Imaginary Cities, Embarking on a US Tour

Readers of this blog may recall how partial I am to Imaginary Cities, a great band from Winnipeg, Canada. They are a five-piece outfit with Marti Sabit providing soaring lead vocals, Rusty Matyas on tasty lead guitar and trumpet, David Landreth on a great thumping bass, Ryan Voth connecting on drums, and Alex Campbell sweetening things up on keyboard. In April I had gone to the release party for their album “Temporary Resident” and had a great talk that night with Marti and Rusty. They were back in town this week, at Mercury Lounge, and I went out to hear them. Again, they played a great show and seemed to really connect with the good-sized Tuesday night crowd. For a full review of their performance style and striving songs, you may read the post I put up after the release party, at this link. For today, here are details on their current US tour, which tonight, May 17, will have them in Washington, D.C. at a club called Black Cat, continuing to such venues as Maxwell’s in  Hoboken, near NYC on June 15, capping off at Lollapalooza in Chicago in August.  Info on the tour is at this link, and below is a chart showing the cities where they’re playing on this tour and photos from this week’s show. // click through to full post for full tour schedule and photos

My Parents in 1948, about a Year after their Wedding

My now sadly gone parents–Earl Turner beaming and his pretty wife Sylvia Shiff Turner, with a gardenia in her hair. They were on a trip in June 1948 from Cleveland, to Niagara Falls and Hamilton, Ontario, in Canada, and to Detroit. The Turners liked Canada even then. Happy Mothers Day!

Prizing Great Advocacy Journalism at the Hillman Awards

“We want a better America.” These were the first words printed in the program of the 62nd annual Hillman Prizes. Reading them I experienced a moment of cognitive dissonance, for only a few days earlier Mitt Romney had uttered something similar at a campaign rally: “A better America begins tonight.” However, the words in the program were spoken in 1946 by Sidney Hillman, a very different public figure than the presidential candidate, who had a very different public agenda than the quarter-billionaire politician. Hillman was President of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, and he spoke them a couple months before his untimely death at age 59. The foundation that was later started in his honor has been giving out prizes for the best in advocacy journalism since 1950. Winners in previous years have included Murray Kempton, Bill Moyers, Spike Lee, Maria Hinojosa, and Robert McNeil and Jim Lehrer.

The latest rendition of the awards was held, fittingly, on May Day. I had been invited to attend by Tom Watson of causewired.com who asked more than a dozen bloggers to be part of a guest blogging contingent for this event at the New York Times Center. We were seated with a prime view of the presenters and recipients, with access to wifi so we could live tweet the proceedings. I emerged a few hours later, fired up and rededicated to the proposition that dedicated reporters, photographers, broadcasters, and authors really do make a difference in people’s lives.

The evening kicked off with remarks by Bruce Raynor, President of the Hillman Foundation, who observed that while New York Times columnist David Brooks has over the past few years been naming recipient of his “Sidney” awards, named in honor of conservative thinker Sidney Hook, the Hillmans have been giving out their “Sidney awards” for decades, and I promptly tweeted that we were at the “progressive Sidneys.” Here’s a rundown on the honorees, with takeaways from the speeches, and photos from the evening, reproduced here from notes and partial audio tape. Corrections welcome, please excuse any errors or omission; for further information, this link will take you directly to the Hillman Prize website. Click on this link to read about all the honorees and view lots more photos. // more. . .

#FridayReads, May 11–“Anatomy of Injustice” & “Have Not Been the Same”

#FridayReads, May 11–Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong, Raymond Bonner’s powerful and sad indictment of the system in a S. Carolina death penalty case. Also, “Have Not Been the Same: The CanRock Renaissance, 1985-1995 by Michael Barclay, et al, a rich, readable tour of Canadian rock n’ roll, accompanied by a great CD compilation of the same name.

Cuff the Duke–Great Folk Rock in Brooklyn May 12

NYC friends who love great live folk rock: If you’re in the market for musical entertainment this Saturday night, May 12, consider heading out to hear Cuff the Duke, an inspired outfit originally from Oshawa, Ontario. They’re playing at the Rock Shop, a friendly club with good acoustics on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn. The nearest subway stop in Union Street on the R train in Brooklyn. Here are details. They are not the headliners–though they’re good and polished enough with great vocals and songwriting to warrant top billing–so they may go on as early as 7:30. I’ve got a call in to the club about that and will post new info when I get it. I’ll be there. If you’re curious about their sound, click on the video below or on their band page at CBCRadio3 where you can hear many of their songs. Hope to see you then/there.

