  

Yep, another Toppermost article

 

If I Had A Boat	Music For Dog People
Go And Say Goodbye	Music For Dog People
Cold Sheets Of Rain	Soul Dogfood
Life's Railway To Heaven	Soul Dogfood
I'd Give Anything	Blue Dogs
Hope She Falls In Love	Blue Dogs
Isabelle	Letters From Round O
Cousin Homer's Anything Goes Dance Hall	Letters From Round O
Wrong Love At The Right Time	Halos And Good Buys
Half Of My Mistakes	Halos And Good Buys

Some acts just never break out, destined to be nothing more than a regional favorite while still managing to put out some pretty decent music. The Blue Dogs are a band that fits that definition to a tee. They’ve been mainstays of the South Carolina and Georgia music scene in the US for over 25 years, although they have done a few tours up and down the east coast of the United States. And while I think the quality of the material, nine albums total, has been somewhat sporadic throughout their career there have clearly been moments when they deserve more than the local following they currently have. The Blue Dogs are roots rock that is country tinged. with some folk and bluegrass thrown in. But for me it’s when they start harmonizing together that makes them a better than your average regional favorite.

They’ve always seemed a loose knit unit. 1991’s Music For Dog People, their first album, has a picture of Bobby Houck, Hank Futch and Phillip Lammonds identified as The Blue Dogs. On the inside they thank a member who has joined since the recording, two original members, and five occasional members.
In 1991 they were essentially a bunch of local guys, who had days jobs, cutting a first record with a bunch of covers. It wasn’t until their third album in 1997 they started writing most of their own songs. At the start some of the “occasional Blue Dogs” wrote for them but it was mostly covers as just one song was written by a core member of the band on that first album. Now it was arguably one of their best songs, but not in this early version. Still, the album had some high points, mostly Lyle Lovett’s If I Had A Boat and Stephen Stills’ Go And Say Goodbye.

The next album, Soul Dogfood, was much the same, although they tended to move away from contemporaries a bit, although not completely, and cover some traditional folk songs This album featured songs by Bill Monroe and bluegrass performer Randall Hylton. This led to the highpoint of the album as Hylton’s Cold Sheets Of Rain and the traditional Life’s Railway To Heaven as arranged by the Blue Dogs were for me clearly their second album’s best moments. But they were still just an above average local band. There weren’t any great moments yet, just some good ones.

They grew quite a bit as a band during the next four years. A big step was as to make the band their full time professions in 1996. A live album in 1995 showed them developing as live performers, and 1997’s Blue Dogs had them arriving as songwriters. The previous three albums had just three songs penned by core performing Blue Dogs. Their fourth album was made up of 11 songs written by either Lammonds, Houck or from a collaboration between the two. It probably isn’t coincidence that the harmonies and signature Blue Dogs sound found itself on this album. At their heart I’d Give Anything and Hope She Falls In Love are by the book love songs, or better yet, love gone wrong songs. Nothing new here, but the guys put it across, especially in their live performances. It probably isn’t surprising half of their releases are either a live album or a concert DVD.

Lammonds stepped back as an everyday member in 1998 to be replaced by Dave Stewart. Lammonds though hung around as one of those occasional Blue Dogs and a frequent contributor in the songwriting department.

In 1999 they released Letters From Round O which contains a pretty much perfect song in the Blue Dogs genre called Isabelle and a damn good country rocker called Cousin Homer’s Anything Goes Dance Hall.

Another live album followed before their last, at least at this point, studio release came out in 2004. All four core members and former member Lammonds received at least one song writing credit, and wrote all the songs, as their cover days were pretty much over although they do perform many during their live shows. Another by the numbers break up song called Wrong Love At The Right Time gets pulled off with their usual style. For me though Half Of My Mistakes is the high watermark of Halos And Good Buys. How can you not love a song that starts out “Half of my mistakes, I made stone cold sober/Half of my mistakes, I made at closing time.”

Two more live albums have followed, as well as some DVDs but there really hasn’t been any new material in a decade. They do seem to be one of those bands who never successfully were able to capture the magic they create live in the studio. Still the Blue Dogs remain extremely popular playing 100 dates a year in the South Carolina and Georgia area charming the home crowd folks with incredibly pleasant vocals, tight harmonies and a good stage show. A couple of those perfectly pleasant songs should have found their way into the top 40 of Americana or Adult Contemporary. But at this point they’ve sort of turned into an Oldies Act without a single national hit to their credit who still have a good following. And they make a living as musicians. There are worse lives.

 Dave Alvin

 This appeared on Toppermost.co.uk the other day, just wanted to share it here as well.


One of the difficulties in writing a Toppermost is sometimes the definition of what exactly should be open for inclusion on any artist’s catalog is really up to interpretation. Take Dave Alvin, do I include Blasters songs? Knitters songs? Pleasure Barons songs? What about the album he did as a member of X? Or his recent release, billed as a Dave and Phil Alvin album? Or the album he did with Sonny Burgess? Or are the 15 albums he released as simply Dave Alvin all I should consider? You get the point. There isn’t a clear answer. I’ve been working on another piece where the musician’s work with his band, who he wasn’t the leader of, clearly has to be included. Here it isn’t as clear cut.

