Music and Music-related Issues That Matter December 2014 – Issue No. 38

Modern Acousticwww.modernacoustic.com

Some of her songs have struck country gold, but make no mistake, Lori McKenna is a local treasure

Page 4

Boston’s QUEEn oF Folk

P L U S O U R F av O R i t e S O F 2 0 1 4 Pa G e 8

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FROM THE EDITORI have a plot idea for the TV show “Nash-

ville” to save it from cancellation.But before we go there, I have admit

something that may make you cringe … I am a fan – or was a fan – of the show. I’m kind of over it now, but for a while it was pretty entertaining.

Now the explanation: Just as some read Playboy only for the articles, I watched mostly for the songs.

I started tuning in last year, early in Season 2. The buzz about the show’s music following Season 1 hooked me. There was much ado about T Bone Burnett being the musical director of the drama (his wife is the show’s creator) bringing real songwriters’ work to the forefront.

There was also a divorce, rubble from a drunken car crash, music label battles, a secretly gay country cowboy … and of course romantic trysts and their aftermaths. All very intriguing.

And there was also some great music. The songs are what got me coming back each week.

We’re now into Season 3, and my interest in the show is waning.

Dramatically, the characters haven’t really grown. The country cowboy is still secretly gay, though there are, of course, weekly close calls and threats to out him. The show could have actually made some social progress if instead of going for high drama, they had confronted the issue of what it is like to be a gay country star, but this is a soap after all.

But the bigger issue with the show is that the music has suffered – or at least has been pushed into the background. Maybe that’s why T Bone left or was pushed out. Burnett was replaced by the equally great Buddy Miller, so I don’t expect the producers didn’t like the musical direction.

All in all, the depth of the show has suf-fered greatly. I still watch it, but I don’t care very much if I miss an episode here or there. I’m not as interested since there are fewer songs per episode. I pretty much know I can pick up the plot anytime since it doesn’t change.

After all that, I now give you the plotline that will save “Nashville”: What the show needs is a new character, one who doesn’t fit the mold of the show’s country music scene.

Picture this musical outsider coming in from out of town, with completely amazing songs. But they’re not country songs, they’re folk songs. This person is a woman, but she’s not single and looking for a man. Instead,

she’s happily married, with five kids.Yes! A folksinger from Boston who is married

with five kids, who comes to Nashville and blows everyone away with her songs of small-town life and all its trials and tribulations.

What? Not believable? No one would ever go for it?

All I can say is that Lori McKenna is the real deal. She could carry the show. Check out our story, beginning on Page 4.

And as always at this time of year, its also worth checking out our Favorites of the Year list on Pages 8-9. It’s a good chance to take stock of another great year of hearing music, whether it’s a new album, live in concert or even on TV.

Rich KassirerCOVER PHOTO by Rich Kassirer, at Club Passim in 2010.

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LIVE SHOT

PhOTO BY RICh KASSIRER

PhOTO BY ADAM KASSIRER

In New Orleans, there is music performed everywhere. This was taken from the street as we walked from club to club on Frenchman Street.

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capturing the struggles and triumphs of everyday life. After all, she gets a check each time one of her songs is picked up by a big-name artist.

But it’s so much more than that, says McKenna. “I’ve been really lucky – because the songs that I’ve had cut by other artists have usually been done in a beautiful way. I mean, ‘My Love Follows You Where You Go’ was written for my kids and hearing Allison Krauss sing it – it’s like hearing an angel sing something that came from your heart. That’s a really quite a blessing.”

But for those who have seen McKenna perform over the course of her 20-year career, those same songs and many oth-ers hit just a little closer to home when she sings them herself.

The plot thickens: The Boston singer gets a gig at the famed Bluebird Cafe. “No one will turn out to hear folk music,” Juliette Barnes sneers…

Asmuch as she can write a great country song, in her hometown state Lori McKenna is a true star of Boston’s folk scene. She started out at Boston-area open mikes in the mid-1990s and has gained fans and garnered critical success for her shows at clubs and coffeehouses across New England. She plays five shows in three nights at Club Passim in Cambridge and sells out each one. She can travel north to Portland, Maine, south to New Bedford, west to Northampton and there won’t be an empty seat.

“I think country songs are a lot like folk songs,” says McKenna. “They are songs about people facing regular strug-gles and enjoying ordinary joys. I like songs that I can identify

with and I think most people do.” Despite the starpower behind those who cover her music,

when McKenna sings her own songs, the desperation is deeper, the memories are more vivid, and relationships – between husband and wife, mother and child – mean everything.

