Texas has a reputation for being difficult to categorize. Superficial examination of typical Texan behavior reveals a pattern of strong-willed, independent, even contrarian individuals who stand up to the odds (successfully or otherwise), laugh in the face of adversity, and refuse to rethink obvious errors in judgment. These traits apply to humans at large, by the way, but Texans, well, they seem so incredibly proud of these sometimes fatal flaws. Someone once opined that “if one person, or two, or even three tell you you’re wrong about something, you can get away with ignoring them; but more than that, well, perhaps you should reconsider.”

Likewise the true troubadour. “A wee bit thin with a will to begin” might be Gordon Lightfoot’s self-description, but he also once remarked, “I never got really good at hockey.” That could explain the Canadian artist’s persistence in the business (Neil Peart also lamented his “weak ankles”, which kept HIM off the ice for the most part). But a troubadour lives the life he or she sings or writes or plays. That’s the experiential part that feeds the machinery of their craft. So what does one say about the lad that weighs in with a quintessential collection of original songs that still shine nearly fifty years later?

When I first caught the cool strains of “Muskrat Love”, the musicality is what drew me in. I may have been 12 or 13, but the smooth minor sevenths really got my attention. It sounded like what it was: not quite elevator music, not really folk, and definitely no pop sensibilities. This was a song about very specific rodents (not rats or beavers, for which they are often mistaken). Muskrats are their own species and genus, in fact, but share the family tree with lemmings and voles. Which brings us to the point of all this fact dartboarding: who would write a song about muskrats in love? And, while we’re at it, who would wax poetic about a flower and a pollinator?

Willis Alan Ramsey, of course. The mystery and the mythology of Ramsey was a thing of much debate in the years when some of us spent time at The Hop, a Berry Street bar (we’d call it a pub, now, because some basic foods were available) in Fort Worth that catered to an eclectic crowd with music from the likes of cosmic cowboys like Ray Wylie Hubbard and B.W. Stevenson, favorites like Delbert McClinton and Bugs Henderson and, later, Brave Combo and Timbuk 3.

Willis Alan Ramsey played The Hop one New Years’ Eve eve. Along with a host of others, I wondered when his next album might be forthcoming. When asked about it, he was known to respond, “What was wrong with the first one?” And that’s pretty much the way it remained.

“Muskrat Candlelight” (Ramsey’s original title for his song) was covered by America, of course, and later The Captain and Tenille, “The Ballad of Spider John” I found on Jimmy Buffett’s Living and Dying in 3/4 Time, and other tracks from his eponymously-titled debut were covered by the likes of Jerry Jeff Walker, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Waylon Jennings, and others. It’s safe to say that his narrative lyrics and straightforward melodies, coupled with an often whimsical style have made this album a real treasure for those acquainted with it.

“Geraldine and the Honeybee” and “Wishbone” are perfect examples of his signature style: the tales depict the earnest love of a bee for his chrysanthemum girlfriend (who, we learn, is “living in a compost pile”) and the stubborn reliance on fate (or luck) to pull us out of our doldrums. More introspective were laments and love songs like “Goodbye Old Missoula” and “Angel Eyes”, proof that his songwriting spanned everything from the downright odd to the heartfelt.

“Northeast Texas Women”, which closes the album, may be the finest example of what would become a 1970s standard of country folk and outlaw country; that feel of an inspired, underrehearsed-but-somehow-spot-on delivery of authentic country blues, complete with accompaniments of cowbell, coke crate, and “carpets and hallways”. Here in the 20s, we might say the lyrics are sexist and objectifying, but truth be told in the 70s it was meant (and received) as a love song to Texas women in general.

“North of Amarillo, east of old Dime Box, you can find your Cinderella or a genuine Goldilocks” is an inspired turn of phrase that has stuck with me since I first heard it, surpassed only by “you wanna get a Lone Star girl with her cast iron curls and her aluminum dimples”, and, yes, it is just that simple: “Texas women is Texas gold – kisses that are sweet than cactus”. Not many could make lyrics like this work, but Ramsey is definitely one of them.

