The old/new way to listen to live music

There’s something humbling and heart-warming about being invited into someone’s home. Hospitality stirs a powerful response of gratitude.

Kate Campbell, photo by Suzannah Raffield.

Every time I sit down to a meal or stand around eating finger foods in someone’s home, I know they have gone to a tremendous effort and expense. I feel valued.

Now, add in the experience of live music, and the occasion moves up the rungs of memory a few notches.

Carla and I had the great pleasure of receiving the hospitality of our friends the Mackeys last Friday night. They treated us to a spread of food and the stirring strains of our favorite musician, Kate Campbell, in our first-ever house concert.

For the first hour or so we caught up with old friends, met new ones and generally enjoyed adult conversation without having our children in tow. For the next few hours, we sat in Brittany’s and Joe’s living room listening to Kate tell stories in word and song.

I was thrilled she sang “New South,” the unofficial anthem of this blog, in her opening set which also included her Southern lament “Look Away.” I beamed with pride when she elected to sing one of my requests in her second set, “Visions of Plenty.” She stuck mostly with the guitar, but at the end of her first set, she did give us one or two tunes on the piano.

Still, I couldn’t get over the mixture of awkwardness and excitement over having such a personal experience in such an intimate setting. I’ve seen Kate perform at church, at large-scale religious gatherings such as CBF’s General Assembly, in songwriting workshops, and even Eddie’s Attic, the Decatur, Ga., landmark venue that routinely hosts outstanding singer-songwriters. I’ve enjoyed her and her music in each setting, but I have to say that the house concert was the best.

I wouldn’t exactly call house concerts a new trend. Back in the 16^th century it was called “chamber music.” Nobles would have musicians play in their homes for their friends. Maybe the contemporary trend is a revival of that practice. Curious, I went in search of information about this trend in live music and found several pieces online from CNN to the New York Times, both dated 2010. Three years is about average for me to experience a trend that the rest of the world begins to notice.

You don’t have to be a music promoter to recognize house concerts are a win-win for the performers as well as the patrons. House concerts provide a powerful experience of the arts and a livelihood for the musicians. The latter part of that equation is why home concerts are making a comeback. Constant touring is a rough way for a musician to make a living: playing in bars where the music is just a backdrop, paying out of pocket for travel expenses, being away from family and friends for weeks at a time. All of these factors and more make the home concert an appealing way to earn a living and share music.

In my research, I quickly found two sites dedicated to the proliferation of house concerts: Concerts in Your Home and Dinner and Song. The concept behind these sites is that they offer you the opportunity to buy tickets to home concerts in your area. Slightly riskier in terms of social awkwardness – paying to go to someone’s home you may not know to spend time in close proximity with complete strangers – than going to a show in a more impersonal venue, these sites make a compelling case for the house concert.

We were able to get Kate's latest release, "Live at the Library" which was recorded with Southern historian Wayne Flynt during Samford University's Homecoming in October 2008. This limited-pressing CD will be available May 15. I'll spare you the full review and say it's amazing. — We were able to get Kate’s latest release, “Live at the Library” which was recorded with Southern historian Wayne Flynt during Samford University’s Homecoming in October 2008. This limited-pressing CD will be available May 15. I’ll spare you the full review and say it’s amazing.

And that’s what made last Friday night so special: it was a gift. Brittany and Joe didn’t ask anything in return. Yes, we bought the one CD of Kate’s that we don’t already have, but otherwise, we didn’t have to contribute anything.

I’m sure your musical taste will dictate whether or not a house concert is for you. I can’t imagine experiencing Metallica or Guns ‘N Roses in a living room. But if singer-songwriters are your preferred genre, I highly recommend a house concert. It will be an experience you won’t soon forget.

Have you ever been to a house concert? Who performed? What was it like? Did you enjoy it? Leave a comment below and share your experience.

Sick day

Raise your hand if you ever envied your sick child’s excused day of lying on the sofa watching cartoons and napping.

