pt at large

Arty Hill and The Long Gone Daddys: Honky Tonk Heaven

Arty Hill and The Long Gone Daddys
Sally O’Brien’s Bar and Grill
335 Somerville Avenue
Somerville, MA 02145
617-666-3589
Open 11 AM -1 AM
Here’s a clue about the vibe of this place - on the “music” tab of their site - that tells you all you need to know.
“NO COVER. Remember your bartender. We hope you dance.”

Question. What’s a remedy for these last dog days of summer, hot and humid, that are sucking the marrow out of Boston’s bones? If you pointed your pony over to Sally O’Brien’s in Somerville last night you’d have found an answer.

Honky Tonk and cold beer. Arty Hill and The Long Gone Daddys were in town for a night of light-hearted, story-telling, twangy, ultra danceable country western music.

Practitioners of the under-appreciated genre of Hill’s Honky Tonk style don’t get to town often. If you’re a dancer, you get ready to ride hard and get put away wet. If you’re a listener, you order a long neck Corona, pretend it’s Lone Star Beer -‘The National Beer of Texas’ - and feel like you’re in a Lone Star watering hole.

My friend Luster says this place and its music comes as close to Galveston as it gets around here - minus people packing guns in the pickup, attitude, and a reason to tell you to step outside. There is zippo pretension to this sweet pub.

Sally’s isn’t a far cry from the Cheers -Where Everybody Knows Your Name - kind of establishment. Friends hang out at the bar for solace, self-expression, and suds. The occasional loner watches a plasma TV on the wall behind the bar with the same sense of contentment he’d have in his living room, sort of like having company without needing to engage them in conversation.

And of course every night there’s the music and people who come here for the release. Short of confession, music is the best way to let go of your sins or at least forget them for a few hours. I guess we could rename this place Saint Sally’s of Somerville.

Arty Hill writes songs that mine heartbreak, longing, love lost, love found, and rowdy-fun-times that come across as two step operettas. You probably don’t have the twang but I’m betting you’ve felt the ups and downs Hill narrates in his three or four minute musical novellas. Hill’s covers of Hank Williams (“You Win Again” and “Lovesick Blues” complete with yodeling!) and Ray Price (“Crazy Arms”) underline how closely his own songs hew to the tradition set by the masters of the genre.

There’s an uncomplicated honesty in Hill’s honky tonk music. No bubble gum, no syrup, and, thank God, no string section - just straight-up intelligent lyrics. In case you’re wondering, this is not the high-pitched, nasal kind of singing and banjo music you heard on the soundtrack of Deliverance. Just Arty Hill on electric guitar, and the Daddys on a standup bass, drums, and a laptop steel. The chain without the saw.

Hill's well-crafted songs, from uptempo "It Ain't Workin'" to ballad "Hall Of Fame Of Nothin'," are layered with that gritty sense of playful energy and survival that make you tap your feet or take a sip out of that longneck in solidarity with the people he's singing about.

There were a bunch of dancers there last night who only sat down because Hill and The Long Gone Daddys took a set break. I was one of them. At the end of each dance, I had the choice of rushing back to write song titles and tidbits into my pad on the bar or staying out on the dance floor. Full reportage suffered a bit.

The term honky tonk, first used in print in an Oklahoma newspaper in 1894, referred to rough-around-the-edges establishments that offered alcoholic beverages, piano music and occasionally women plying the world’s oldest profession, to miners, cowboys, cattlemen, and laborers. The Galveston Daily News used the term honkatonk in 1892 to describe an establishment in Fort Worth. The music in these honkatonks was more upbeat than classic blues and was and still is rhythmically suited for dancing.

Honky Tonk music eventually influenced ragtime, boogie woogie, rock ‘n roll, hillbilly, country, and in turn was influenced by them. It's now in its present incarnation as western swing. You don’t have to be on a road trip through Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, or Montana to hear honky tonk influenced music these days. It seeps into country stations around America.

In case I haven’t made it abundantly clear, if you have a dancing bone in your body, it will begin keeping time when Hill and the Long Gone Daddys rev up the music. If you know how, you'll dance a Texas Two Step, or any kind of swing, or anything else you think you can imagine leading with a partner.

