The Great Gray Bridge

Readers of this blog may recall the contribution I made last year to the book Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology, “Remembering Mr. Stress, Live at the Euclid Tavern,” a personal essay about a bluesman I followed avidly all the years I lived in my hometown. Now, less than a year after the book’s release, the enterprise has gone so well that the editors of the collection are planning to create an an online magazine, Belt, that will expand the concept of the book in to a continuing forum for writing about Cleveland, and more broadly, the Industrial Midwest. Co-editor Anne Trubek has announced a Kickstarter campaign to which I will make a contribution, and I encourage you to consider doing the same. With three weeks to go before their deadline they’ve already gained pledges that take them to more than half of their $5,000 goal. Like me, you’re probably receiving a lot of requests like this these days–this is definitely one worth offering your support. Here’s a link to the Kickstarter page with a video about Belt.

My wife and son and I bought tickets for Josh Ritter’s May 18 gig at Terminal 5 back in the winter, shortly after the show was first announced. When the night finally arrived this past Saturday, we were excited we’d be hearing him live for the first time. It was also our first time hearing a show at this venue, and we were surprised and pleased by how smoothly Terminal 5 operated. Though we arrived earlier than 7 PM when the doors were scheduled to open, we were admitted immediately, sent up to a rooftop patio and soon allowed downstairs in the big performance space. Our early arrival meant we were very close to the stage when the opening act, the Felice Brothers, took to the stage. Though hailing from towns in NY’s Hudson Valley, I heard tinges of Tex-Mex rock from this likable 5-piece, along with echoes of Doug Sahm and his Texas Tornadoes, driven especially by the keyboard and accordion work of boisterous brother James Felice. They were a great warm-up band and I was glad I later I had a chance to buy their CD, “Tonight at the Arizona.”

After an interval to reset the stage, Josh Ritter stepped up to his mic right at 9:00 PM. He addressed the audience:  ”It is so good to be here, this is my home now. Thank you for being here. We’re going to have an amazing night. If at any point in the show I look nervous, it’s  because I am.” With that he started finger-picking a Gibson acoustic guitar for his first song, “Idaho.” As he segued from his first song to his second, members of the Royal City Band began joining him on stage, with Sam Kassirer taking a seat at the keyboards, while Zachariah Hickman*, sporting an extravagant  handlebar moustache, picked up a Fender bass, followed by Austin Nevins on lead guitar and Liam Hurley on drums. The first song with the full band was “Southern Pacifica”–with its opening verse “Southern Pacific/Red, white and blue/Where are we running to,” and the  memorable chorus, “Remember me to Roxianna/You know she’s still lovely/Tell her I was on the move/Last time you saw me/That you only saw the back of my head.”

A bit more than halfway through the show, Josh spoke to the audience about his new album, “Beast on the Tracks,” a kind of breakup album written following his recent divorce. He alluded to the personal anguish that led to the composition of the new songs, and the resilience that allowed him to record them and, now sing them live for people, night after night, and do so joyously and not in sorrow.  As the band then moved in to playing the songs from “Beast,” Ritter became even more buoyant than earlier, even while some of his lyrics became darker. I was reminded of other breakup albums, almost a genre of its own: Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks,” released in 1975, and widely regarded as expressing his pain at the end of his marriage to the same Sara who he sings of in “Sara” from “Desire.” More recently, Canadian artist Kathleen Edwards released “Voyageur”–Rolling Stone reported she wrote the album after enduring a breakup of her own. 

For nearly two hours Josh Ritter and his fine band ranged widely across his rich repertoire, playing nearly 20 songs on the ride. Ritter is an exciting and ebullient performer, continually interesting to watch on stage. He lowers himself to his knees while continuing to strum his instrument; cups his hands to his mouth and howls like a wolf; turns his back to the audience to direct his band like a vested conductor; strides in close to Nevins as the sideman plays arcing lead riffs with clear tone; tosses away guitar picks like pistachio shells; and connects with everyone in the crowd like he’s playing and singing just for them. It was a thrill to hear and see him play live. His performance was a triumph of his winning personality. Below are pictures from this superb show, many taken by my wife, artist Kyle Gallup.

I’ll be eager to take in a new exhibit at the City Museum of New York, marking the 175th anniversary of Brooklyn’s Green-wood Cemetery, which its 19th century planners designed to be a pastoral enclave amid the cacophony of the ever-growing metropolis. According to the City Museum’s website, the exhibit “features original artifacts, sculptures, drawings, and Hudson River School paintings; historic documents; and photographs.” Even its antiquated spelling, with the hypen mid-name, rather like the New-York Historical Society, has a 19th century air about it.

