The only things I know about New Orleans based singer/songwriter Alexandra Scott are from listening to her at a house concert at a friend's house Monday. Seeing her perform with her band would be a different story. This was a rare chance to hear an artist in a solo, no frills, back yard setting in which she has to create context, meaning, and connection with a bunch of people who barely know her. She managed quite well, thank you very much. After writing this post, I learned much more about her by reading music critic Brett Milano's story for OffBeat Magazine. Brett was a guest at the house concert. http://www.offbeat.com/articles/sweetness-alexandra-scott/
July 20, 2015, Somerville, MA
No mic, no stage, no supporting band, no props, just a young singer songwriter perched on a folding chair in a patch of lush green grass in a back yard on Irving Street in Somerville, MA.
Host Phil Woodbury heard Alexandra Scott at a fancy New Orleans hotel where she was the opening act for Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Revue, one of Phil's favorite bands. He loved her stylings, chatted her up, learned she was heading to the East Coast for a writer's workshop and invited her to Boston – to play a house concert in his backyard. An audience of 30 of Phil’s music lover friends relaxed in lawn chairs, jets from Logan intermittently drowned out a verse or two, and Alexandra Scott serenaded a lovely July early evening’s transition into dusk.
I have no idea what Alexandra Scott sounds like with her band in a hotel lounge, on a New Orleans festival stage, or nightclub. Like many of the guests, I'd never heard of her. This was as much of an adventure for the solo singer as for the audience. It took her a few songs to get in the groove but groove she did.
Her first song, the iconic Buddy Holly's “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” with its refrain “Now you go your way baby and I'll go mine…And I'll find somebody new and baby, we'll say we're through, and you won't matter any more” is a harbinger of the territory Scott will inhabit the rest of the night. Accompanying herself on an acoustic guitar, she sings softly in a slow tempo, tinged with melancholy as opposed to Holly’s sunny rockabilly rhythm. Written for Holly by Paul Anka in 1958, it's one of the few covers in her repertoire.
"Gas Station Lover" showcases Alexandra's ability to forge a song from seemingly mundane daily rituals. Most of her songs are a way to make sense or at least music out of every day moments of human connection. In this case, a song is hatched when buying a Powerball ticket and being asked for a date from the young man behind the cash register, whose odds of getting a yes may rival Alexandra's odds of winning the jackpot - but whose interest flatters the singer. For both of them, it's sweet to dream of hitting a jackpot.
"You'll know this song, it's an old one," Scott chirps. Laughter from the audience, many of them of AARP age, one of whom says, "You may want to reword that introduction," which Scott does with comic flair.
"You Are My Sunshine" is the surprise package of the evening. Scott sings it in a minor key and changes up the phrasing to give it a dirge-like, nearly desperate edge completely different from any version I’ve ever heard. It resonates in my brain long after the song’s last refrain.
“There are two kinds of songs, the kind that you wrestle with and the ones that write themselves and you know they’ll be on your next record. This one wrote itself in five minutes.” Thus comes “Sorrow On A White Horse.” Full of dense imagery, a sense of loss, it masks hope with tears of acceptance of what’s not to be. It’s a great example of the ethereal tone that frames many of her songs.
"If you tell me that’s what you are, I’ll believe you and be sorry
If you tell me anything, tell me your true name
I am sorrow on a white horse, I go riding through the darkness
With the sound of tears behind from whence I came."
“Smell Of Cut Grass” is sung with exquisite longing for a disengaged lover.
"A dream that keeps repeating, a song in your head
Think about all those nights that we spent lying in your bed
Try to get it back, filling in the cracks, watch it slip away, start to decay
You remember the way that you felt but not just what you said."
"Smell of cut grass, smell of cut grass
Just has to happen, doesn’t have to last
Doesn’t have to last, doesn’t have to last
Smell of cut grass, smell of cut grass."
These aren’t chart buster songs - they’re sweet, honest, imaginatively sung, with lyrics that remind you of emotional places you’ve occupied yourself. Some are made with the simplicity of a Shaker box, others rich with nearly surreal imagery, poetic and opaque.
“You want Josh Ritter or Hank Williams?” she asks us. Hank by acclaim! Thus comes "I Can't Help It If I'm Still in Love with You," sung with stripped-down fragility as opposed to achy breaky country. Scott’s talent is bending a note here or there, changing the phrasing or timing and the next thing you know, you’re listening to the song that sounds new, surprised by how these tiny interpretations can turn a song on its ear. Pop? Indie? Alt Folk? Hard to pigeon hole.
Scott's voice is high pitched, often keening, and thin, much like the wispy clouds overhead. She’s not a belter or a rocker and she may never fill an arena. But her style is atmospheric, a mix of cerebral and confessional, that has a growing audience.
Scott switches from her six string guitar to a ukulele, which, of course, comes with an endearing back story about why she began to play the tiny instrument, used to make fun of hipsters who play them, and how her mother makes fun of her for playing it now.
“This will be the first upbeat song,” she says…and I can’t read my notes to tell you the title but I can say this proved she does giddy-up once in a while.
Scott hits the home stretch with a far out cover of Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me,” a heart on sleeve “I Loved You From The First Time I Saw You,” a post-Katrina dog song titled “Little Black Cloud,” an upbeat “If You Don’t Love Elvis You Don’t Love Me,” and “Coney Island Baby,” each preceded by a quirky story.
Alexandra Scott is a composer in the old time folk/blues tradition who finds content in the high, low, and dreamy moments in life. How far will her star fly? Hard to tell. But if illuminating the dark corners of the heart with insight, poetic imagery, and winsome stage presence has anything to do with it, she’s in the race.
Music critic Brett Milano, Alexandra Scott, host Phil Woodbury; Scott's 'merch' table
Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
July 4: Declarations of Inter-Dependence
July 4, 2015
July 10, 2015 edition
Somewhere down the line, celebrating our country’s independence morphed into ways we celebrate our inter-dependence with each other. As much as we look to the heavens for blooms of aerial pyrotechnics, we connect with each other on terra firma in long standing traditions of our own. I’ll bet many of you have versions of the one I just celebrated with the same gang with whom I’ve marked the occasion with for thirty years.
The recreation of the late afternoon party is as reliably predictable as the cadences of a John Philips Sousa march…from the little things like reprises of some of the same great appetizers adorned with teensy American flags, the grilled hot dogs and burgers, chips and dips, cold drinks of every construction, followed by the reliably tasty chocolate chip cookies, homemade brownies, and the massive fruit compote, to the big things like the people around the table (now two tables!) and the years we've spent reconnecting for hours before fireworks and watching the 'kids' grow up and begin families of their own.
This day’s presence of an 18 month old and a two year old certainly made a hit with all and reminded me of what seems like not so long ago that the “kids” who are now their parents had the same effect on us. And now we talk to them as grown ups. We’ve graduated from a two-generation party to a four-generation party, many of us now grand parents. How did that happen? Permanence and a sense of the fleeting of time mingle like the smoke from the grill and the clouds of exploded fireworks overhead.
The sense of conviviality and instant connection between us bursts out much the same as one of those lovely cascading firework displays that colorfully bloom overhead and shower down in slow motion fading in luminosity as they cascade to earth...much like the party itself, burns brightly, illuminating us all for moments of traditional festivity then dissipates, ready to bloom again when we reconvene next July 4.
Photo by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. iPhone5
July 07, 2015 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (4)