As far as that second, album, it is, I believe, closer to release than it was before.

We can hope, can’t we?

“It was late in December, the sky turned to snow,

All round the day was going down slow…” – Time Passages, Al Stewart

History, I’m told, is written by the conquerors. Ultimately it seems, in our schools and even in our zeitgeist, the losers still manage to scratch and claw their marks into our collective unconscious. I’m a little jaded, I admit, but it strikes me as excessively ironic that the very first album I had chosen would be a time capsule from a troubadour of tales that situated on the fringes of human history. The spectacle at the U.S. Capitol on then sixth of this month left many of us speechless, but the insurrectionists there were little different than the anarchists of the early 1900s or the fascists in Europe during the 1930s.

So it’s hardly a shock that idle minds and idle hands would make of themselves a cautionary tale that plays into the hands of the manipulating powers-that-be. I think Franz Ferdinand would feel a little less pressure as the historical catalyst for a tragic cataclysm if he knew how we picked up and ran with the mustard gas. Let’s take a second to analyze: is the point of learning history (human, not natural) to memorize dates of battles and names of the influencers of history, or is to glean some context and understanding of the human condition that may save our sorry asses going forward? Your answer to that question definitely determines where you stand on the human evolutionary timeline.

Well.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. Now, let’s talk about that time capsule I mentioned earlier, Year of the Cat (Al Stewart). Possibly one of the best (definitely one of the most literate) albums to arrive in the middle 1970s, Year of the Cat boasted a broad range of topics and pop hooks that carried historically-driven stories to the masses. (As a side note, I’m constantly plagued by an overwhelming feeling of despair that the broader music audiences of today lack the acquisitive nature of the audiences of 1976.). From “Lord Grenville” and “On the Border” to “Flying Sorcery” and “One Stage Before”, Stewart throws wave after wave of nostalgic reminiscence at the listener, a barrage of musically splendorous ammunition that permeates and ignites the soul.

“You were always Amy Johnson since the time that you were small” (Flying Sorcery) were lyrics which led me to a 1930s-era female pilot, the first to solo from London to Australia, and her tragic end in a Thames Estuary crash while flying in a WWII Air Transport Auxiliary ferry flight. Or, in “Lord Grenville”, “Our time is just a point along a line that runs forever with no end, I never thought that we would come to find ourselves upon these rocks again” left me with many questions, not the least of which was who was the title subject. a 14th century Lord and politician who fought aboard the Revenge following a protracted battle with 15 ships of the Spanish fleet. “On the Border” flips between the Spanish Basque separatist campaign and the Rhodesioan conflict, all driven by a superlative Spanish guitar improvisation by guitarist Peter White. The lyrics, prosaic poetry (“On my wall the colours of the maps are running” – the changing geopolitical topography of human civilization) and plaintive in their call to arms (“The ghost moon sails among the clouds turns the rifles into silver on the border”) for the oppressed, are never more haunting than in the final verse:

“Late last night the rain came knocking on my window, I moved across the darkened room and in the lampglow I thought I saw down in the street the spirit of the century telling us that we’re all standing on the border.”

This is hardly lightweight pop. It’s catchy, sure; it has Alan Parsons as both engineer and producer (engineer for Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” and The Beatles’ “Abbey Road” to name the biggies); but it has depth and complexity and connections to the higher human aspirations that set it apart from many of its contemporaries, and its successors.

I could linger on “One Stage Before” (an existential romp and Christopher Nolan-esque event horizon that any performer faces in the endless repetition of performances – “While others talk in secret keys and. transpose all I say and nothing I try or do can get through the spell”) or “Broadway Hotel” (the retreat to anonymity for those overwhelmed by…life?). But, still, it waits, like a vigilant sentinel on the window seat, watching a rainy day pass; quiet, observant, and introspective, there is the cat.