When I asked a woman who was swaying along with the music if she'd like to dance, she smiled, reached for my hand and said, "I don't know a thing about dancing, can we just make something up?" We did just fine, thank you very much, with a bunch of other happy dancers on the Persian rug sized dance floor at Sally O'Brien's last night.

And yes, Sally, I remembered the bartender.

The Long Gone Daddys (based in Baltimore, MD) who played tonight
Standup Bass - Steve Potter
Drummer - Ed Hough

Special guest
Mike Castellana of Framingham, MA, on pedal steel

PLAYLIST first set partial list
Unless noted as ballads, these were all country swing or two step songs  of varying tempos and singularly danceable to anything else you could make up on the dance floor.

“Living On The Road Again” Arty Hill original, uptempo
“Driftin’ In” Arty Hill original with lines like “Every bar’s a harbor when she comes driftin’ in…” mid tempo
“You Win Again” Hank Williams ballad
“White Lightning” ? not verified, uptempo with big time guitar and laptop steel
“Julie Don’t Get Married” slow tempo with Framingham’s Mike Castellana’s pedal steel wailingly weeping all the way through the lyrics like “Julie, wait for me because someday I’ll be free…”
“I’m Thinking It’s Better This Way” Arty Hill, mid tempo
“Church On Saturday Night” Arty  Hill original
“It Ain’t Workin’” Arty Hill uptempo original
“If You See Me Comin’ Around” Arty Hill original, uptempo
“Make My Wishful Thinking Come True”

Second Set: partial list
“Lovesick Blues” Hank Williams two-step with yodeling!
“Crazy Arms” Ray Price mid tempo
“Hall Of Fame Of Nothing” Arty Hill ballad
“It’s All Your Fault” Willie Nelson
“The Race Is On” Arty Hill
“Bar Of Gold” Arty Hill
“Me And My Glass Jaw” Arty Hill
================
The band played on but ptatlarge had an uncharacteristically early curfew.
Try going to http://www.artyhill.com/v3/ or
 http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/ahlonggonedaddys
to hear some audio clips

===============

To be investigated soon: “This place has the best burgers and fries around ” - from a regular patron, who spoke with great certainty.

The Crown Cafe: Belgian Waffle Alert

Crown Café
106 Main Street
Watertown, MA 02472
(617) 923-9219
Hours Monday - Sunday 6 a.m. - 3 p.m.

Waffle lovers, here’s an unassuming place for a very satisfying Belgian Waffle. The Crown Café in Watertown, MA.

The perfectly embossed, round, lightly browned, high-rise Belgian Waffle arrived with several thick twirls of fresh whipped cream and sliced fresh strawberries. The whipped cream was dusted with spice, just enough to give your taste buds a chance to register a familiar taste and another few moments of swirling it around your mouth before the light bulb registers and my dining companion blurts, “Cinnamon!” Subtle and satisfying.

The batter is home-made, says Owner Karren, native of Belmont and Armenia. This little place on Main Street is his first foray into the restaurant business as an owner. He’s been making a go of it for two and a half years, pretty good considering the economy and the competition in Watertown, which could easily be referred to as Dinertown.
.
The shy man’s gentle brown eyes light up as we tell him how utterly delicious the waffle tasted. When we comment on the rich taste of the syrup, he replies, “I make a mix of real maple syrup with commercial corn syrup.” My taste buds say he didn’t scrimp on the real McCoy.

My own plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and home fries was unremarkable but I’ll return soon for the lentil soup and the falafel wrap with hummus, tomato, and lettuce on the daily special menu.

Allen Toussaint: New Orleans Roots, American Music

Allen Toussaint
Scullers Jazz Club
400 Soldiers Field Rd
Allston, MA 02134-1805
August 20, 2009

Allen Toussaint. You may not know his name. You know his music. Music that was born in New Orleans and grew up in America. 

