Songbook: Volume Eight

I consider Steve Earle to be a kindred spirit of mine. That doesn’t make much sense when you think about it. I’ve never been to prison on drug possession, been married seven times or had a picture of Reba McEntire taped to my toilet seat. Ok, maybe the last one. But it’s not as though I can say that we have lived highly similar lives.

But he’s one of those guys you admire even when you don’t agree with him. He wears his heart and his politics on his sleeve. He brings the punk rock ethos of speaking truth to power and places it into a country music context. That makes his songs all the more powerful. It also helps that the guy is just an amazing songwriter. The man knows how to write a song that is meaningful and that will stay with you for days on end.

Last week I listened to I Feel Alright again as part of the random CD project. I had forgotten just how much I like this song. I wanted to play it over and over again at full volume. The story behind this song is that this is what was truly his return from government imposed rehab, which is a nice way to describe a prison stay. He had been as low and as close to death as you could get and this was his return to the light. He was back but he had kept his snarl.

For some reason I really identified with this song. I did play this song repeatedly, yelling the line “I’ve been to hell and now I’m back again.” Maybe that is a little harsh to describe my life but it really rings true. As anyone who has read this site with any level of a critical eye knows that I just haven’t been happy with my life for a very long time. I’ve had a lot of crappy moments over the past couple of years. Some (maybe most) were my fault but in the end I was just not enjoying myself. That is never a good thing to say about your life.

But the past month or two have been different. I’m actually having fun again. Not that things are easy or all of my anxieties have gone away. I just feel like I can take on all of the challenges and smile through them all. I feel alright. My life isn’t perfect but I can appreciate the mistakes. Steve explains it better than I can.

Songbook: Volume Seven: Tift Merritt "Broken"

Haven’t done one of these in a while. For those who don’t remember, this is an idea taken from Nick Hornby’s book “Songbook” in which you talk about music less in critical terms and more in terms of what it means to you. Thanks to the wonders of technology I can now ensure that you actually know the song that I am talking about (as in, here is the video)



Music has a funny way of finding you. It’s not as if one can walk into a store, look at a rack of CDs and go “This one is going to speak to me the words that I need to hear.” It doesn’t work that way. Enlightenment comes from odd corners and coincidences and actions taken years earlier.

I’ve mentioned before how I became a fan of Tift Merritt. Well, less of how I became a fan of hers and more how I became aware of her. In a nutshell while leaving a Kelly Willis show I was handed a flyer promoting Tift’s debut record and I noticed that she was very pretty, a fact that was sufficient incentive to give her a listen. How that reasoning works is still a mystery to me but I’m happy for it as Bramble Rose became part of the soundtrack of my life. I followed her career, thought that Tambourine was the album of the year and even had her sign her set list for me, which hangs on my fridge to this day. The worst thing I can say about her is the fact that my inclusion of one of her songs on a mix tape resulted in the recipient saying that she never wanted to speak to me again. Admittedly that was more my fault than Tift’s and she did change her mind (eventually and for reasons I have yet to comprehend).

For the past few years though my fandom really hasn’t had any outlet. Tift disappeared from the scene and though I still listened to her discs and recommended her to friends I didn’t know when or if I would ever hear a follow up. She didn’t really fall off my radar but she was slowly become a voice from my past, tied to a specific part of my life that I had been leaving behind. When I heard recently that she had a new disc coming out I was interested to see what it was like.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked it up over the weekend. I wasn’t planning on finding an album explaining what I have been going through the past few years. I certainly didn’t plan on going to sleep with the chorus of “Broken” floating through my ears. But all of this happened as part of a masterful artistic turn for Tift.

In essence, this is an album about finding yourself and needing to break away in order to do so. About realizing that there are times when you have to stop and reassess what is important to you. The story as to how the songs were written seems to have been taken from an old black and white movie. Tired with life on the road, Tift headed off to Paris to live in an apartment with only her guitar and a piano for company. In that environment, free from the noise and headaches that had filled her life she was able to find what was missing and reclaim her music. She even woke up one morning hugging the leg of her piano almost as if in a scene from a movie that has never been made. These epiphanies, these moments of clarity have helped her to create a group of songs that are heartfelt and emotional and just amazing.

If I had heard this album a few years ago I don’t know if I would have appreciated it as much. Maybe in a few years time after my life has resettled I will reassess my feelings. But that first listen made me stop everything I was doing and just listen to Broken on repeat for most of the evening. It is a song that has reached me at the right moment; one of those twists of fate that makes you happy that you are open to them.

Because I don’t know if I’ve listened to anything recently that explains my life quite as well. I’ve woken up to find myself in the midst of a life that isn’t satisfying. It’s as if I look around and wonder how I got here while realizing I’ve reached an age where the phrase “I’ve reached an age” has become very appropriate. All I want to do is stop and find the path that I am meant to be on and get back to being the person I am in my heart. To do what Tift did and chuck it all for a while and just be for a little bit and listen. That’s what I love about this song; the acceptance of what is wrong and knowing that the pieces can be put back together again. “I think I will break but I mend.” I hope that is the case for me.

Songbook: Volume Six

(Last week I had a comment on my blog on an old Songbook posting. I realized that I hadn’t written one for more than a year and I thought that since I’m now posting videos that this might make writing about a song a little easier. Here we go.)

Perfection is a funny thing. We all strive for it, whether we admit it or not. No one wants to screw up, everyone wants to be the star. We want to look the best and be the best at everything that we do. The fact that I come up short drives me up the wall because I can never figure out why can’t I just be perfect.

The thing is people who actually are perfect are amongst the most boring people alive to the point where there perfection ruins themselves. Take a model for instance. She might epitomize beauty, every single pore on her body can be considered magnificent, but you wouldn’t want to date her. Heck, a lot of the time you wouldn’t even consider her to be pretty. Flawless yes, pretty no. For some reason I always use Celine Dion as an example of this. She has a perfect voice that is completely forgettable. There is absolutely nothing there to latch on to.

What I love about Beth Orton (and it’s a long list) is that she is the most wonderfully flawed person I’ve ever seen. Her voice isn’t crystal clear, it has nooks and crannies and odd little corners that you never noticed before. There’s something about the range she sings in and the tone of her voice that just stays with you. Not in a humming the chorus when you leave the car sort of way. More like the song has become a part of your soul.

(I even extend it to her look. Beth has been on my Perfect Mate list for years even though I don’t know if people would consider her to be conventionally pretty. It’s just that even in this video she can throw a glance that makes me want to marry her (except that I think she already is married).)

In the end what I look for in music is not perfection but passion. I don’t need to hear technical mastery. It can bore me in less than an hour. But someone like Beth can sing in a key that only she knows and I am just spellbound by it. Passion doesn’t always mean jumping around on stage, playing full volume or begging the crowd for a reaction. Often it is just putting your heart and soul out there for the world to see even if it is not the image that most people would have originally drawn.

“Stolen Car” is a track from the wonderful and underappreciated disc Central Reservation. It’s another song about relationships as that is what most songs in the world are. Is the meaning important? I’m not sure it is. I just know that every time someone asks me who my favorite artists are Beth Orton always makes the list. Flaws are a wonderful thing.