OK, so I’m the only one?

No? You say you have felt that way, too? You have been burning the candle at both ends until there’s no wick left and you still haven’t found a way to extinguish the flame?

know when to take a sick day billboard — Sometimes what you need to do IS on a billboard in front of you.

A week ago today I came home from a business trip to Pittsburgh to find Carlton vomiting. Welcome home. I can’t really complain because Carla had been dealing with it all day. The 24-hour stomach virus ended up lasting 72 and required at least four changes of bed linens. Seriously. Four.

The kid would run around all day without a symptom. He would go 18, 20, even 24 hours without vomiting and we would think we were home free. Then he would fall asleep at night, completely exhausted. Several hours into my own REM cycle, his cries would send us scrambling to his room where the evidence of his illness hit our nostrils before our eyes could adjust in the darkness. It was not remotely pleasant.

But Carlton was sick during the weekend. It was such a relatively busy weekend that I didn’t have time to envy him. Carla and I juggled him as we kept up our pace – she bought groceries, I went to a deacon’s meeting, she took Barron to youth group, I took Harris’ Cub Scout den bowling, and on and on, back and forth. We didn’t slow down at all.

Monday came and Carlton cleared the 24-hour hurdle. He was pronounced cured, so he could return to preschool on Tuesday. Carla’s day of teaching preschool was not threatened. We held our breath, hoping that our mandatory household hand-washing regimen and antibacterial wipe-down of every surface was enough to keep the scourge at bay.

Alas, at 3 a.m., Harris was knocking on our bedroom door giving off that now all-too-familiar malodorous clue that something was amiss. The cycle was repeating.

Fortunately, my two meetings of the day were such that I could phone in, and my very understanding supervisor permitted me the opportunity to work from home. This allowed Carla to carry out her plans for her preschool class without having to get a substitute, and everything else was fairly normal.

Harris was no distraction at all. After about 10 a.m., there were no more symptoms. He simply lay on the sofa with “Tom & Jerry” dueling in front of him. He ate a couple of crackers and drank a juice pouch at about 2 p.m. and seemed to perk up a little.

As I stood there conducting my visual scans for any hint of his condition an unfiltered thought burst into my consciousness: “Wow, I wish I could be sick.”

What? No. I didn’t mean that. No one would wish to have the awful stomach bug. It had completely paralyzed our family a couple of years earlier when we all shared it. That experience was seared into my memory. I couldn’t possibly want another dose of that.

I edited myself.

“What you meant to think was ‘I wish I could have a sick day.’”

See, public relations people even put words in their own mouths.

It’s not that work is overwhelming. I’m thoroughly enjoying my new job, and the challenges and fresh problems to solve and new people to meet have been invigorating.

It’s not that I don’t believe in service to my church. Serving as a deacon is a privilege, and every interaction with the families I care for is sacred and brings me closer to my community and to God.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy serving as a Cub Scout den leader. Those boys with their boundless energy and endless curiosity love tackling new challenges together and learning new skills.

sorry your sick day is due to actual sickness — Wouldn’t you rather get some rest before it comes to this?

It’s just that sometimes it all has to stop in order for me to get my bearings again. You know what I’m describing, right? It’s like when you’ve got nine browser windows open with at least two of them streaming sports highlights and one playing country music and your computer can’t process the data fast enough so the machine just locks up.

The real truth is that our bodies do the same thing. Whether it’s a head cold or a stomach flu or exhaustion, if we don’t have the good sense to slow down and rest, our bodies will force down time on us.

Rest is fleeting in the New South. Busy is the norm.

My wish for all of you is that it doesn’t take a sick day for you to find some down time. In fact, you should go ahead and plan on it right now. Go ahead. Put it on your calendar. Find a day. You need it more than you realize.

If you don’t, your body will.

If you couldn’t relate at all to today’s post, then great. You are a better person than I am. But if you have ever been jealous of your sick child because they got to rest, then you’ve got a problem. Share your story by leaving a comment below, and then go take a nap. You’ll feel better. I promise.

