On July 16, 1930, two of the great forefathers of American music met in a Los Angeles recording studio. Louis Armstrong, the great jazz and blues man — and probably America’s greatest contributor to music, had been hired to back up the “Father of Country Music” Jimmie Rodgers on “Blue Yodel 9 (Standing on the Corner).”
History does not record how the two men came to record this song together. Armstrong and his wife Lillian, who played piano on the recording, had recently moved to California. Armstrong was signed to a different record company (Okeh) than where they were recording at Victor.
Some have guessed that the two legends must have somehow ran into each other, or that Rodgers proposed the meeting. On “Blue Yodel 9,” Rodgers included some lyrics he took from Nolan Walsh’s 1926 blues recording of “The Bridewell Blues.” And, in addition to the lyrics, Rodgers must have liked the trumpet accompaniment on Walsh’s song, played by Louis Armstrong.
Unfortunately, Armstrong did not get to sing, but he played his trumpet. Armstrong and Rodgers would never get to record together again, as Rodgers died from tuberculosis in 1933. But they made a great record, and there may have never been a greater teaming of two artists in American music history.
Although Rodgers and Armstrong never got to combine their vast talents again, Armstrong did later get the chance to return to “Blue Yodel 9” with another country music legend. In the fall of 1970, he appeared on Johnny Cash’s variety show on ABC. During the show, the two men performed the song.
At the time, Armstrong was not in good health (he would die on July 6, 1971). And his doctors had told him not to play his trumpet. But he did anyway, and this time he got to throw in some vocal riffs with Cash’s yodels. Not surprisingly, Armstrong got a standing ovation. It was awesome.
Matthew Ryan continues to be one of the few artists creating great music out of our strange historical moment, struggling to provide us with understanding, catharsis, faith, hope, and beauty out of unsettling times. Now, he is releasing a new EP, Fallen Ash & Embers. As Ryan explains on his website, the EP is “inspired by the moment we’re in, but not tied to. It’s more interested in who we’ll be after this fever breaks.”
Fallen Ash & Embers follows another three-song release earlier this year that featured “On Our Death Day.” Like many of us, Ryan is questioning the current state of affairs in the United States and around the world. And he is using his talents to create great music to let you know you are not alone in the battle to save our humanity and the earth. Ryan recommends listening to these songs with headphones, and that is good advice for capturing the music and the lyrics of this EP that is essential listening for our time.
“Are You the Matador?”
The first song on the EP asks the question “Are You the Matador?” The song came out of a poem Ryan wrote that he later matched to music written by Doug Lancio that Ryan describes as “Spanish noir.” Ryan explains that he offers the song of “inclusion” with “acknowledgement, affection, thanks and welcoming to Hispanic and Latino people, and their cultures.”
Ryan often writes of his love of Leonard Cohen, and the beautiful lyrics, as well as the sound of the song, reverberate like a lost Cohen masterpiece. But where is the question of the title directed?
Are you the matador? Or are you the bull? Are you the weapon, Or a tool? Or are you a third thing, Something like air, That’s felt and fluid and moving Like a water that wasn’t there?
The opening made me think of a question well-worth asking about our current president. While a listener might instead think of someone they know, I hear a question about whether our president has been the reason for the misfortunes of our country (i.e., the matador), or is he merely the result of darker forces that have controlled things (i.e., the darker side of politics)? Or is he and the hate for immigrants a “third thing” like “air” that has been present around us all along but we just didn’t see it?
It is an essential question of our time, and one not being addressed adequately. And that is why we need more artists to ask questions that need to be asked.
“Warm Lightning”
The other songs on the EP remind us what is at stake from the questions of the lead track. It is not just democracy or our government that is at risk, but everything that really matters, like our loved ones and the world.
“Warm Lightning” is a radiant love song that Ryan explains is “about the now and the room to still explore and grow while together.” It’s a deep and complex painting of mature love, and all of its depth makes my eyes water every time I hear it.
Ryan notes that the song was inspired by Elvis Presley’s haunting version of “Blue Moon.” I hear that connection in the ambient music of the song. But the new song reminded me more directly of one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen album tracks, “Dry Lightning,” from The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995).
The songs convey two sides of love. Both begin with a portrait of a part of the day with the singer getting dressed. Springsteen begins his song, “I threw my robe on in the morning / Watched the ring on the stove turn to red,/Stared hypnotized into a cup of coffee . . . .” In Ryan’s song, it is nighttime, and the singer is not alone: “I buttoned my shirt; She laid on her side; I leaned down to kiss her; She put her hand over her eyes.”