Let me state that I believe unequivocally that any song which opens with the lyric “On a morning from a Bogart movie” has already placed itself above other pedestrian fare. It’s not just that the Casablanca connotations inherent in the phrase evoke that film classic (helped along with the straight-on reference to Peter Lorre), but the song as a whole, lyrically, paints a tableau of a bygone era, which, amid masks and social distancing and so many unimagined future shocks, is perhaps mythologized now more than when it was first released.

“Year of the Cat” is filled with everything we eagerly devoured at Saturday matinees: the mysterious feminine presence, an exotic foreign setting, and a sense of the inevitability of the of a predestined assignation leading to heartbreak. Even recognizing the transitory nature of the protagonist’s realization of desire, there is no choice but to pursue the liaison which will ultimately dissolve. “Better to have loved and lost” Tennyson said but here, though “the drumbeat strains of the night remain in the rhythms of the new-born day”, the melancholy of the poet is replaced by an inevitability in the voice of the narrator.

Echoing that constancy of change is the instrumental bridge, cello to violin to acoustic to electric guitar and finally a jazzy Phil Kenzie sax solo every bit as memorable and penetrating as Raphael Ravenscroft’s “Baker Street” riffs. The seamless transitions between the instruments could be echoing the human shift from relationship to relationship, “like waves upon the shore of infinity.” The fullness of Alan Parson’s arrangements on “Cat” (and the rest of the album) elevate the stories, giving a feeling of completion, rather than a burial in overproduction.

All in all, Year of the Cat – for me – is about as perfect as an album can be: tales of history and nostalgia that produce a rare synergy. It’s got a folk-rock feel with jazz tones and a heavy dose of literate insight. But don’t take my word; carve yourself forty minutes of time, put on the phones, and listen, and let the stories paint your day.

I’ve always believed that Latin – the language, not the musical genre – gets a bad rap. “It’s a dead language” and “Only doctors and scientists use it now” are two of my favorite examples of the spoken English language being misapprehended by practitioners of lingual suicidium. The contradictory ignorance of the basis of most of our words coupled with apparent unconcern for the veritas at the root of the proposition is barely forgivable at best, and monstrous when it can be cited as willful. Pausanias, the Greek writer, recorded that the first of the three great Delphic maxims was “Know Thyself”, a phrase the modern (post-modern?) human seems determined to bury with noise and acquisitions and distractions. Is it the fear of finding nothing of interest or character or value within that drive us away from self-awareness? Perhaps, but that’s a subject for another time and blog.

Let’s, for now, focus on something a little more externalized and only loosely connected to our lives: music we could not live without. It’s the holidays, sure: Michael Buble’ and Mariah Carey are wafting through the stores, even the parking lots, and even long-absent friends like Burl Ives and Bing Crosby find their way onto pop holiday playlists. The standards, covered again and again by smooth jazz artists, R&B icons, and country crooners crowd into our brains like Macy’s shoppers jamming the elevators. Even great parodies, like Bob and Doug McKenzie’s faux-Canadian re-envisioning of “The 12 Days of Christmas” and the original “Do It In My Twin Bed” from Jimmy Fallon’s Christmas host gig at Saturday Night Live bring, at the least, a pleasant parody and wicked ear-worm of a hook.

How, then, does the joy of music stack up with the joy of the holidays? Is it a juggernaut of secular snow frolicking and nostalgia for BB guns that drives our sentimentality to higher heights than the rest of the year, or is it bolstering of the religious hymns presented with full orchestra and choir, hymns that grew out of monastic scriptions of Latin verse and blossomed into Catholic liturgical canons and Lutheran standards? Is it a wee bit of both?

I had a few early favs among the first LPs I acquired, through parental gifting or straight up allowance (I’m not going to divulge which was which). One entry was “Songs of Christmas” by the Norman Luboff Choir, an a cappella collection of Christmas hymns and melodies (including my then-favorite “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and a moving rendition of “The Holly and The Ivy”, which would figure much more prominently in my more mature years. Lawrence Welk’s “Silent Night and 13 other Best-Loved Christmas Songs” was another early holiday entry to my collection, somewhat influenced by parents’ champagne music-fixation. My favorite Christmas album, most likely because I was about seven at the time, was The Original: Gene Autry Sings Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer & other CHRISTMAS favorites” – a compendium of the title track and eleven other kid-friendly tunes on one long playing record, the cover of which was graced with the erstwhile saddle-master in full cowboy regalia with the team of (numerically precise) nine reindeer – led by the young upstart himself – flying between Gene’s cowboy boots with the Santa in his sleigh pulled merrily behind.

