TIE FOR #11: WILLIAM ELLIOTT WHITMORE "FIELD SONGS"

I first heard singer/songwriter William Elliott Whitmore a few months ago, when I saw him open for Chris Cornell.  I was knocked out and wrote about him. He's put out a number of albums, and his latest one came out a few weeks after the show.  Field Songs is one of the best albums of 2011, and you should check it out.

The photo on the cover was taken in 1947, and these songs could have been written back then.  The whole record is just Whitmore singing and playing acoustic guitar or banjo.  But it never sounds like a folk revival, it sounds like a working class guy telling the stories that he's seen with the instruments he has at hand. If I had five minutes with Bruce Springsteen, I'd ask him if he's heard this album: he should check it out, especially before doing another solo acoustic record.  This is the album that I wish Devils & Dust was.  I liked Devils & Dust, and I liked the songs, but I feel like he was going for something like this.  I wish Bob Dylan had heard of him: he would have been perfect for The Lost Notebooks Of Hank Williams LP that came out earlier this year.

It's sparse, hard and beautiful, and certainly one of the best things I have heard this year.  Big props to Anti- Records (also home to Tom Waits) for having the balls to put this out.  

TOM WAITS - "BAD AS ME"

Tom Waits is amazing. And so is his latest album, Bad As Me. I'm a big fan of Tom's most recent records, the ones he's done since signing to Epitaph Records' Anti- label. My favorite Waits album is 1999's Mule Variations.  That's pretty much when I got into him.  I was kind of prompted to check out his music because of his association with one of my favorite bands, Primus (he does guest vocals on "Tommy The Cat"). From Mule Variations, I went back and investigated his Elektra and Island years. Wow, what a body of work.  He kind of gets weirder as he gets older, which is the opposite of most artists. But his songs always pack a punch.

Anyway, Bad As Me is just classic. It seems to touch on all the different phases of his career.  The opening track, "Chicago," fits in with his music from the past decade or so, it sounds like it could have been on Mule Variations. "Hell Broke Luce" reminds me of his most bizarre era, the early '90s when he did Bone Machine and The Black Rider. But some of the ballads, like "New Year's Eve" has that boozy, last-call sound from his earliest records.  But despite the stylistic diversity, the album still feels like it has a real continuity, it has a real flow to it.

There are so many great songs here: I love "Chicago" and "New Year's Eve."  "Talking At The Same Time" is awesome, Tom sings in that otherworldly falsetto.  You never know what year it is when you hear a Tom Waits song, but when he sings, "Well, the dog is in the kitchen/and the war drags on/The trees wait by the freeway/all the money is gone," well, what feels more 2011 than that?

My two favorite moments come toward the end of the album.  I love "Satisfied," which is kind of a 60-something's answer to "Satisfaction." When he sings, "Now Mr. Jagger, Mr. Richards, I will scratch where I've been itching," it's cool, punk rock and defiant. Upping the cool ante, though, is the fact that Keith Richards is playing guitar on the song. (Les Claypool from Primus is playing bass on the track: how many artists could get members of those bands on one album, much less one song?). The next song is my other favorite, and it also features Mr. Richards. "Last Leaf" holds up with any of his ballads, "Ol' 55," "Jersey Girl," whatever you want to name.  Keith is the perfect foil for Tom on this song and this album.  In fact, I'm thinking that if Mr. Jagger doesn't get a Stones tour together, Keith should join Tom's touring band.

MEET WILLIAM ELLIOTT WHITMORE

A few weeks ago, I was knocked out by William Elliott Whitmore, an artist I hadn't heard of before. He was opening for Chris Cornell at the Wellmont Theater in Montclair, New Jersey.  I'd never heard of him, so I checked him out online the week of the show and found this video of him performing "Hell Or High Water." That's all I needed to know to get me to get to the Wellmont early enough to catch him, and I'm glad I did. Like Cornell, he played a solo show, and he did really well - odds are that most people didn't know who he was, and by the end of the show, everyone in the theater was paying attention.

He is a solo acoustic badass.  If I had to guess, his influences are Cash, Waits and Springsteen.  As soon as his set ended (I felt it ended too soon, a rarity among opening acts, especially ones that I'm not familiar with) I went downstairs to buy his new album.  I wasn't surprised to see that he was on Anti- Records, the same label that Waits is on, as well as Mavis Staples and Nick Cave. Anti- is one of the best labels out there, but most of their artists are a lot more well known than this guy. But good on them for taking a chance, he deserves it. Anyway, I picked up his most recent album, Animals In The Dark, and I definitely recommend it highly. His next record, Field Songs, comes out July 12, and you can hear the first song, "Everything Gets Gone," here. Meanwhile, he has lots of older records that I have to catch up on.  (PS I got the above photo from WEW's website)

YOU ARE NOT ALONE: JEFF TWEEDY PRODUCES MAVIS STAPLES

Earlier this year, I wrote about Wilco's Jeff Tweedy producing the upcoming album by Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Mavis Staples. It's one of the records I'm most excited about. 

Mavis has been singing since 1950 - back then, she was in the family band, The Staple Singers. Their big hits were "Respect Yourself" and "I'll Take You There." She's also been making solo records since 1969.  A couple of years ago, she signed to Anti- Records, the label owned by punk label Epitaph. Anti- has also put out albums by Tom Waits, Solomon Burke, Bettye Lavette, Merle Haggard and Joe Strummer.  It's probably one of the coolest record labels of all time. Needless to say, they let artists do their thing, and don't try and make them trendy or contemporary.  The results are always great. Teaming Mavis with Jeff Tweedy was especially inspired. A recent press release (announcing the 9/14 release date and the title, You Are Not Alone) contains this Tweedy quote:

"I have almost everything she's ever recorded, and I dug back through very thoroughly when I was given this job to do.  I thought that if I refreshed myself about where she's been, it would help her figure out where she wanted to go. I wanted to be sure that we were making a record that she really wanted to make."  He wrote the title track for her.  The press release says that the song could apply to anyone - a lover, a sibling, a friend - but Mavis got teary eyed singing it, she had her father, Pops Staples, in mind when she sang it. 

So it sounds like it is going to be a great album, hopefully it will get a lot of attention for Mavis. That said, the album will have a hard time living up to her last one, 2006's We'll Never Turn Back, produced by Ry Cooder.  That is a classic which you should check out, and I also highly recommend 2008's Live: Hope At The Hideout.

JEFF TWEEDY TO PRODUCE MAVIS STAPLES

A press release that just came out announcing some of Wilco's 2010 plans (tour, working on new songs) also happened to mention that frontman (and one of No Expiration's Best Of The '00s artist) Jeff Tweedy is going to produce Mavis Staples' next album. Like her last two,  2007's classic We'll Never Turn Back and 2008's Live: Hope At The Hideout which is up for a Grammy this year, it will be coming out on Epitaph imprint Anti- Records this year.

It's an interesting combo, and it reminds me of Joe Henry's production projects.  Like Jeff with Uncle Tupelo and Wilco, Joe was part of the roots-heavy "alt.country" scene, and then moved into doing more abstract music. But as a producer, Joe has worked on great albums by Solomon Burke and Bettye Lavette, among others. Hopefully this collaboration will be just as good as those.