“Whenever I hear one of Lori’s songs, I am always wait-ing to hear that one line that just devastates me,” says Mark Erelli, a fellow singer-songwriter who frequently plays with

McKenna and who has produced her last two albums. “I don’t necessarily mean that the lyric makes you sad, though God knows she has that down. It’s just that one lyric or phrase that really distills an everyday truth that’s right in front of me in such a way that’s never occurred to me before.”

She opens “how Romantic Is That” with this: “Forget about Paris/Or the Pacific Ocean/The honeymoon lasted 24 hours and was a town away/Then it was you and me/In that little apart-ment/Eight months before the baby came.”

As Erelli says, a phrase or even the way she phrases a lyric adds a depth of character that more mainstream artists gloss over: In “Stealing Kisses,” one of McKenna’s great tunes from perhaps her finest album, “Bittertown,” she sings, “You haven’t

‘Whenever I hear one of Lori’s songs, I am always waiting to hear that one line that just devastates me.’MARK ERELLI

PhOTOS BY NEALE ECKSTEIN

McKenna (top) performing with Mark Erelli in 2013 and (above) early in her career in 2006.

PhOTO BY NEALE ECKSTEIN

A recording session is stopped abruptly, and a new-to-town songwriter is introduced, brought in to “fix” the projected hit song for

Miss Rayna James, Nashville’s Queen of Country Music. The stranger doesn’t fit the mold of the

shiny country music scene: She is short, dark-haired, and (gasp!) a mother of five … oh, and (double gasp!) she’s a folk singer … from Boston. Jealousy and intrigue ensue!

Look out Nashville, Lori McKenna has arrived... (But she still belongs to Boston!)

‘I like your idea about the story line. I’d be a shoo-in!” says Lori McKenna, about our fictitious plot idea for the ABC hit TV show “Nashville.”

The reality is that this is not how the scenario has played out for the mother of five, Boston-area folk singer. The country community has, in fact, been very welcoming to her – so wel-coming that some of her prized songs have found stardom with the biggest names in country music.

“Sober,” “Your Side of the Bed” and the new “Girl Crush” which she co-wrote, have found the charts as Little Big Town

hits. “I Want Crazy,” another co-write, was one of the big-gest country hits of 2013 for hunter hayes. McKenna’s “The Luxury of Knowing” made country playlists thanks to Keith Urban’s version. Faith hill titled one of her albums “Fireflies,” named for the McKenna song she covered. And Alison Krauss pristinely sings “My Love Follows You Where You Go,” a song McKenna wrote and released on her 2013 album, “Massa-chusetts.” (McKenna released her latest album, the critically acclaimed “Numbered Doors,” this September. See Page 8.)

All of which is fine and dandy with the self-proclaimed “housewife” singer-songwriter from Stoughton, Mass., who just happens to write some of the most gut-wrenchingly real songs

ABC PhOTO

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talked to an adult all day/Except your neighbor, who drives you crazy/When he finally gets in/he’s sure not in the mood for talkin’.” She elongates the word “craazzy” just enough that it pinpoints the utter loneliness this woman feels because her husband is never home. A cover of the song by Faith hill completely misses that exclamation point of despair.

her songwriting skills and distinctive voice set her apart from other singer-songwriters on the circuit.

“The first thing that struck me about Lori was that she al-ways sang with such passion,” says Jim Olsen, whose indie label Signature Sounds signed McKenna early on. For me it was the voice first and then the lyrics. It was pretty clear that she had some magic right from the start. I loved the fact that she wrote from the perspective of a young working-class mom who took on subject matters you didn’t hear much from the other young folkies. She wrote about the struggles of parent-hood and it was refreshing. So many young artists in the folk scene of that time focused on their love life. Lori was different from the start.”

her first albums definitely had a more folk feel. “Paper Wings and halo” and “Pieces of Me” featured some solid songs, including the fanciful “Fireflies,” with the lyrics “I found mayonnaise bottles and poked holes on top/To capture Tinkerbell/They were just fireflies to the un-trained eye/But I could always tell.” A self-released solo album of demos called “The Kitchen Tapes” foreshad-owed what was to come. But it was “Bittertown” where it was clear that McKenna’s songwriting had changed.

The songs were edgier, more mature and they infiltrated the household and snuck around in the corners of people’s private lives, telling the stories, exploring the feelings that you don’t even tell your best friends. The album was filled with people from blue-collar towns growing up, growing old and trying to survive the day to day. In “Bible Song,” she sings “They marry young in these parts/They raise their kids and set them free/So I ran as fast as I could/Through the tall grass and the midnight woods/So nobody would sing some Bible song over me.”