Last October, I visited Green-wood for the first time–for the unveiling of the “Angel of Music,” a new memorial statue at the grave of pianist and composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk–and discovered that its 478 acres of rolling hills, big hardwood trees, and sparkling views of Manhattan and NY Harbor, make it a pastoral, soothing place for mourners to say goodbye to their loved ones. As the New York Times‘ Joseph Berger reports after a recent visit to Green-wood, the cemetery is still a pastoral balm to the daily cares of all city-dwellers. Here are some of the pictures I took on that day last fall, on a gorgeous Saturday that turned out to be just three weeks before Superstorm Sandy wrecked hundreds of trees and gravestones in the memorial park, damage they are still working to clean up in one of NYC’s most historic treasures.

Sunny THURS bike ride in upper Manhattan, heading up the Hudson to the Great Gray Bridge. Placid river, little wind. twitter.com/philipsturner/…

— Philip Turner (@philipsturner) May 2, 2013

I heard a great musical act last Tuesday at one of my favorite NYC venues, the Living Room**. That night I discovered singer and songwriter Marc Berger who’s assembled a tight acoustic band to create a roots-rich concept album called “Ride,” which takes its inspiration from the American West. As Berger writes on his website, “Clouds that forever stampede the endless sky, shadows gliding over canyon walls–the West is a vast expanse of magic and mystery. American artists from John Ford to Frederick Remington to A.B. Guthrie have used film, canvas and the printed page to convey the essence of its unique landscape and mythology.” To those associations, I would add the 1962 Kirk Douglas film, “Lonely Are the Brave,” where he plays a latter day cowboy unable to conform to modern society. The movie was based on  Brave Cowboy, a novel by legendary iconoclast of the American West, Edward Abbey. Relatedly, Kirk Douglas also played the lead role in the 1952 adaptation of Guthrie’s novel, The Big Sky. Adding to the association with the movies is journalist Glenn Frankel’s new book, The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend, on John Ford’s 1956 film with John Wayne. Now, Berger has written songs and created a sound that reflects the West of yore, and the West of today, exemplified by the lyrics of the title song, “Ride:

Used to be silent/Used to be open/Used to be romance in a life on the plains/Now it’s Exxons and K-Marts/Best Westerns, McDonald’s/And my cattle graze on the big missile range
Ride, ride/Get along little doggies/Ride, ride/So gold in the sun/Yippy-aye boys/Here the dinner bell ringin’/Get along little doggies/For day’s about done

Though I had never heard these songs, I instantly liked them, and the way Berger and his band presented them. The musicians on stage with Berger were his co-creator, Mike Ricciardi (a steady presence on drums, especially with the soft brushes; he also took landscape photos in Momument Valley for the handsome CD package, graphics that are viewable here); Deni Bonet (on violin and accordion, continually interjecting tasty textures); Rich DePaolo (playing lead guitar on a plugged in acoustic, as rich a contributor as any Stratocaster axe-wielder); Rob Meador (on mandolin); and Jeff Eyrich (upright bass). Berger’s deep voice brings an appropriately weathered sound to his songs, sometimes talking the lyrics, other times belting them out, often in the same song. His harmonica and guitar added another layer to the rich mix. They performed with great energy and care for the material. I was really impressed and look forward to hearing these songs many times over the weeks and months to come. Below are pictures I took of their performance and two videos from Berger’s excellent website, which has many resources devoted to the project. Please click here to see all photos.

** The Living Room is unfortunately facing the loss of its longtime comfortable home at 154 Ludlow Street sometime this summer. Its management is in search of a new venue, and conducting a fundraising drive to help finance the move. I urge you to consider supporting them with a contribution at any level. To do so, please visit their website.

Thursday night my wife and I greatly enjoyed the reception and opening for the new exhibit, “Jazz. Covers. Politics–Album Art in an Age of Activism.” We had been invited by Elisa Pritzker, artist and art curator, who assisted Nathan Cummings Foundation and Romare Bearden Foundation staff in mounting and hanging the show. They’ve assembled over 150 album covers as examples of social activism from America’s civil rights struggle, the opposition to the Vietnam War, and the campaign to end apartheid, among many other historic milestones shown.

The musicians and albums on display constitute a veritable hall of fame of jazz recordings, including Max Roach’s “We Insist!,” the signature piece for the whole exhibit, that used for its cover a news photograph of three African-American activists sitting in at a segregated southern lunch counter, as they and the white-uniformed counterman, all eye the camera challengingly; Nina Simone’s “Emergency Ward!,” with its backdrop of war headlines from daily newspapers; and Duke Ellington’s “Liberian Suite,” with its red masks, and his “Afro-Eurasian Eclipse,” with a tableau showing dozens of faces from the human family. The artists whose work is found on these covers are equally important, from Jacob Lawrence’s painting decorating a Jelly Roll Morton LP to several Romare Bearden works, on Wynton Marsalis, Billie Holiday, and Ricky Ford covers. There’s so much more on these walls: Miles Davis’s “Bitches Brew,” Paul Robeson’s “Songs of Free Men,” Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” and dozens more.

