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Discovering Marc Berger’s Album “Ride,” Richly Evoking the American West

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Berger posterI 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.

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Happy to Be a Good NY Google Neighbor

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I posted earlier this week that I’d had a heads-up from Google Places NYC informing me that this blog and I are being featured in their Meet Your Google Neighbor program, which gives denizens of Gotham an opportunity to share online reviews of favorite restaurants, taverns, merchants, music venues, and bookstores, as well as educated comments about the best bike paths, picnic spots, urban beauty spots, and all manner of urban entertainments.

This afternoon I received the email blast that Google Places NYC sends out to all their subscribers with the announcement of each week’s new Neighbor, and it’s fun to see how they promote the fact that we New Yorkers relish sharing our favorite places with one another, and will give you a piece of our mind about them, given the chance. Below are screen shots of that email, which I’ve begun to share with the venues I’ve recommended on my Google Places page.

I’ve sent the email to The Living Room, the excellent club on the Lower East Side, with my write-up of a show I attended there last November–when Amy Helm, who sang with her father Levon on his Grammy-winning albums–sat in with the super alt-country Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. The Living Room’s longtime owner Jennifer Gilson quickly replied that she was delighted I was on the record saying of her business “Excellent vibe to this mostly acoustic room, though they also know how to rock out here. . . . I love this mellow listening room.” She asked me to say hello the next time I’m in the club and continue sharing reviews of shows I attend there.

I first learned about Google Places NYC last December when I attended an audacious event in the sumptuous lobby of the Jane Hotel in the West Village, where they–along with The New Inquiry, BOMB Magazine, ForYourArt, and New Directions Publishing–organized a public reading of the entirety of author Frederic Tuten’s influential 1971 novel, The Adventures of Mao on the Long March. After the nearly four-hour long reading, The New Inquiry‘s Rachel Rosenfelt introduced me to Google’s Esther Brown, who told me about the mission of Google Places NYC. When I wrote my blog essay about the reading I shared it with Esther, and we’ve been in touch since, with her encouraging me to start a Google Places page and begin writing reviews. This initiative of Google’s is an excellent example of the creative sort of community building that can be done with cool tools on the Web.

From the time I began conceiving The Great Gray Bridge I envisioned the site becoming a virtual water cooler for the appreciation of urban life, books, music, and culture so it’s really gratifying to see the blog gaining more recognition via Google’s promotion. Happily, the Web feature includes a photo my wife Kyle Gallup recently took of our son Ewan and me on a boat ride around Manhattan with the Statue of Liberty as backdrop. It’d hard to be more New York than that! // click through ‘share’ link below to see Statue of Liberty photograph . . .

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Rose Cousins & Band–Catching a Spark at The Living Room

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One of the first musical artists I chanced upon when I discovered the terrific Canadian indie music scene on CBC Radio 3 was the spellbinding Maritimes-born singer-songwriter Rose Cousins. I put her classic, “White Daisies,” a poetic tale of love and loss, in one of the first personal playlists I made on the Radio 3 website and have listened to it many times with its great vocal and concluding verse,

“You sent me flowers when you were strong/You were my baby, a whole year long/All you could tell me is how I’d done you wrong/Now I’ve got white daisies and a lonesome song.”

I was excited last month when I heard Rose would be performing in New York City at the Living Room, a great venue to enjoy acoustic and roots music and lightly amplified rock ‘n roll. When I arrived breathless last night, cutting it way too close for the announced 8:00 start time, I saw a very full room, and wondered where or if I might find a seat. When I saw there was no one at the door taking cover charge money, I realized that the gig was actually a release party for Rose’s new album, “We Have Made a Spark.” Someone was already saving the first seat I tried, but on my second attempt found a chair right in front of the low stage, closer to Rose and her mic than anyone else’s in the room. She was only moments from beginning her set when I shrugged off my coat and settled in to my seat.

The stage at the intimate Living Room was crowded with the excellent band she’d gathered around herself in Boston where the new album was recorded–with Charlie Rose on banjo and pedal steel; album producer Zachariah Hickman, plucking and bowing an upright bass and sporting a handlebar moustache; Sean Staples seated, on a battery of acoustic guitars; Billy Beard on drums and other percussion, playing great thumping beats; Austin Nevins on a big, gorgeous hollow body Gretsch electric guitar making tasty licks; Dinty Child, on an eight-string (!) acoustic guitar, banjo, and piano; and Ana Ege singing backup vocals, who was seated at the same table as me when she wasn’t singing. Rose sang beautifully and feelingly, moving between her Martin guitar and the piano tucked in the far corner of the stage. In her songwriting she boldly knits her heart to her sleeve, and in her vulnerability asks her listener to do the same. “Spark’ is a very intimate and personal set of new songs that began growing on me instantly. I had heard Radio 3 hosts Grant Lawrence and Lisa Christiansen say that she also has a great stage presence, often engaging in witty and self-revealing banter. This reputation is deserved, as she introduced virtually every song with a bit of story and a personal truth.

After the gig it was a treat to introduce myself to Rose, and tell her that I love her home province of Prince Edward Island. I mentioned that my wife, artist Kyle Gallup, painted gorgeous watercolors when we vacationed there a few years ago, and she replied that her grandma had also painted PEI’s lovely shores and red sand beaches. One of Kyle’s pieces is below, a PEI scene titled, “Doyle’s Cove, North Rustico, 2008.” 

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Blackie & the Rodeo Kings at The Living Room

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I got to hear a great Canadian indie music show this week. On Wednesday night fabled country band Blackie and the Rodeo Kings played The Living Room on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The Blackies, or BARK, have hung together for sixteen years, even while each member of the basic trio pursues side projects in music […]

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Wilderness of Manitoba In the Wilderness of Manhattan

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Tuesday night Nov. 1 was an exciting evening and got the new month off with a real bang. After participating in the reception for the American Philosophical Society at the Grolier Club (detailed in another post) I went to Brooklyn’s Powerhouse Arena for PEN America’s reception for new members, of which I am one. Saw […]

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