The similarity in the titles first made me connect these two memorable songs. Springsteen’s “Dry Lightning” is about a man who cannot lose the memory of a lost love. But the lightening in Ryan’s song is “warm,” as he reflects on a current true companion. Even though she asks him to “leave” in the opening stanza, you soon realize that it is not a request to never come back. The singer is just going for a ride in the dark.
And unlike Springsteen’s protagonist, Ryan’s subject is not lonely in the morning. The singer recounts how he enjoys the mornings when his lover is up before him and he can still smell her perfume. By contrast, it is a similar smell that instead haunts the brokenhearted in Springsteen’s song (“But you can’t lose your memory,/ And the sweet smell of your skin.”).
The tragedy, if there is one, of Ryan’s story is that time goes by so fast, and the aging singer laments that sixty — or six hundred — “years can go by in a minute.” But it is a warm lament, like the warm lightning of the title, as the singer reminds her, “Wherever you go/ I want to be near.”
“The Last Event”
The final song on the EP, “The Last Event,” ties together themes from other two tracks. Ryan calls the ballad, written by him and David Ricketts, “the centerpiece” of the EP. It is “The Last Event” that also features the lyrics that gives the EP its name, Fallen Ash & Embers.
“The Last Event” is a warning that reminds us what is at stake. We risk the world and all that we love. And in the story, we lose it all in “the last event” that we should have seen coming: “Don’t say it comes as any shock / Things just go and go and go until they stop.”
What causes the “last event”? Ryan doesn’t say, but one could easily hear the unheralded warnings about climate change as well as other stupidity in governments. In the tale, Ryan recounts how people “smiled and cheered” at people in “rented black sedans” while “Monsters crept behind tall buildings.” And we were not blameless ourselves, “We were so beautiful we forgot we were human.”
Even as we think things will never end, they “go and go until they stop.” But as the singer of “The Last Event” recounts the end, he is still thinking of those he loves and how they were something (even if they “weren’t too bright” about where things were leading).
Although the singer in “The Last Event” is telling us about the end that came step-by-step in ways that we should have seen, Matthew Ryan is trying to tell us something now before it is too late and the last event becomes “falling ash and embers.” As he also recognized in the previous song, “Warm Lightning,” time goes by fast.
After this post initially published, Ryan announced that he was adding a fourth song to this EP, “Avalanche of Stars.” This additional song features Kate York on lead, and as Ryan says, it is a “beautiful ending to this collection.”
The entire EP Fallen Ash & Embers is essential listening for anyone who hopes, dreams, and wonders about where we are, what matters, and where we are going. Ryan’s new EP does what the greatest music sometimes is able to accomplish in a timely and timeless way by making us question, think, feel, and even dare to hope.
Fallen Ash & Embers will be released October 4, 2019 and is available for pre-order (with immediate download of “Are You the Matador?”) through Bandcamp. Buy it and listen to it through over-the-ear headphones as Ryan recommends (and over and over again, as I recommend). Leave your two cents in the comments.
The 2011 movie about Billie Beane, an executive with the Oakland Athletics, features a song about being “just a little bit caught in the middle.”
The film Moneyball (2011), starring Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, ends with Beane listening to a recording of his daughter singing a song. It is a touching moment connected to an earlier scene in the film where she sang the song for him in a guitar store. What is the song?
I’m just a little bit caught in the middle; Life is a maze and love is a riddle; I don’t know where to go, can’t do it alone I’ve tried, and I don’t know why.
I’m just a little girl lost in the moment; I’m so scared but I don’t show it; I can’t figure it out, it’s bringing me down I know, I’ve got to let it go and just enjoy the show.
The song is “The Show” by Australian singer Lenka. The song originally appeared on her 2008 self-titled album, Lenka.
Moneyball bears rewatching if you have seen it already. When I saw it in the theater, I remember being disappointed at the ending. Unlike most sports movies, there is not a satisfying baseball action climax. While scenes of the game do play an important role, the movie is really about Beane. And “The Show” plays a key role in telling that story.
Below is a touching scene where Beane encourages his daughter to play the song. His daughter is played by Kerris Lilla Dorsey. When Dorsey auditioned for the part, she played “The Show,” feeling that one of her favorite songs suited the character. Director Bennett Miller loved the audition, hiring Dorsey and putting the song in the film (even though it had not been released at the time of events in the movie).
And below is part of one of the final scenes of Moneyball in a video where someone has intercut the movie’s earlier performance of the song. So while it is not exactly the ending, if you haven’t seen the movie, I would suggest you wait to watch the entire film to get the full impact.
Maybe that ending is just as good as a walk-off home run or a championship. It is certainly one of those times where I think Brad Pitt is underrated as a serious actor. The film also features wonderful performances by Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Check out the movie and enjoy the show.