“Lori became such a prolific writer in that period, and everything she was turning out was different and really good,” says Olsen. “She found her true voice. I remember being ab-solutely stunned when I heard the rough mixes of ‘Bittertown.’ The album was so raw and honest and every single song was great. I still consider it to be one of the very best albums that Signature Sounds ever released, and my favorite Lori McKenna album.”

Back in the studio, the Boston songwriter is introduced to Rayna James. “Rayna, this here is a folk singer from Boston. She’s got a song we think would be perfect for you.”

To those who have followed her career, McKenna’s back story is well-known: She has five kids and a blue-collar, good-guy husband who fully supports her. There was a small window in 2007 when, championed by country royal couple hill and husband Tim McGraw, McKenna gained some national atten-tion. After hill covered her songs, McKenna was given a presti-gious opening slot on hill and McGraw’s national tour, and she even made it onto Oprah’s couch (as the housewife songwriter).

Other Boston folk goddesses (Joan Baez, Bonnie Raitt), after being found, moved away and gained national glory. It could have happened for McKenna as well, but life as a wife and mother won out, and so did her fans in Boston as she returned home to the welcoming confines of those same local clubs where she began.

Yet, with an assist from fellow singer-songwriter Mary Gau-thier, Nashville did take notice of McKenna’s talents and came calling. She was signed to a big-label contract, and released

‘I think country songs are a lot like folk songs. They are songs about people facing regular struggles and enjoying ordinary joys.’LORI McKENNA

PhOTO BY NEALE ECKSTEIN

the Warner Bros.-backed album, “Unglamorous,” which adorned McKenna’s gritty lyrics with a bit of Nashville sheen. The title track, which mimicked her busy home life, got some strong radio play and the album cracked the Billboard country charts for a short period.

But her time in Nashville may have been best served by the connections she made, becoming part of the co-writing culture there. She has since paired with other songwriters, including Liz Rose, Barry Dean, and hillary Lindsey to pen tunes not only for her own albums, but for others as well.

“It’s another great way to stretch yourself as a writer,” says McKenna. “I think as songwriters we all try to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes anyway.”

“Liam, Scarlett, I’d like to introduce you to someone who might be able to add something to that song you’ve been working on…”

‘I really feel very blessed to be in a position where I have the opportunity to try and help someone write “their” song. Or to write a song that someone else will be inspired to sing,” she says. “I can’t play an instrument like the great players or sing any song like a great singer can – so songwriting is my way of connecting with other artists and sharing that space in music with them. It’s been hugely enlightening for me.”

So can she tell the difference between writing a Lori song or one for someone else?

“Yes. Usually right away,” she says. “That’s probably not always a good thing. There’s been times that I’ve played a song for Mark Erelli that I didn’t think was really ‘me’ enough – and he’s seen it from a different perspective. Sometimes it’s a great exercise to try and wear it as my own. I’m such a creature of habit – it’s good for me to stray from the same road I always

want to go down.”So along with a monthly Nashville co-write trip, she has

picked up right where she left off, with three more fine albums, including “Lorraine,” which very personally delved into her re-lationship with her mother, the fittingly titled “Massachusetts,” and now “Numbered Doors,” which peers into the lives of others.

From Erelli’s point of view, the co-writing ventures have deepened McKenna’s own songwriting.

“As a musician, I do hear differences in the two types of songs,” says Erelli, “especially if she’s writing with a co-writer who plays a different instrument or draws from a more technical side in the arrangements. But I think the two sides have influ-enced each other for the better. her best solo songs are catchier and more concise, and her best co-writes have more emotional authenticity and honesty in them than anything else I hear com-ing out of Nashville.”

So would McKenna consider pulling up stakes and moving south?

“I’m a New England girl. I would miss this place if I didn’t get to spend a lot of time here. I would miss my extended fam-ily,” she says. “There are a lot of great people who live here. My best friends here are the girls I met in seventh-grade band. We also have a great music scene here – we always have and that’s what drew me to music in the first place. Someday it’d be nice to have a house in Nashville. It is my second home – but that’s a long way off.”

As for that TV show about love, jealousy, and music of Nash-ville, McKenna says she is a fan. “They’ve got some good music in there and a few of my friends have really had their songs showcased – so that’s always nice.”

After the dark-haired stranger plays her a song, Rayna stares her down, walks over... and shakes her hand: “Welcome to town,” she says.