Piano music

New South Essays readers know I’m a fan of Southern singer/songwriter Kate Campbell, so when her 13^th album “1000 Pound Machine” was released April 3, it wasn’t a stretch to predict a review was coming.

Kate Campbell at the piano — Kate Campbell at her "1000 pound machine"

I was intrigued by several twists on this album. First, Campbell trades her customary acoustic guitar for a piano, the instrument of her training and youth. Second, she is joined by an all-star cast of musicians including Will Kimbrough, Spooner Oldham, David Hood, John Deaderick, Dave Jacques, David Henry, Paul Grifﬁth, Sloan Wainwright and Emmylou Harris.

And third, no matter what instrument Campbell plays, her melodic storytelling always delivers.

Even with high expectations, I was not disappointed. From the first track to the redux, Kate delivers soulful ballads, playful imaginary scenarios and spiritual depth that will unfold over many hours of listening.

In case there’s any doubt that the album’s title refers to a piano, the title track “1000 Pound Machine” begins with a lesson of sorts on exactly how a piano makes music. Line by line, Campbell explains the technical details of making music on a piano, but song by song, the album restores the mystery by placing the emphasis on storytelling.

The sound might be a little different, but the lyrics are classic Campbell. Each song tells a uniquely Southern story with beauty, grace and cleverness. She connects the South’s agricultural roots with a very modern quandary in “Wait for Another Day.” A farmer’s decision turns out to be a universal challenge faced by procrastinators everywhere.

Campbell then takes us on a bus ride across Alabama in “Montgomery to Mobile,” imagining George C. Wallace and Rosa Parks seated next to each other. The excited-to-travel child in all of us is transported down the flat stretches of road flanked by cotton fields and pine trees, and the idealist in all of us is given some reason to hope that human beings can overcome their differences and connect on deeper levels.

“Red Clay After Rain” is a longing for the South by an ex patriot Southern who moves up north for economic opportunity. The song’s protagonist declares “I miss cotton, camellias, curtains of cane and red clay after the rain.”

“Spoonerville” is a tribute to legendary musician Spooner Oldham, who returns to play with Campbell again on this album. The lyric “Don’t you know, you gotta have soul if you want to rock and roll” speaks to Oldham’s approach and what he has brought to Campbell’s previous work.

Haunting and beautiful, “The Occasional Wailer” is an instrumental that sounds as if it has blown in from the Celtic isles.

Album cover of 1000 Pound Machine — "1000 Pound Machine" was released April 3

In the bluesy ballad “Alabama Department of Corrections Meditation Blues,” Campbell’s adopted persona laments the circumstances and character traits that led to his incarceration. But ultimately the song is about redemption and being born again. Campbell seems to be asserting that freedom is a function of the spirit and not physical space, and Emmylou Harris’ vocals add a richness that drives home the point with emotional power.

“I Will Be Your Rest” has a message we can all afford to soak in from time to time, with a warm and full sound. The song envelops you like a hug from God. Next time you are feeling down and out, a good dose of this song will bring comfort and maybe a few tears.

“God Bless You, Arthur Blessitt” tells the true story of the fellow who carried a cross around the world. Rather than focus on those elements of Blessitt’s journey that would strike people as fanatical, Campbell poetically congratulates him for his commitment, perseverance and sense of direction.

“Walk With Me” has a Hammond organ to complement the thousand-pound machine in this song that updates a hymn with compelling emotion and earnest pleading. None of us want to walk this “tedious journey” alone.

The album ends with a reprise of “1000 Pound Machine” that, absent the lyrics, reiterates the piano theme and injects some of the Hammond and an undertone of another piano that intertwines with the dominant melody like two playful swans floating on a still lake.

The final song is “1000 Pound Machine Redux.” Each version plays with sound in different ways, but what all of the versions capture is a sense that life carries on amid playful and sometimes fearful distractions. You can read your own emotional state into the stanzas, and I think I could hear something different in it if I listened to it a thousand times.

