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.  

TOMORROW ON OUTQ: OLD GUYS WHO ARE NEW TO YOU (and new guys who sound old)

Longtime No Expiration readers know that every Wednesday morning, I go on SiriusXM OutQ's Morning Jolt with Larry Flick to talk about music. Tomorrow's theme, as the headline says, is old artists who may be new to you, and also some new artists who just sound like they are old. None of these artists are huge in the mainstream (yet). But you never know!

Charles Bradley is a 60-something soul singer who just released his debut album. So, he's a bit old for a debut album (but there's no time like the present) but he may be new to you.  No Time For Dreaming is out now on Daptone Records. No surprise there: it's the same label that Sharon Jones is signed to.  You can read Charles story on his bio at his official website. He spent years honing his very James Brown-like act, but he also has a lot of Otis Redding in him.  This guy can sing soul music because he's lived the life.  I gotta give a lot of credit to the label for signing people like him and Sharon Jones and letting them do their thing.  I should also mention that I was introduced to this artist by a former colleague at VH1; VH1 has been pretty supportive of him, and even recently featured him in a news segment.

Seasick Steve has been around for a minute, he's kind of like a rock and roll Forrest Gump in a weird way.  He's a 70 year old dude. Again, a bit old, but maybe new to you. He used to be a hobo, traveling the country by hopping on freight trains. In the '60s, he was friends with Janis Joplin.  In the late '80s, while working in a studio, he became friends with Kurt Cobain. In the '90s, he produced early recordings for Modest Mouse. And in the '00s, he started making his own records on customized guitars.  He recently signed to Jack White's Third Man Records.

I don't know as much about Black Joe Lewis and The Honeybears, but they sound like an old time Stax band or something like that. They play southern sounding hard driving soul music. So I was kind of surprised to learn that they aren't that old. (They're a new band who sound older than they are.)  It is hard to imagine a band like this getting too popular these days, but I hope that they prove me wrong. If you went to a party and these guys were playing, you would probably be drinking, sweating and having a great time. Their new album is Scandalous.

Fitz & The Tantrums is probably the most popular group I'm bringing with me this week. I saw them perform in the SiriusXM studios recently, and I thought they were a hell of a lot of fun. They sort of split the difference between '60s Stax and Motown.  (Also a new band who sound older than they are.) They write really great songs in that style, but they don't sound like rip-offs. It takes a lot of earnestness to write like that, maybe that's why I enjoy them.  I would love to see them get huge. Their new album is Pick Up The Pieces.

I wrote about William Elliott Whitmore last night, so you can check out that post. I'll talk about him tomorrow as well. And we'll also probably discuss Ted Hawkins, a guy who signed his first major label deal in the twilight of his life.  Ted will get his own No Expiration post in the near future. I'm a big fan.

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)

CHRIS CORNELL AT THE WELLMONT - AWESOME

Chris Cornell’s local solo acoustic concerts – two at New York City’s Town Hall and one at Montclair’s Wellmont Theater – sold out almost instantly. When I went to a ticket re-sale site, the cheapest seats were twice as much as the list price. I decided to take the gamble – I’ve seen some great performances by Chris (notably on his tour for his 2007 solo album Carry On, and with Audioslave on Lollapalooza in 2003) and some that weren’t so good (most of the Soundgarden shows I saw). 

I’m glad I spent the bucks, tonight’s show blew me away. It was a great mix of Soundgarden, Audioslave, Temple of the Dog and solo songs, and a couple of incredible covers, including two Bruce Springsteen Nebraska-era tunes. 

The show was over two hours, but he only played four Soundgarden tunes – probably because he’ll be playing them in July, when the band finally tour. 

He opened with the great Audioslave song “Be Yourself,” and then went into “Ground Zero,” from his most recent (and much-maligned) solo album, Scream. Scream, of course, was slammed in large part because it was produced by Timbaland, and while I thought it was an interesting idea, it just didn’t work. Timbaland treated Chris like any other singer in his assembly line of hitmakers, and a lot of the songs just sounded forced. But “Ground Zero,” and the other Scream tunes, "As Hope And Promise Fade" (a B-side) and "Scream," came off a lot better stripped down of the huge arrangements. I'd love to see an acoustic version of that album ("Long Gone" is definitely a great song). 

He played lots of "hits" (Soundgarden's "Fell On Black Days," "Burden In My Hand" and "Black Hole Sun," Audioslave's "I Am The HIghway," "LIke A Stone") all of which took on a new life without the hugely muscular bands that he played with on those songs.  There were also lots of fan favorites, Temple Of The Dog's "All Nite Thing," "Call Me A Dog," "Say Hello 2 Heaven," his Singles solo tune "Seasons," and "Sunshowers" from the film Great Expectations. And some really unexpected selections, like Soundgarden's "Mind Riot" from Badmotorfinger (inspired by the first Gulf War) and Audioslave's "Wide Awake" from their final album Revelations (inspired by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina). Back in the Soundgarden days, Chris seemed not to enjoy being onstage, and while he has always been really charismatic, he was never what you'd call "warm." Seeing him tonight was an altogether new experience: it was fun listening to him talk about the songs, and discuss politics a bit. I remember reading that when he hooked up with the Rage guys to form Audioslave, one of his conditions would be that it wasn't a political band. But it seems that maybe he was influenced by his former bandmate Tom Morello, he was getting a bit political at points, which I'm totally cool with. At some points, he seemed as engaging as Eddie Vedder on a good night, or even Bruce Springsteen. And speaking of... 

About an hour into the show, he strapped on a electric guitar and played a familiar riff. When he sang "New Jersey Turnpike..." people went nuts.  He covered the Nebraska era classic "State Trooper!" And funny enough, it was the most Soundgarden-y moment of the night, and even veered on being Sonic Youth-ish. He looped his riff and started soloing over it, and then just played with feedback for a while.  It was intense and totally awesome. And that wasn't enough Springsteen for him, he closed the show with another Nebraska tune, "Atlantic City." Unbelievable.  Who even knew he was a fan? 

There were a few other covers: Led Zeppelin's "Thank You" (which was funny, I remember the guys in Soundgarden claiming that they weren't influenced by Zeppelin at all, which sounded hard to believe... and "Thank You" kind of makes up for Chris' "Whole Lotta Love" debacle with Santana), John Lennon's "Imagine," MIchael Jackson's "Billie Jean" and Mother Love Bone's "Man Of Golden Words." 

I remember last time I saw Chris, thinking how much pressure his band must be under to be able to play like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam (on the Temple songs) and Rage Against The Machine (in the Audioslave songs). To me, it makes much more sense for him to tour solo acoustic, and I hope he does more of this between Soundgarden albums and tours, if they are in fact back as a semi-full-time thing. 

I have to mention Chris' opening act, William Elliott Whitmore. Amazing. Do yourself a favor and check him out. Right after he finished, I went right downstairs and bought his album (for $20!  But I had to have it).  I'll be writing about him more in the future, I think.