Reflecting on The Band’s Break-up and Levon’s Death

Among the pieces of journalism and commentary I’ve read about Levon Helm since word of his terminal condition was released by his family last week, and then since his death on Thursday, this one by Mark Guarino is the best yet. I recommend you read it, for it captures the injustice that accompanied The Band’s dissolution, and how Robbie Robertson and the businesspeople around him really did treat his four bandmates inequitably. According to Levon, in his memoir This Wheel’s on Fire, Robbie claimed all the publishing royalties on most of their songs, compositions that had famously been workshopped by all five of them, beginning at the Big Pink house, and in later sessions. For the sake of argument, even if Robbie believed he was genuinely responsible for most of the songwriting, why not assert a claim on a larger share of the royalties and then split the remaining percentage four ways? Instead, he just walked away with it all on most of their repertoire and by the time Levon received his cancer diagnosis in 1998, he had to declare personal bankruptcy and nearly lost his house. I know Robbie came to his bedside this week, and if Levon really reconciled with him that’s great, but it’s hard not to see Robbie’s visit as some self-serving absolution. It certainly adds to the sadness of Levon’s passing to say this, but I believe it’s true.

Now, as many articles have pointed out, Levon did mount a great second act with the Midnight Ramble, the Grammy-winning albums, and playing and singing with his daughter Amy. But that happiness stands in sharp contrast to the fact that nothing like that happened for Richard Manuel and Rick Danko, and this is where Guarino’s Christian Science Monitor, “Levon Helm and The Band: a rock parable of fame, betrayal, and redemption” is most valuable.

Manuel’s post-breakup troubles ended with his 1986 suicide, during a revival tour of The Band sans Robbie. Guarino tells us that Levon is the one who found him after he’d hanged himself. As for Danko, he died at fifty-one from complications of heart disease. Guarino, quoting from the memoir, reminds us of Levon’s words: “If Rick’s money wasn’t in their pockets, I don’t think Rick would have died because Rick worked himself to death.… He wasn’t that old and he wasn’t that sick. He just worked himself to death. And the reason Rick had to work all the time was because he’d been [expletive] out of his money.” To be fair, it should be admitted too that a hard-partying lifestyle would have contributed to Manuel’s and Danko’s early demise (see Danko’s stoned moments with Janis Joplin in the rolling concert film “Festival Express,” if you have any doubt how much Rick loved getting high), but it doesn’t change the fact that playing half-empty dives to keep making a living, for a musician who once played to 600,000 at Watkins Glen with the Allmans and The Dead in ’73 (which I personally attended*), had to have depressed him and Manuel to a point where continued substance abuse was, if not inevitable, unsurprising.

All this sadness acknowledged, it is comforting to see how sadness brings us all together, bridging intervening years. After posting on Facebook and Twitter over the past week, I’ve heard from high school friends, such as Seth Foldy of Friends School and hometown Cleveland pals, like Eric Broder. Eric referred me to the Drive-by-Truckers’ Danko-Manuel song, with its haunted lyrics, “Got to sinking in the place where I once stood/Now I ain’t living like I should . . . Richard Manuel is dead”.

It was fitting to me that the family’s first message about Levon’s illness, while originating with his wife and Amy (who I had the privilege of hearing sing a few months ago with Blackie and the Rodeo Kings**, a performance I wrote about here), was immediately passed along on social media by “Bob Dylan and The Band.” And then, after Levon died, this appeared on bobdylan.com: “He was my bosom buddy friend to the end, one of the last true great spirits of my or any other generation. This is just so sad to talk about. I still can remember the first day I met him and the last day I saw him. We go back pretty far and had been through some trials together. I’m going to miss him, as I’m sure a whole lot of others will too.”

In honor of The Band and Bob Dylan, and yesterday’s Record Store Day, I’ve taken photos of all my LPs and CDs coming from their great musical enterprise, even Robbie’s first solo album. (click on thumbnails for full panorama of album images

* From that great weekend, I recall that a heavy thunderstorm with distant bolts of lightning let loose on the Saturday night, and The Band, then playing, had to flee the stage out of safety concerns. When the downpour had ebbed, Garth Hudson came out first and sat at his organ beneath a protective little canopy, launching into an unforgettable rendition of the solo that opens “Chest Fever, a song on “Music From Big Pink,” “Chest Fever.” These moments are forever captured on one of the CDs photographed below, “The Band- Live at Watkins Glen.”