For Campbell’s fans, this album is a delight. If it’s your introduction to her brilliant songwriting, you need to invest in some of her other music to hear the contrast. I highly recommend you spend some time with Kate and her 1000 Pound Machine. Don’t “Wait Another Day.”

Two nights in Texas

Mississippi-born singer songwriter Kate Campbell intruded into my awareness in the late ‘90s, and since then, each lyrical and patently Southern album she releases is a must-own in my limited collection.

On Sept. 27, she released her latest, a live album called “Two Nights in Texas,” with recordings from back-to-back shows April 8-9, 2010, at the Blue Rock Artist Ranch and Studio in Wimberley, Texas.

The 14 tracks showcase Campbell’s diverse range of styles and topics, although all are grounded firmly in the red clay of Dixie.

Her repertoire, while not exclusively ballads, tells stories. I had the opportunity to hear Kate explain her songwriting process back in 2005 at a conference in San Antonio. That peek behind the curtain has helped me hear the stories she tells even as I tap my foot or sing along.

Of course, I’m partial to “New South,” a 2002 song chronicling the obvious as well as the subtle changes to southern living that indicate even tradition-laden Southerners are evolving. The version on “Two Nights” is a little more up-tempo, and the dobro gives it a rich sound.

A compelling element to the album is a seamless medley called “The Steal Away Trilogy.” At a little more than eight minutes, the piece includes her songs “Would They Love Him Down in Shreveport,” “Peace Comes Stealing Slow” and “Steal Away.”

As a fellow preacher’s kid, I resonate with the way she weaves deeply spiritual themes into her stories, letting hymns, Southern gospel and spirituals infuse and inform her music. I like that I can put the windows down and turn up the car stereo, as she suggests, and crank out “See Rock City” or mull the truths of “10,000 Lures” in mellow contemplation.

Of “10,000 Lures” Kate says from the stage: “My mama said ‘I believe that song could go in the Baptist hymnal.’ I said ‘I don’t believe the word ‘voodoo has ever been in the Baptist hymnal.’”

Though I’ve heard it dozens of times, I’m still haunted by “Crazy in Alabama,” and this rendition is a good one. The story of the Fall of Adam gets a Mississippi Delta reinterpretation in “Genesis Blues.” Your heart will melt when you remember your old home place as Kate reminisces on “Tupelo’s Too Far,” and I defy you to listen to “Look Away” without feeling a pang of regret at how insidious the snare of racism has been in the South.

As I’ve previously stated in this space, I’m more of a writer than a musician, but unlike some singer songwriters, Kate has a beautiful voice that can lilt or twang depending on the context. And on this album, the very accomplished musicians accompanying her deserve credit, including Sally Van Meter on dobro, Scott Ainslie on guitar and Don Porterfield
on bass.

If you’ve had the misfortune of missing out on Kate’s music this long, I urge you to start with this live album. Kate spins a good story with or without music, and her comments captured on the album will give you a taste of her colorful personality, eye for telling details and sharp wit.

After you’ve soaked in “Galaxie 500,” “Free World,” “Cotton Field Away,” “Jesus and Tomatoes” and the rest, you’ll be ready to appreciate her broad discography. My recommendation: Listen to “Two Nights in Texas” for a few weeks, then go and buy everything she’s ever recorded.

I promise the experience will make you wiser and more in tune with Southern culture in all its expressions.

I Gotta Go … listen to Robert Earl Keen

I’m a writer, not a musician. That’s the best way to explain my fascination with country music – specifically, alternative country and the work of singer-songwriters. I’m not much of a fan of that over-produced, impure sound coming out of Nashville the last 10-20 years.

A few years ago, my native-Texan friend, Bob, introduced me to the music of Robert Earl Keen. Texas-born and Texas-bred, Keen’s knack for storytelling outstrips his singing ability, so naturally, I immediately took to his music.