Perhaps you’ve heard of The Pointer Sisters, Boz Scaggs, The Rolling Stones, Bonnie Raitt, Manhattan Transfer, Ringo Starr, Gladys Knight and the Pips, B.J. Thomas, Otis Redding, Little Feat, Three Dog Night, Jose Feliciano, Dr. John, Robert Palmer, Sam and Dave, Johnny Winter, The Judds, Lee Dorsey, Al Hirt, Aaron Neville, The Band, Warren Zevon, Irma Thomas, Alison Kraus and Robert Plant? They’ve recorded his songs.

Toussaint produced and arranged for Paul Simon, Patty LaBelle, Paul McCartney and Wings, Joe Cocker and Maria Muldaur traveled to New Orleans to record in Allen Toussaint’s studio.

I knew Toussaint’s name was long associated with New Orleans. I had no idea his musical footprint was so deep.

Last Thursday, Allen Toussaint graced Scullers Jazz Club with a performance that transcended music. A package of dignity, genius, and humanity, he can light up a place as small as Scullers or as big as a few acres at The New Orleans Jazz Fest.

Lights dim. To the stage walks a man in a dark suit, purple and black striped shirt, lavender and rose paisley tie and pocket square. Right away you see the man with the nappy grey hair and salt and pepper mustache isn’t afraid to mix and match in fashion or music.

“All my life I’ve waited for the red light to come on so I could play my music, ” he says after bantering with the audience over our Haavaad Yaad accents. He hasn’t been on stage for more than three minutes and he has us in the palms of his strong key-striding hands.

Toussaint opens with “There’s A Party Goin’ On” and by the time he gets to “You got nothin’ to lose but the blues…” his fingers have pounded or feathered practically every one of the 88 keys on the baby grand.

Toward the end of the song, Toussaint stops, grins impishly at the audience, and says “Your turn…” The surprised silence that ensued for three seconds was the last time this audience would be caught flat eared. “Well,” he says before the next song, “I heard a lot of silence out there when in was your turn.”

He launches into a medley of his songs beginning with “What’s Her Name.” Every time he pauses and nods our way, the audience roars, “What’s her name, what’s her name!” I’m not talking about a subdued, let’s be cool about this, effort, either. This was as unbuttoned Boston as I’ve ever heard. Toussaint kept it up during “Mother In Law” and ‘Working In A Coal Mine” and the Boomer to Slacker-aged salt and pepper audience nailed every chorus.

First, I had no idea he’d penned those songs (and most of the ones that followed) and second, I was blown away by the crowds unfettered collaboration. I mean you practically have to pay a Boston audience to participate in music of any sort.

Maybe part of it is that rollicking sound that’s been called a rhythm and blues rumba crossed with a second line parade. New Orleans’ French, Spanish, Cajun, Caribbean, African heritage is concentrated in Toussaint’s music and he spins it out in his musical centrifuge.

When Toussaint invites tenor saxman Amadee Castenell, a Katrina displaced New Orleans friend who now resides on the North Shore, to the stage for a soulful medley of  “Saint James Infirmary" (Anonymous), “Just Can’t Take It" (Toussaint), “Dirty Water" (Toussaint), and  “Riding On The City of New Orleans" (Steve Goodman), Castanell proves his New Orleans credentials are for real.

“Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky From Now On” (Toussaint) a swampy boogie rhythm ‘n bluesy song with lots of pedal morphed into quotes from Edelweiss, Chopin, a Christmas carol, show tunes, pop songs of his own, Grieg, to “Chattanooga Choo Choo’, “Tea for Two”, Jelly Roll Morton quotes, Irish jigs, Polish polkas -yes, polkas as in “Roll Out The Barrel”! - , “My Foolish Heart” with a New Orleans rumba tempo and back again to “Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky From Now On” all so fast your head hurts from trying to keep up and your jaw is slack with awe and your brain is slapping its knee in joy.

After that, Toussaint settles everybody down again with “So Far Away From Home,” Paul Simon's song built on the architecture of J. S. Bach.

Toussaint often pairs “We Are America, (unknown composer)” a history lesson wrapped in a ballad, with his original of “Yes We Can Can,” (and I couldn’t help thinking of Obama’s campaign slogan) and he does tonight. The piano bench may as well have been a pulpit. The man is preaching what he believes.

