And Your Bird Can Sing

Billy Strings makes this Beatles song from the Revolver album seem like it was actually written as a bluegrass tune. 

Tiny Desk Concert

Billy Strings and company on NPR's Tiny Desk last month performing four tunes, Red Daisy, a traditional bluegrass, and three originals by Billy from his recent Highway Prayers album, the Appalachia themed My Alice, Malfunction Junction an instrumental with a lot of changes, and my favorite, Gild The Lily.

A nice way to start off the New Year. 

24 Hours Back From Tulsa

Have a friend here in Phoenix who is a fellow music lover and also a fan of Bob Dylan.  We'd talked about visiting the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa (Dylan's archives are in Tulsa because that's where Woody Guthrie's archive and museum is).  Earlier this year he found out that Billy Strings (another mutual favorite) was playing a Tulsa concert on December 10 so we decided to make a road trip.

Fortunately, Southwest Airlines has direct flight to Tulsa, so on the afternoon of the 10th we flew there and attended Billy's concert that night.  I'd seen him once before and have watched endless live videos on YouTube.  Billy and his band don't have a warm up act.  They start at 8 and end around 11, with a 20 minute break in the middle.  One of the things I like best about his music is though I only recognized about a 1/3 of the songs, everything they played was incredible.  The rest of the group; mandolin, bass, banjo, and fiddle are as talented as Billy. We, like most of the audience, spent most of the concert on our feet.  

We were in the 12th row of seats but in front of us was an area without seats where fans can stand for the entire concert.  At the end of the show, Billy slid off the stage and hung out with the folks in that area.

His shows are a magical experience.  Will see him again.  Upon returning to AZ realized the concert marked exactly 4 years since I first heard Billy Strings (read Away From The Mire).

One of the last songs Billy played was Don't Think Twice, It's Allright.  Appropriate since we visited the Dylan Center the next morning.

The exhibits at the Dylan Center take you through Bob's career and are set up in an entertaining fashion.  It includes previously unavailable photos, recording takes, letters, and drafts of lyrics, along with videos from Dylan interviews.

The special exhibit was Dylan Goes Electric, sparked by the movie A Complete Unknown and Elijah Wald's excellent book Dylan Goes Electric!, by itself worth visiting.  The highlight was a film about the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, the first part of which consists of interviews with some of the surviving key players (and their conflicting memories) and culminates with Dylan's entire performance that night which consisted of three electric tunes (Maggie's Farm, Like A Rolling Stone, It Takes a Lot To Laugh It Takes a Train to Cry) and the two acoustic tunes he came back out to play to calm the audience down, It's All Over Now Baby Blue, and Mr Tambourine Man.

All the interviewees recount that the Newport sound system was awful and Dylan's vocals were inaudible during the electric set. However, in the film the sound has been remastered so you can clearly hear the vocals and, it turns out, Dylan was in fine form.

Listening to Baby Blue when Dylan returned to the stage, it's unmistakeably meant as a warning to the hardcore folkie contingent who disdained his turn to electric that The Times They Are a-Changin'.   

Leave your steppingstones behind there
Something calls for you
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue 

We had enough time before our flight to make a brief visit to the Guthrie Center which is next door to Dylan.

Billy plays most of his solos with eyes closed.

Lyrics from Mr Tambourine Man with Dylan's handwritten changes inserting "in the jingle-jangle morning).  Below is the Cash Box Top 100 for the week in September 1965 when Like A Rolling Stone displaced The Beatles Help! at Numero Uno.  The Top Ten also includes another Dylan song, It Ain't Me Babe by The Turtles at 7.

Below: Pete Seeger is often portrayed as strongly objecting to Dylan's turn to electric.  Pete's contention is that his objection to Dylan at Newport was that the electric music was so loud it drowned out Dylan's lyrics.  This is a 1968 letter from Pete to his father about the recent release of Dylan's album John Wesley Harding.  I really like the last paragraph: "Maybe Bob Dylan will be like Picasso, surprising us every few years with a new period.  I hope he lives as long."  He has done so.  If you are in any doubt listen to Oh Mercy (1989), Time Out Of Mind (1997), Love and Theft (2001), and Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020).