Ultimately it boiled down to two things. If I only include Dave Alvin albums I’ll have at least 16 less albums to listen to, and I might be able to get an entry out of The Blasters down the road.

When you add in that a third of Alvin’s solo albums are live, he tends to record songs he likes over and over again, and since he was often the primary songwriter of the bands he was in, if he feels like recording a Blasters song as a solo effort he’s going to do it. Well, he makes things a little tough.

I’m just saying that coming up with a definitive Toppermost wasn’t so easy. But what the hell, let’s give it a shot.

For whatever reason Alvin, 35 years into his career, seems to be at his commercial peak right now. He recently recorded an album with former Blaster bandmate and brother Phil Alvin covering the songs of Big Bill Broonzy that is doing pretty well for an Alvin album. Maybe he had to be pushing sixty to grow into possibly the deepest and often most introspective singing voice in music. Who knows, but the voice is unique, the guitar playing stellar and the man can write a song that rips your heart out. That usually isn’t my thing, but with him I’m OK with it. Even sort of enjoy it.

Right out of the gate, if you ignore he had already recorded with three bands over seven albums I mean, Dave Alvin scored a home run with his first album. On it he recorded some of my favorite songs in his songbook, although maybe not the definitive versions of those songs. Regardless, Romeo’s Escape is a solid album with standouts songs like Fourth Of July, Every Night About This Time and Border Radio. Alvin excels in a couple of different styles, but I prefer him as a blues balladeer. Even though he is often described as an Americana or Roots musician Alvin has always identified himself as a bluesman, which I definitely agree with. Fourth of July is a melancholy piece about a man who knows his marriage has fallen apart, has no idea why and has no idea how to fix it. Every Night About This Time is an oddly sentimental song about how to treat, and ultimately hook-up with, that desirable lady at the bar who also happens to be an emotional trainwreck. Border Radio is another love gone wrong tune about dedicating a song to someone who you still don’t quite know why they left. It had originally been a Blasters’ song, although Alvin has recorded it twice as a solo musician, not counting live versions that is.

Haley’s Comet from his second album Blue Boulevard takes a fair amount of liberties with history but certainly captures how sad the final days were of one of the first great rock stars.

Alvin’s fourth album King Of California has remakes of a couple of songs I’ve already mentioned, and if push comes to shove I prefer the versions on this album and think I’ll list these versions on this Toppermost. The title track is also a stand out. At first it seems that Alvin has actually written a song with a somewhat happy ending. Luckily though by the end of the song the man telling his love he is coming home to claim her as King Of California mentions he has killed a man and the bullet in his chest is burning. Blue Wing from the album is also a standout, just a song about an old man who gets drunk, looks at his blue wing tattoo, and lets it fly beyond walls, above the clouds where he can still dream. Normal stuff, ya know.

I really thought about skipping this next song, but it’s so damn good. Maybe it just speaks to me now, who knows. “And these tremblin’ hands, they’re not mine/Now my hands are strong and steady all the time/they can swing a sledge hammer or soothe a baby that’s cryin … No the man in the bed isn’t me.” The Man In The Bed is sung from the perspective of a man at the end of his life who doesn’t see himself as “some helpless old so-and -so”. I can’t listen to it these days without tearing up, those of you who have walked the road I’m walking right now with my Dad understand what I mean. Sometimes a song transcends just being a song, sometimes too much.

Alvin’s last solo album Eleven Eleven joins King Of California as one of the two albums in the conversation for the best Alvin album in my opinion. Johnny Ace Is Dead is another early days of rock ‘n’ roll star gone wrong song, especially in how the record company made sure to make some money from his death. Black Rose Of Texas is extremely poignant, even for an Alvin song, as it’s about Alvin band member Amy Ferris who died of an apparent suicide in 2009. It’s another rip your heart out song, especially if you hear it live when Dave talks about Amy before he sings the song (see above video). Run Conejo Run rounds out my top ten, and it’s just as depressing as the other songs on this list as Alvin sings “Well, it’s three hours past midnight and I’m driving interstate Ten/A hundred miles out of El Paso and I’m thinking of my old friend/I know that I can’t see you but I feel you by my side/So, light up a cig, Conejo, and let’s go for another ride/Run Conejo Run.” It’s the most hard driving song in this bunch and shows that Alvin can crank it up and rock out just as successfully as he can take up the mantle of a blues balladeer.

When I went through Alvin’s ten studio albums from 1987-2011 I came up with a short list of 23 songs. As I’ve cheated far too often on the Top Ten premise of this site I made a real effort to get down to ten. Still, if you like what you hear look for Andersonville, Between The Cracks, Little Honey, 1968, California Snow, From A Kitchen Table and so many more.

I’m not quite sure why I love Dave Alvin so much. I know I’m usually not a fan of his covers. Which is odd as one of his two covers albums focuses on old folk songs. And that’s something I would usually like. The man can play the guitar, but there are very few songs on this list where he really rips out a great Alvin solo. And I’m not the kind of person that likes woe is me songs. I guess I like Alvin because his sad gut-wrenching songs aren’t woe is me, instead there is a stoic acceptance that it is what it is, and you got to just deal. He reminds me a little of Johnny Cash in that sense. A pretty sad world view really, but that deep voice just nails it for me.