When he gets to “The Sweet Touch Of Love,” music used in hot Axe Body Wash commercials, you realize how deeply his music has penetrated the culture.

Toussaint’s “Get Out Of My Life Woman,” a hit by Lee Dorsey in 1966, re-recorded more times than any of his other songs, is an up-tempo song with echoes of Jelly Roll Morton, Scott Joplin, Professor Longhair and the steeped New Orleans tradition. Toussaint’s thin singing voice has never been his calling card but it delivers his songs with infectious energy.

What happened next is spellbinding, and it isn’t even music. Toussaint quietly talks us through a reverie, a tone poem, about childhood trips in which his father packs the family in a 1936 Buick for a trip to visit relatives far far out into the Louisiana countryside. Toussaint remembers his father saying, “You need to know where you came from so you know where you’re going.” His richly detailed, extended description of the trip is filled with a rootsy sense of place and of belonging.

I’ll bet Toussaint has played softly on the keys and retold this story a thousand times and I cant imagine it feeling any more authentic, heartfelt, and spontaneous than it does right now. By the time he sets to playing “Southern Nights,” the song it inspired, my companion is in tears. 

If you’re old enough, you might remember Joel Chandler’s "Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings" which Walt Disney made into the film “Song Of The South.” Toussaint’s final song, “Southern Nights,” is a true Song of the South. 

The audience is on its feet cheering. Toussaint shakes hands with patrons in the first row and doesn’t head back to the piano. Sustained cheering could not possibly have produced an encore that could top "Southern Nights". Allen Toussaint slowly exits the room, shaking hands all the way out.

One vignette: at the merchandise table, Mr. Toussaint, still perspiring, stood up from his chair every time a new person came up to ask him to sign an album or CD.

Like I said, dignity, genius, and humanity.
 

Toussaint's Southern Nights Tone Poem

Allen Toussaint
Scullers Jazz Club
400 Soldiers Field Rd
Allston, MA 02134-1805
August 20, 2009 

At the close of the raucous “Get Out Of My Life Woman,” approaching what I thought was the end of the set, Allen Toussaint began feathering the keys and talking softy. The room’s energy, having pegged the needle from the crowd’s lusty participation with the choruses of the last song, was brimming with energy.

Toussaint’s tone was reflective. It settled the room down as a parent would calm an excited child at the end of a long day. It took a moment to register that this was not Toussaint tossing off some patter. He’d begun to tell a story in which he spun specific childhood memories into an extended reverie, mesmerizing, deeply personal, about family trips deep into Louisiana sharecropper countryside.

What followed was what amounted to a tone poem filled with  love and a rootsy sense of place and belonging. I'll bet Toussaint has retold this story a thousand times and yet I cannot imagine it feeling any more heartfelt, spontaneous, and veined with pride as it was at that moment.  It really deserves to share a space on a future CD.

I began to scribble as fast as I could. I couldn’t write fast enough to get all the details but here’s what I got. Close your eyes and imagine this being told to you by a gentle man softly fingering the keys on a piano while unfolding a story that goes something like this…

“Sunday mornings my father
whose name was Clarence
would pack all of us
my mother Naomi Neville
my sister Joyce and my brother Benson
into the car
a 1935 Buick
'You need to know where you came from
so you know where you’re going…'
he would say to us

we drove on and on
past old weathered gray houses
unpainted, never new
close together
and as we drove farther and farther
into the country
the houses were farther and farther
apart

it seemed like every house had a porch
that seemed to wrap all around
each one
and people were sitting on the porches
sometimes waving
as we drove by

we saw cows, horses, chickens…
(he pauses)
with all their parts intact
wells with water in them
and frogs
and we’d finally get to our porch
all the uncles and aunties there
and cousins running out to greet us
and I’d listen to the language
of the old folks
the patois, the Creole so thick
I could barely understand it
(Toussaint mimicks some Creole conversation)
but
if I saw an eyebrow raise up
it meant I better listen because
it was going to be important