**From Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, Colin Linden, who knew and had played music with Levon, was interviewed by Jian Ghomeshi on the CBC Radio program ‘Q’ the day after his friend’s death, as was Garth Hudson, conversations that can be heard via this link.  // see more . . . for footnotes and photos. . .

Bonding with Shotgun Jimmie & John K. Samson at the Bowery Ballroom

I love one-man bands, those musical artists who can stomp, holler, and play licks while animating a whole set entirely on their own. Soloists like this captivate an audience with talent, musicianship, and personality. Last Thursday night’s show at the Bowery Ballroom offered ample pleasures like these, with the fresh and funny Shotgun Jimmie opening for master singer-songwriter John K. Samson in a show for the ages. Jimmie was charming, talented, playing kick drum with his foot, ripping on his Fender electric, and singing his quirky songs of striving and nerdy romanticism, maintaining despite all disappointments a cockeyed optimism. Even the title of Jimmie’s latest album suggests wit and wordplay: “Transistor Sister.” Here are some lines from the opening track “Late Last Year.”

Oh my darlin’ the legs under this table/are independently bumpin’ in to mine/They’re on a mission dispatched to disable/My defenses and they’re working just, fine

Like the Canadian rockers Library Voices, John K. Samson’s lyrics exude a literary quality, filled as they are with learned allusions to explorers, the classical world, and existential reality. He’s co-founder of a publishing collective in Winnipeg called Arbeiter Ring Publishing, a sort of Workmen’s Circle for books, which recently brought his Lyrics & Poems 1997-2012. As a book professional myself, I am intrigued with this rocker who also has a big footprint in the book and publishing camp. I see that Vancouver writer Steven Galloway, whose novel Ascension I published in 2002, has articulated what’s special about Samson’s work:  “John K. Samson is one of Canada’s finest living writers. He creates a world with a phrase, devastates with a word and restores hope with an image. Many novels do not contain as much humanity and emotional resonance as one of Samson’s lines. As a writer I am torn between admiration and jealousy; as a reader I am enthralled.” // more w/photos . . .

Stomping Feet in NYC with The Pack A.D. & Elliott Brood

Last Wednesday night I had the privilege of hearing two great Canadian bands on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, enjoying their back-to-back sets enormously. First up was The Pack A.D., a female duo from Vancouver who play hard-charging drums + guitar raw punk style. Guitarist Becky Black is angular and lanky, kind of a girl version of The Sadies’ Dallas Good, while lead singer Maya Miller drums fiercely and handles show banter with alacrity. With signature songs like “Sirens,” “All Damn Day Long,” “Making Gestures,” and “Haunt You” (with a great arcing chorus vocalized against a pounding drum beat, Black sings, “I died/I died/I died/I’ll haunt you,” stretching out the “I’ll” till it’s more wail than words. Their wall of sound made a helluva sonic impression on me and since then I’ve been loving their recent album, “Unpersons,” which I bought at the merch table. I was joined there picking out a CD by my CBC Radio 3 show buddy Steve Conte, a comics artist and comics dealer from New Jersey.

Next up in Pianos’ tight little music room on Ludlow Street were the Ontario trio called Elliott Brood, whose gritty sound feels as if it’s been imported from the early days of sound recording. More raw than roots, it’s a sonic stew of acoustic guitar, banjo, reverb-ed Fender Stratocaster, harmonica, and thumping drums. Mark Sasso, standing stage right, handles the acoustic, banjo, and mouth harp, while the electric’s in the hands of Casey Laforet, seated at the other side, and in the middle is drummer Steve Pitkin, who also has a small keyboard to the side of his drum kit. Mark and Casey traded off singing lead, also swapping high and throaty harmonies on many tunes. Mark and Casey are bearded, hatted, and vested, reminiscent in appearance of Band members from their prime, Rick Danko and Levon Helm. Their set list was composed of songs from across all the Elliott Brood  albums, including the latest, “Days into Years.” The analogy to The Band isn’t purely visual, as like those original greats from the North Country, Elliott Brood seems to have composed their songs by channeling roots from the last century, or maybe the century before that. For the current album, they borrow the motif for its ten songs from the conceit that a young man in our era has found letters of a WWI doughboy who’d written home about the terrors of the trenches. The signature song for this strand on the record is “If I Get Old,” a verse of which has these lines:

And when we got here we were young men/What we’ve done has made us old/Left to die out in these frozen fields/So far away from home/And if I live to see the end I’m going to make a brand new start/But I’ll never be the same again without my youthful heart. // more . . .