In the intervening years, any number of artist’s holiday LPs caught my attention, from Jimmy Buffettt’s “Christmas Island” to Sting’s “If On a Winter’s Night…” to Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Christmas Gonzo Style” and “The Jethro Tull Christmas Album.” Entertaining, novel, and at times, truly inspired work by intrepid musicians contributing to the midwinter codex.

But something else was calling, something from an idiomatic past where the convergence of the sacred and the secular was met and melded into something both new and old. Strange, you may think; but for all the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, the lyricist concludes “…there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecc 1:9)

Two albums crossed my radar just then, one right after the other.

The first was “A Winter Garden: Five Songs for the Season” by Loreena McKennit was a 1995 EP stuffed with eclectic, original arrangements of three traditional and two adapted yuletide songs. Her expanded Christmastide LP “A Midwinter Night’s Dream” revisited and reimagined several of those offerings more than a dozen years later. “Good King Wenceslas” – found on both – quickly became a favorite of mine for it’s troubadour rhythms and instrumentalities. The “Winter Garden” version of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” is to me the superior version (to the “Midwinter” one), casting the “glad tidings” of “comfort and joy” vocals in their major key, wafting paradoxically across minor-chorded Moroccan-style accompaniments. Finally, “Snow” is McKennitt’s adaptation of 19th century poet Archibald Lampman’s verse of the same name, an ethereal, evocative snapshot of an evening settling across a snowscape of rural environs, the aural equivalent of a Currier & Ives print, with a quiet depth of vision and peace.

The second was “Mistletoe and Wine” by the Mediaeval Babes, a recording I was gifted by my wife; she had acquired it through the monthly drawing of in-store plays, CDs which were given away at the end of their promotion to employees who vied for them by tossing their names into the proverbial hat. “Wine” turned out to be several new selections by the songstresses who adapted ye olde English, French, Latin, and some Middle languages into something that lurked between New Age and Classical. These were accompanied by other vaguely yule-related tunes culled from some of their earlier albums, although not present were the sometimes bawdy and salacious adaptations which might have amused Chaucer. But “Mistletoe and Wine” held some true gems: “The Holly and The Ivy” and “In Dulci Jubilo”, both leaning heavily to a cappella performances, “Jubilo” presented in a mix of Latin and English that was immediately captivating. In terms of a compellingly pure invocation of winter, the rest of the compilation is eclipsed by “Blow Northerne Wind”, the final track on the album which closed with long, dreamy vocal notes and harp runs invoking visions of gusty, winter winds. “Wine” was followed eleven years later by “Of Kings and Angels”, an album which, like McKennitt’s “Midwinter”, revisited some of the tracks on this first holiday album.

There are, to be sure, other collections containing a wealth of holiday and winter music that are not just the standard fare of XM radio holiday hits, such as Nightnoise’s “Wexford Carol” or Tenebrae and Ola Gjeillo’s “Tundra”, an epic choral work as expressive of the short days and long nights of darker season. But in all of these, we have to find the lost chords, as the Moody Blues more or less referred to it, that resonates within us. It produces that resounding feeling within us, that echoing vibration, the sound of the breath of our life that would cause us to lift our eyes and say, “Lo, the joy of music!” (Ecce musicae gaudium!)

Go, and find the music that moves you this season, challenge yourself to find something new and eclectic – Frost’s “Road Not Taken” as it were – and check back in a week or so for further adventures with the muse and minion…

Happy Winter’s Solstice to you and yours!