aunties on the porch
always wearing aprons
even to church
would pick you up and
hug you to their bosoms
and some of them were
quite well endowed
and I’d struggle to breathe
in the soft mass
with the scent of
talcum powder
maybe that’s where the expression
love you to death comes from
(Toussaint chuckles)

after eating we’d all sit on the front porch
the old folks told old stories
an auntie would say
I know that old John
died on his mule
but I heard him jabberin’ and cursin’ out in the dark last night
and an uncle would say
you must be hearin things
and she’d say well he say he gonna pay a visit to you next week
so you find out for youself
and over in the corner by the left side of the door
was the matriarch in her  chair
never talkin

once in a while she’d get real still
and we’d get to worrying
then slowly her arm would move and her hand would reach down
to the floor and she’d pick up a small bottle in a sack
bring it to her lips and slowly put it down
and we’d all breathe a sigh of relief

and I knew that I was in the right place
and everything important
in the world was right there
on that front porch
if there was something wrong with something
there was someone there who could fix it

it was dark out there at night
no light no electricity no gas to light anything inside or outside
and quiet
so very quiet outside
pitch black
but I knew that nothing would ever happen to me on that porch

when it was time to drive back home
I sat in the back seat
looking up at the only light
light that was coming down from the moon
as it filtered through the trees
that lined the road

the moonlight turned the leaves silver
and that’s where the next song comes from….”

He began to sing and play “Southern Nights.” I don’t think anyone in the audience could help but think of the ties that bind us, or we wish would bind us, to our kith and kin.

Southern Nights lyrics (written by Allen Toussaint in 1975, it sold over one million copies when country-pop singer Glenn Campbell covered it in 1977)

Southern nights
have you ever felt a southern night?
Free as a breeze
not to mention the trees
Whistling tunes that you know and love so.

Southern nights
just as good even when closed your eyes.
I apologize to anyone who can truly say
That he has found a better way

Southern skies
have you ever noticed southern skies?
It's precious beauty lies just beyond the eye.
It goes running through your soul
Like the stories told of old
Old man
he and his dog that walked the old land
Ev'ry flower touched his cold hand.
As he slowly walked by
weeping willows
Would cry for joy
Joy

Feel so good
feel so good
it's frigth'ning.
Wish I could,
stop this world from fighting.
La da da da da da la da da da da da da da da

Mysteries
like this and many others in the trees
Blow in the night
in the southern skies.

Southern nights
they feel so good it's fright'ning . . .
Wish I could stop this world from fighting
La da da da da da la da da da da da
da da da da da da da da da da da

The Family Jewels: Doo-Wop - Alive and Swell

The Family Jewels
Sally O'Brien's Bar and Grill
335 Somerville Ave.
Somerville, MA  0214
Monday August 10, 2009

If you’re of a certain age, listening to your first live Family Jewels concert can suck you down the rabbit hole and deposit you bam into the midst of memories of sock hops, Clearasil commercials and a type of mellifluous harmonic convergence that poured accelerants into adolescent firestorms that free-ranged through your smutty teenage one-track mind. We’re talking “Doo-Wop,” a style of music that style left a vapor trail that’s still visible. And in this case, audible.

Look in the right places and you can still find evidence of that glorious white contrail. Sally O’Brien’s was the right place last Monday and The Family Jewels band was flying high.

The vibe vivified memories of the Friday night Boys’ Club Dances in my hometown, boys on one side of the gym floor figuring out how, as damn cool as possible, to cross the no man’s land in the middle of the floor to ask a girl to dance, then determine exactly how close to dance the slow ones, many of them dreamy doo-wop songs that ionized hormones already in danger of exploding out of the dancers’ pores.

The 1950s was the music industry’s Big Bang. By the middle of the decade, one form of popular music was draining out of the country’s kitchen sink and other forms, like visitations from alien planets, used radio airwaves to penetrate the country’s homogenization shield with a mix of rootsy, country, rhythm ‘n bluesy, rockabilly sounds.