The spacious quarters of the Nathan Cummings offices on Tenth Avenue were ingeniously used to hang the album covers, as each time we turned a corner there was something new and splendid to see and read about, with insightful text alongside the images. In addition, a room was set aside for a listening booth where we sampled the music from the albums on display, and another room was reserved for a video about the album covers, musicians, and artists. The exhibit can be seen Monday-Friday, by appointment via email to exhibits@nathancummings.org. It will be up through August 23, so if you’re in NYC I urge you to make plans to see it. As an indication of the wealth of material on display, here are some pictures I took during our tour of the exhibit last week. Click here to see all photos

I knew Peter Workman, founder of Workman Publishing, who died last Sunday at age 74. I started ordering Workman titles from him and his sales reps in 1978, when I opened a bookstore. The past 5 years Peter and I were fellow members of the same monthly lunch club. He last attended one of our luncheons last November, after which he missed the next month and we learned he’d become ill. He never rejoined us. Peter’s company was one of the most successful independently owned publishers of our time.I’ve been tweeting and sharing about him since Sunday. Here’s a selection of my timeline since then.

RT @shelfawareness Sad news: @workmanpub founder Peter Workman has died, age 74.

— Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) April 7, 2013

Peter Workman – best publishing entrepreneur of his time RT @publisherswkly: Peter Workman Dies at Age 74 pwne.ws/ZISzct

— Dominique Raccah (@draccah) April 8, 2013

A few details hint at Peter Workman’s legacy-publisher of Preppy Hndbk, Silver Palate Ckbk&What to Expect franchise. bit.ly/ZbdoOJ

— Philip Turner (@philipsturner) April 7, 2013

Sad-thinking of Peter Workman passing today. After I went thru a layoff in ’09 he had me at his office&to talk abt my next steps-he listened

— Philip Turner (@philipsturner) April 7, 2013

Stunning stat in Peter Workman @nytimes obit-”worthy of Cooperstown-1 of every 3 @workmanpub books sold 100K or more. nyti.ms/17ow58c

— Philip Turner (@philipsturner) April 9, 2013

Had a fun time Monday night at the Studio at Webster Hall, where Vancouver bands We Are the City and Hey Ocean! stopped off on their current US tour. I had not seen either group before, though I enjoy hearing them on CBC Radio 3, so it was a real treat to hear both groups live.

We Are the City are a trio led by gorgeously expressionistic vocals from keyboard player Cayne McKenzie, complemented by guitarist David Menzel and drummer Andrew Huculiak. They play an anthemic sort of big-sound pop, with Cayne’s great vocals. They played “Happy New Year,” a favorite of mine from their 2011 EP “High School.” You can hear it and more of their music at their band page on CBC Radio 3. Their first full album will be released this coming June.

By contrast, last night’s headliner, Hey Ocean! have been around longer, with three albums to their credit. At their core, they are also a trio, which they supplement with additional musicians. The central threesome is bassist and producer David Vertesi, guitarist David Beckingham, and spectacular lead singer, and flutist, Ashleigh Ball. She has a great pop/rock n’ roll voice, full of character, inflection and power. She’s also cute and lots of fun on stage, bouncing around like a bundle of positive energy, which is also reflected in the striving message of their lyrics. Hey Ocean! just released their later album, “Is,” which I picked up at the merch table last night. For info on the rest of the US tour of We Are the City and Hey Ocean! visit this page at the latter’s website. Upcoming cities are Akron, OH; Lansing, MI; Chicago; Minneapolis; and Billings, MT. Here’s a video of one of their best songs, “Big Blue Wave.”

Making the night even better, it included meeting a new member of the #R3NYNJ, the local music appreciation group (and Twitter hashtag) I recently started with Steve Conte–owner of Funnybooks, a comics store near Parsippany, NJ– to share information on shows by Canadian artists in the NY area. Our new pal is Kennedy Davey, a transplant to NYC from Vancouver by way of Los Angeles, newly working in advertising after some years in the film industry. She’s only ever lived on the West Coast of North America, so this is going to be a big change for her. Cold winters, late-arriving springs, living on the eastern edge of a time zone–instead of the blessed western edge–with nightfall coming earlier even in summer. She’s an avid show-goer like me and Steve, so it will be fun bumping into her at live shows of Canadian artists, and perhaps at other live musical shows, such as the Brooklyn Folk Festival, which is the next music event I am excited about, April 19-21. Below are my pictures from last night’s fun. Please click here to see all photos.