It’s been called the soundtrack to our lives. The language of the soul. A balm to soothe the savage beast. From tribal drums to a wailing theremin, music aims to captivate and free, to evoke joy and melancholy, to arrest our souls and fire our imaginations. The greatest composers aimed to incorporate sounds of nature: wind, thunder, the flow of water. This drive to interpret the natural world was no different than setting oil to canvas, or the carving of stone and clay, but something was incorporated that was not previously present.

Other art forms were static, relying on the palette or the graceful lines to evoke an emotional response from the viewer. The audience interacted with a stoic representation of an iconic figure, or event, or pastoral vision. Experimentation with light and shadow, styles of paint application, even reduction and exaggeration struggled to provide a sense of originality – and vitality – some tangible something that would differentiate a particular approach and catch the viewer’s eye, retinal inversions communicating dynamic images to brains overwhelmed with fleecy clouds and pudgy cherubs. “What is Art” Tolstoy posited in his book, and, unlike so many examinations of art, he managed to boil it down to an inclusive definition. Basically, he says, art is the culmination of the artist’s need to communicate a personal experience in a way that will incite an emotional response from the recipient.

Art, then, would mean different things to different people. One person’s art is another person’s soup can label, so to speak. It’s not up to you to feel the same way about Guernica as me; we all have different life experiences, so we all have different reactions to art, and that’s as it should be.But while all art is not created equal, is it delivered to its patrons equally? Is art in the eye of the beholder, too?

And what about the ear of the listener? Does the music of the spheres resonate within you and without you, as George Harrison might ask? As much as I would like to leap to a conclusion, sorting out the facts, and, for that matter, the emotions, of those admirers of art is not a process to be concluded prematurely. We don’t really “search our feelings” in this time of instant gratification and social media rushes to judgment. Our impatience with ourselves – and others – in trying to nail down how we really feel about something, anything (!) – shoe styles, politics, conspiracy theories – may be a symptom of the pressures of modern life demanding a rapid response: knee-jerk reactions supplant investigated, analyzed responses rooted in logical determinism, seldom to our benefit.

Our emotions, with which have become singularly – even historically – out of touch, are reduced to momentary jolts of vitriol and adrenaline, driven by entertainment media and zip-line adventures. Can we still connect with art? Is art for art’s sake still valuable to the observer?

Don Mclean asked, “Can music save your mortal soul?”

I would, in search of further, more concise clarification, ask: “What, then, is life without music?”

By now, no doubt, you may be wondering where all of this is leading: like any good railroad conductor, I will give you a couple of reference points.

My earliest recollection of listening to a music recording is a now-somewhat obscure piece from a set of WWII jazz musicians. It was a 78 rpm red-label Columbia pressing, the B-side of “Celery Stalks at Midnight” – another classic later covered by Doris Day with Les Brown (and His Band of Renown) – and a 1940s pop entry which earned my father an extra day of leave during his time as a Master Sergeant during the Italian occupation (a story deserving of its own timeline). The B-side of “Celery” was “Down the Road Apiece”, a trio-driven boogie with sly, comedic exchanges between the band and the song’s writer, Don Raye (his stage name), an American songwriter and stage vaudevillian.

The record itself was scratchy from years of being played on the low-fidelity weighted tone-arms of the music players of the day. It was a listening experience that today’s sonic snobs would fail to appreciate: the hiss and click, the occasional skip of a groove, and – not on this 78, but on some – the solid clunk as the needle negotiated the broken part, mended with near-engineering precision with straight-up epoxy. But from the opening piano and bass, I was hooked. The instrumental breaks highlighting the piano, bass, and whistle opened a new door for me, one through which I stepped and never looked back.

That’s what music should do, right? The nature of art is to help open our minds, our hearts, our emotions to something new, perhaps something greater. What is music but an gallery of sounds that strike the chords we already contain?

We relax with waterfalls, and rain, and wind in the trees. The sounds calm our souls, they energize our visions, they motivate us to aspire. And which of these do we choose to carry with us as our lives unfold? What Aeolian imprints do we take with us, in our memories, on our phones, in the playlists on our streaming platforms?

I know some sets I hope you’ll find as intriguing and lasting in their impact as I have.

More to follow……