Gurgle, gurgle gurgle…Teresa Brewer, Perry Como, Nat King Cole, The Mills Brothers, Patti Page, hell, even Ol’Blue Eyes Himself began falling off the charts. Up into Billboard’s Top Ten floated unlikely artists like Billy Ward and His Dominoes (Sixty Minute Man, 1951), The Spaniels (Goodnight Sweetheart, It’s Time To Go, 1954), a supernova named Elvis Presley in 1955,  Sam Cooke (You Send Me,1958), The Platters (Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, 1959).

Elvis Presley took the mix of gospel, rockabilly, rhythm and blues, he grew up with and went one way. Others, vocal groups primarily from big cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, and Los Angeles, added pop music, a cappella, ballads, jump blues and swing into an alchemy that threaded in and out of mainstream music from the 1950s to the early 1960s.

This would be the form of smooth, tight-harmony, vocal music called Doo-wop that had its roots in African American communities in the 1940s. The so-called “race music” bubbled through cracks in the mainstream around the time Elvis blew the hinges off the doors of popular American music.

If you want evidence of this peppery genre, there’s the Family Jewels fronted by vocalist Fred Griffeth. These guys channel close-harmonied, dance-friendly, heart-on-sleeve, neighborhood-boys-standing-on-the-street-corner music that’s at the heart of doo-wop.

By the time I reached Sally O’Brien’s at 8:07 PM, they’d just cranked into their first set and the dance floor was full. These five guys can sing as well as they play. Asa Brebner, guitar, Andrew Mazzone, bass, Steve Sadler, laptop steel, Kevin Shurtleff, drums, are all miked up and deep in harmony with an uptempo “Oh Gosh, Oh Gee.”

Griffeth is the impish spark. He growls, hoots, banters, and teases. Occasionally all you can see of him is the top of his straw snap-brim hat as he winds his way through the dance floor proclaiming, “Monday is the new Saturday night!”

He’s been known wade onto the dance floor to tap a guy on the shoulder to "cut in" and dance with a woman for a few bars then hop back to the bandstand for his turn at the mike. Nothing forced about it. His rich baritone would have put him at the center of any street corner doo-wop group of the fifties and features him as the gemstone in the Family Jewels setting.

Brebner and Mazzone first hooked up with Griffeth to play for a friend’s wedding in 1990. The show rocketed off so well that Griffeth founded a group called Blue Heaven which still plays locally.

The Family Jewels was born in the early 2000s. Brebner and Mazzone have a huge catalog of rhythm ‘n blues songs. Local laptop legend Steve Sadler and drummer Kevin (Spider) Shurtleff round out the group.

These guys are masters of their instruments but the Family Jewels' main focus is singing those harmonies together. Griffeth puts his own vocal stamp on the songs and The Family Jewels hand-delivers them with five-part harmonies loaded with raw zest and playful energy.

 “Our music has, over the past three or four years become a rich American gumbo of styles and I'm delighted. Sometimes the R&B numbers are more Rockabilly, the gospel tunes get that swampy New Orleans feel in them and the country oftentimes will swing into something jazzy and citified!” Griffeth says. That energy has deep roots.

Niche music, yes. Limited audience, maybe. But happy, rich and rootsy music, definitely.

For more info, check http://fredgriffeth.net/index.html
and click on “You’re So Fine”
http://www.asabrebner.net/index.html
http://www.myspace.com/familyjewelsboston

=======================
Partial Set List
Oh Gosh Oh Gee,  uptempo, sort of rockabilly
You're So Fine, mid tempo, swing or whatever you kind of dance you want
Why I Love That Girl,  uptempo swing
I Saw Her Standing On The Corner,  mid tempo swing or groove
Your Precious Love, ballad (Whew)
It's Time To Rock, Don't Let Go uptempo swing or whatever you kind of dance you want
Oh I Love You Forever, great ballad, Johnny Ace?
Pretty Little Girl ?
Crazy Little Mama, Come Knock Knock Knockin', uptempo swing
Yes Im A Fool Falling In Love With You, ballad i think,
Fine Wine, uptempo swing
Waa Waa Baby, I Aint Gonna Let You Go, uptempo swing