 

The Missing Concert

Mrs THC and I had tickets tonight to see the Outlaw Tour with Sierra Hull, Billy Strings, Bob Dylan, and 92-year old Willie Nelson.  Unfortunately, I've got a bit of a condition that makes us unable to attend but the THC Daughter and friend will use our tickets.

In lieu of that, here's a mini-concert I put together.

Boom by Sierra Hull from her new album, A Tip Toe High Wire. 

Two from the Billy Strings album, Highway Prayers, released last fall, and hitting #1 on the charts (or whatever they call it nowadays).  An instrumental, Escanaba, named after a town on Michigan's Upper Peninsula that the Mrs and I passed through a few years ago, and Gild the Lily.

 

 

A couple from Dylan.  My Own Version of You from 2020's Rough and Rowdy Ways.  Dylan's voice is shot but that he could produce an album with such amazing lyrics, nearly 60 years after his first recording, is remarkable.  And Mississippi from 201's Love and Theft.

Finally, from Willie, an unusual choice.  This is Willie performing a Brian Wilson song, The Warmth of the Sun, with the Beach Boys harmonizing behind him.  Willie has an immediately recognizable voice.

Turmoil And Tinfoil

Another one from Billy Strings from earlier in his career in 2017.  The lyrics reflect on his childhood filled with family drug problems; his father died of a heroin overdose, while his mother and stepfather became meth addicts (both now recovered).   This version is six minutes, but in concerts more recently he stretches Turmoil and Tinfoil into 15 to 20 minutes filled with improvisations and snippets of other tunes.

Through the turmoil and the tinfoil
I could wait my early life
I can see you in the darkness
And I'm running through the night

 

I recall a silver morning
When your face had turned to gray
You were standing right before me
But I missed you every day

 

Though you never said you're sorry
I forgave you even then
But I feel inconsequential
In the current state I'm in 

Back In The Mire Again

I posted a version of this song in 2021 when first discovering Billy Strings.  Since then, I've listened to 15 or 20 live versions of Away From The Mire and seen Billy and his band perform their dynamite live set.  It remains my favorite with its strong melody, lyrics, and other-worldly guitar solo.  This version is from Lollapolozza 2022.

Let go of the pain and hold onto the rhythm
It's consciously held back in you
You're drowning a sorrow that's long been at rest
The past is a hell, it can creep up inside you
So let me remind you of this
It's the reason your troubles exist

Circles

A live performance by Billy Strings and his band, along with Sierra Hull on harmonies and vocals.  Billy and Sierra are two recent favorites of mine.  The song is a cover of a massive hit by Post Malone from 2019.  I know nothing about Post Malone other than what I've just written but this is a very good song.

Hide & Seek

Last night, for the first time, I watched a live stream of a music concert; Billy Strings and his band at Red Rocks outside of Denver.  Since coming across Billy last December (see Away From The Mire - still my favorite) I've been listening incessantly to him.  While his records are good, it is as a live performer that he's at his best; my #1 concert priority is to see him.  And while listening to him I've also come across other terrific artists he's worked with like Molly Tuttle.  

Below is a great jam on the tune Hide & Seek (you can also listen to a fine truncated version done at the Grammys last month).  This link takes you to the beginning of last night's concert.  And it's not just Billy, as great as he is, the band he's put together is top notch.

Away From The Mire

I'd never heard of Billy Strings until yesterday when I came across a mention of him and a recommendation to Away From The Mire.  This is an extraordinary song and performance.  Billy's lyrics and voice are wonderful but it is his guitar playing that takes this over the top (even when he hits the wrong note about 8 minutes in).  Am now listening to more from him.  It's always exciting to find someone new to me that I enjoy so much.  Also featured are the members of his touring band, Billy Failing (banjo), Royal Masat (bass), and Jarrod Walker (mandolin).  

In his introduction to the song (not on the video) Billy explains he wrote it after a big argument with his brother and meant it as a message to others.  Several weeks after starting to play the song in concerts he realized, while singing the tune, that it was really a message to himself.