‘Songwriting is my way of connecting with other artists and sharing that space in music with them. It’s been hugely enlightening for me.’ LORI McKENNA

PhOTO BY NEALE ECKSTEIN

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Hitting closE to HomE

“Numbered Doors,” by Lori McKenna and “Milltowns,” by Mark Erelli These two locally produced albums are as authentic and moving as any released nationally. After making two very personal albums, McKenna steps back a bit, lyrically creeping around the hall-ways of hotels and motels capturing stories of broken lives, heartbreak, and hope. What can I say about Mark Erelli – songwriter, producer, and a kick-ass guitarist – except that I want to be him. Besides producing McKenna’s album, he also recorded “Milltowns,” a wonderful tribute to fellow folksinger Bill Morrissey. Most of the songs on this album are Morrissey’s – the

title track is an Erelli original he wrote about his time with his mentor. The opener “Birches” about a husband and wife’s long-time relationship is just a beautiful, personal song, and Erelli’s soulful voice suits it perfectly.

O u R L I s T O f faV O R I T E s O f 2 0 1 4

SURPRISE ALBUM

FAVORITE CONCERT PHOTO

FAVORITE ALBUMS

MEMORABLE CONCERT MOMENT

Mavis staples joining Lake street Dive onstage at Newport folk festivalI decided to take a break from the mainstage and wander to the other stages to see what was happening. I caught the last two songs from Grateful Dead songwriter Robert hunter (wish I had heard more!), and when his set was over, dropped by the Fort stage only to realize Lake Street Dive was playing. I missed most of their set, but for their last song, they brought out Mavis Staples to help them sing their hit “Bad Self Portraits.” That’s what I call timing! To see a video of the performance, click HERE.

FAVORITE CONCERTS

FAVORITE VENUE

FAVORITE QUOTE

My iPhone notes are full of song titles – some are good – some are terrible. Some titles are typed in the middle of the night when I’m half asleep – some are typed discreetly dur-ing a conversation with a friend that I should be paying better attention to – and sometimes I have my kids type them while I’m driving. My 13-year old daughter doesn’t even blink when I hand her my phone and say ‘type ALL A WOM-AN WANTS into my note-pad.’ She knows

what’s happening in my head. LORI MCKENNa, on her songwriting process

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BEST TIME AT A SHOW

Green River Music festival. Now that my kids are grown and in college, anytime I am with them makes me smile. Green River is already a great family festival, but when my family and friends all converge in one place, and you throw in some of my favorite bands, including Josh Ritter and the Royal City Band, Barnstar! and the Lone Bellow (pictured)… well, even a little rain couldn’t dampen the fun. To see more pics, click HERE.

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ALL A

WOMAN

WANTS

“PhOTO BY RICh KASSIRER

“Indian Ocean,” by frazey fordI first heard Frazey’s dis-tinctive voice years ago on a cover of Neil Young’s “For the Turnstiles” done

when she was in the Be Good Tanyas. It’s a voice that twists you: melodic for sure, but the phrasing of lyrics is stretched and turned to the point where you have to lean in toward the speakers to catch what she is singing. “Indian Ocean” was recorded in Memphis, with that unmistakable sound complete with horns. The song “September Fields” is an instant earworm.

Parker MillsapAt 21, the Oklahoma-native Millsap has a real presence and commands the stage. his songs, a mix of country and blues, are deliv-ered with an age-old surety that is hard to believe they come from someone so young. And he seems like he’s really enjoying his success. Catch him on small stages now before he makes it big!

PhOTO BY REID SIMPSON/hEAR AND ThERE PhOTOGRAPhY

PhOTO BY REID SIMPSON/hEAR AND ThERE PhOTOGRAPhY

PhOTO BY RICh GASTWIRT/STAGEShOOTER.COM (LEFT); RICh KASSIRER (RIGhT)

PhOTO BY RICh KASSIRER

Prescott Park, Portsmouth, N.H.A two-minute walk from the center of town, this park is beautiful space right along the water. The shows are free ($10 donations are suggested and are worth it!), they rent chairs and blankets and sell food there. The sound is impeccable and the crowd is mostly respectful of the mu-sic. Portsmouth has become a go-to town, with varying-size venues the Music hall, the Press Room and the Book & Bar also hosting shows.

Kermit Ruffins at Brighton Music HallThis photo was taken by my friend Reid Simpson at a show we were both at. Earlier in the year I caught Kermit at a jazz club in New Orleans and was psyched to see him again. he didn’t disappoint. he’s such an amazing showman, knows how to work a crowd. I love this photo, the way Kermit’s body arches to hit the note. Especially in black and white, the photo has an old-time feel to it. Except for the stage lights overhead, it looks like it could have been taken in the ’40s.