Natalie Merchant recently completed a short A Summer Evening With Natalie Merchant tour. During it, she visited several Northeast states, including Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York. I was lucky to catch her at Hudson Hall in Hudson, New York for the final performance of the tour on August 9, 2019. On a simple blue-lit stage accompanied only by one musician, she gave an intimate career-spanning show.
Merchant appeared on the stage before maybe a few hundred people, alone except for a piano behind her and her guitarist Erik Della Penna at her side. Throughout most of the show, Penna provided the only accompaniment. But Merchant did not hesitate to stand up and move with the music. She often spoke to the audience, telling stories.
Penna’s guitar work beautifully accompanied the songs, perfectly balancing and never intruding, allowing Merchant’s voice to shine. And it was her amazing voice that mesmerized the listeners. Her distinctive voice sounded much like it did while Merchant was still in her twenties.
The Summer Evening Tour helped promote a recent 10-CD box set that Merchant released covering her solo career since she left 10,000 Maniacs. The Natalie Merchant Collection begins with Merchant’s successful Tigerlily album and includes a new album, Butterfly, as well as a CD of rarities.
Merchant’s career is ripe for the retrospective. If you have not followed her career in recent years, you have missed out on a career that has continued to create quality interesting music. Delving into folk music interpretations, different arrangements like using a string quartet, Merchant maintains her signature sound while also being adventurous.
The Summer Evening Tour did an outstanding job of highlighting the roads of Merchant’s career. She closed with the Maniacs classic “These Are Days.” She had played the song on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show the night before. She played it, she joked, “Because whatever Jimmy wants, he gets.” (Update: Unfortunately, the video of her Tonight Show performance is no longer available on YouTube.)
And of course, there was “Wonder” from Tigerlily. But songs from her other albums stood up with her most well-known songs. Among other songs she played were: “Motherland,” “Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience,” “Owensboro,” “Cowboy Romance,” “Break Your Heart,” a cover of Henry Mancini’s “Moon River” (for her guitarists parents’ anniversary), and “Don’t Talk.”
For the encore she came back onstage, starting with just herself at the piano before being joined again by her guitarist. Other songs included: “Life is Sweet, the folk song “Matty Groves,” “Saint Judas,” “If Noone Ever Marries Me,” “Wonder,” and “Kind and Generous.”
During the long folk song “Matty Groves,” Merchant forgot the lyrics at a few points. As she sought help from her guitarist, she did it all in a funny way that made the audience enjoy it even more.
Because of Merchant’s advocacy for social justice issues in her life and music, it was not surprising that her banter went to such issues a few times. She talked a little about President Trump and his immigration policies when she introduced “Saint Judas.” And earlier she told a story about the city of Hudson’s history in fighting against a large polluting concrete company that wanted to destroy the area before people fought back. Such talk was limited and done in an entertaining way that brought the audience together.
Although Merchant appears to be taking a break from performing and recording, during the show she announced she will be getting the John Lennon Real Love Award in December. The award will be presented by Yoko Ono for Merchant’s activism and music. As part of receiving the award, Merchant will perform with other artists in tribute to Lennon and the Beatles.
Although Merchant may not attract the large crowds she did in her heyday, she still sells out small venues. And the intimate settings highlight her music, her charisma, and her voice. If you get the chance to see her, do. In the meantime, if you have lost track of her recent work, check out the career-spanning box set.
Gary Lewis & the Playboys recorded some memorable hits in the 1960s, such as “This Diamond Ring” and “Everybody Loves a Clown.” I always knew the songs, but for a long time I did not know that Gary Lewis was the son of the great Jerry Lewis. And that the two talents once hosted an episode of the NBC variety series Hullabaloo together.
In the episode, which you may watch below, Gary and Jerry open with the Beatles song Help! And then Jerry introduces his son to sing “Everybody Loves a Clown,” while playing a little prank on the younger Lewis.
The episode also features Joannie Sommers, Barry Maguire (“Eve of Destruction”), and Paul Revere and the Raiders (watch for Goldie Hawn appearing as a dancer behind them). Check out the episode from September 20, 1965 for an entertaining glimpse back at the humor and music of the 1960s. And don’t miss the train wreck of a musical medley with all of the guests, including Jerry Lewis singing 1960s songs, Gary Lewis on a Bob Dylan song, and Maguire somehow making “Hang On Sloopy” sound angry.
Unfortunately, the father and son did not remain as close as they appeared on the TV show. The two men later became estranged (with Jerry Lewis disinheriting Gary and his brothers).
As for Gary, although his band features different members than from their heyday, Gary Lewis & the Playboys still tour. Check out the band’s website.