On Tuesday, Keen released his latest album, “Ready for Confetti,” with the pre-released single “I Gotta Go.”

This album has a different feel than Keen’s previous work. The imagery-rich ballads such as the evocative “Black Baldy Stallion” and “I Gotta Go” are still there, but overall, the pace was slower and the mood more subdued. It’s as if Keen, 55, is slowing down after 30 years in the music business, and he thinks the world needs to slow down, too.

The title cut, “Ready for Confetti,” has a Latin flair, and if I knew the steps to one, I might be tempted to do a Latin dance. “I Gotta Go” reminds me the most of his other work. The story of an orphan who steals and gambles his way right into more and more trouble, “I Gotta Go” is a toe-tapping tragedy that will lift your spirits even as the lyrics depress. But who among us hasn’t felt upbeat even when faced with certain death?

I can’t help but think the line “I’m wasting time standing here, I gotta go” is also Keen’s not-so-veiled smirk at our over-caffeinated, texting-addicted, hurried society. This is particularly evident when juxtaposed with the next song on the album, the mellow “Lay Down My Brother.” With a little bit slower tempo, this song seems to be encouraging us to “take it easy, take it slow,” an admonition that might help us all live longer. “Lay Down My Brother” has nice harmonies, which is frankly when Keen sounds the best.

“The Road Goes On and On” is a satisfying insult song that harkens back to one of Keen’s best loved songs “The Road Goes on Forever.” We’ve all encountered phonies who are so full of themselves that we just wanted to cuss. Keen captures the feeling well with such hurtful criticisms as “you’re malicious and downright cruel, superstitious, so uncool,” “you’re a regular jack-in-the-box in your clown suit and your goldilocks” and the coup de gras, “all duded up in your cowboy crocs.” Wow, now that’s a cowboy insult if I ever heard
one.

I’m convinced that “Top Down” is best listened to live. The studio isn’t kind to Keen’s ability to hold pitch, but I admire the fact that it doesn’t sound artificial and over-modulated. Like “The Road Goes On and On,” this jazzy song seems to be poking at the stars who drive around with the “top down” and believe that “everbody’s clapping and it’s all about you.”

If “Top Down” makes you doubt, Keen returns to a familiar sound in “Play a Train Song.” From the opening guitar licks and harmonica strains, you know REK is back on his turf. Anyone familiar with his discography will immediately recognize his nod to the genre of train songs that Keen himself has helped populate over the years with such songs as “Number 9 Coal” and “Whenever Kindness Fails.”

Way back when I worked at The Macon Telegraph, page designer and copy editor Randy Waters and I played a word game we liked to call “Who da’ man?” We would ask each other that question back and forth until those around us demanded we shut up. Well, in “Who Da Man,” Keen turns the question into an adjective as the song proclaims the advantages of being a “Who Da Man,” who is able to evade law enforcement and other life consequences as he somehow sneaks through life.

“Paint the Town Beige” is a rerun from 1993’s “A Bigger Piece of Sky” album. I think Keen repeats the song on this album to tell us that he really has slowed down. Keen seems to be saying with this even more laid back version that he craves the quiet life, and he’s put crazy antics behind him.

The final song, “Soul of Man” evokes images of a men’s quartet in a country church on a dusty central Texas farm-to-market road complete with funeral home fans, men in boots and starched white shirts and women in bonnets. “Soul of Man” is Keen’s take on the hymn, “Where the Soul Never Dies,” which has been recorded by a variety of artists, including the Oak Ridge Boys, Ricky Skaggs and even Hank Williams Sr. My fondness for traditional hymns makes this a fitting ending to the album in my mind.

Overall, it’s one of Keen’s most understated works, but enjoyable and meaningful if you find yourself feeling wrung out emotionally and stressed from the busyness of life. In the New South, we could all use a little more time to “lay down” and less “I Gotta Go” urgency.

REK may be an acquired taste for those who like good singing, but for the storytellers of the world, enjoy.