Trigger Hippy at Brighton Music Hall;Peter Mulvey and the Crumbling Beauties at OberonWant to have some fun? Go see Trigger hippy. Joan Osborne has such a great, soulful voice, Jackie Greene’s guitar playing will blow you away, and the band rocks its socks off. I’m not your buy-a-T-shirt-at-a-show kind of guy ... but I got myself one from Trigger hippy. And, no, they didn’t play any Dead covers. (So stop asking!)Mulvey and his band the Crumbling Beauties performed the entire Tom Waits album “Rain Dogs,” complete with a burlesque troupe, the Lipstick Criminals, which was just perfect. And while it wasn’t easy keeping your attention off of the dancers, the music was completely funky and fun. For video of Trigger hippy show, click HERE; for Mulvey pics, HERE.

FAVORITE NEW ARTIST

PhOTO/REID SIMPSON/hEAR AND ThERE PhOTOGRAPhY

MA 5 - FAVORITE SONGS OF THE YEAR“september fields,” “Indian Ocean,” Frazey Ford – That voice is mesmerizing.“Birches,” “Milltowns,” Mark Erelli – The reason we should know who Bill Morrissey is.“Brushy Mountain Conjugal Trailer,” “Remedy,” Old Crow Medicine Show – Almost more fun than ... well, you know.“Tennessee Mud,” “Trigger hippy,” Trigger hippy – Give me that old-time (’70s) rock ’n’ roll.“One More Cup of Coffee” “Desire” Bob Dylan – OK, this is a song from 1976. But for some reason, I had never heard it before, and now I can’t stop listening to it.

FROM THE BLOG

Do it again Some excerpts from this year’s blog entries

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From Nov. 8, 2014I won’t listen to Spotify. In fact, I am

personally boycotting it.It doesn’t seem to bother Spotify or

Pandora that they are ripping off musicians by underpaying them for their music, but it bothers me.

I’m not a musician, just a music fan that needs music to feed my soul. I gladly pay for that.

I have read interviews with musicians like Rosanne Cash who rail against Spotify, Pan-dora and other streaming sites for their prac-tices. Cash says her music had been streamed by Spotify 600,000 times over an 18-month period, resulting just $104 in royalties.

This makes me angry, angry enough to

boycott. But she continues to allow her music to be streamed there? This puzzled me at first. Now, of course, I understand that these services offer a visibility, an outlet to be heard in great numbers. But is it worth the cost – the cost in principle?

It’s easy for me to ask. I’m not the one trying to spread the word of my own work and make a living at it. The recourse would be, what? Trying to spread the word yourself? Good luck with that. Anything short of a Taylor Swift PR campaign will get lost in the Internet’s here-today, gone-tomorrow news cycle.

But someone has to fight back!Could that someone – to pull their music

and give Spotify a kick in the ass – actually

be Taylor Swift? She recently pulled her catalog off the site and wrote in the Wall Street Journal that music is valuable and deserves to be treated like “art.” I’m not exactly sure what Swift’s real motives are and it really doesn’t matter.

What matters is that by pulling her music off the site, she has brought the issue of mu-sicians being paid by streaming sites to the forefront again. And what really would make a difference is if other artists immediately followed suit and pulled their music catalogs.

Spotify could probably care less if Ro-sanne Cash pulled her music. But if it was Swift and Cash and Springsteen, Dave Grohl, Tom Petty, oh, and Dylan (the times they are a-changin’ again, Bob), I bet Spotify would notice. Maybe then something would happen.

Click HERE to read the entire post.

From Aug. 13, 2014 here in the New England, we

have no Bonnaroo, no Coachella, no Lollapalooza, no New Orleans Jazz Festival: summer music extravaganzas with lineups filled with pop superstars, celebrity spotting and amusement park activities. We don’t have venues like Red Rocks in Colorado or The Gorge in Washington state, where the vistas are even more amazing than the acts that play there.

That’s OK, we don’t need them. What New England has is two of the best summer music festivals – the Newport Folk Fes-tival and the Green River Music Festival – if your main interest is actually listening to great live music.

At both Green River and Newport – two very different

festivals – the music is the en-tertainment. There are no Ferris wheels or big-top tents. There isn’t even overnight camping.

This summer, as in past sum-mers, I attended both festivals, hitting both days at Green River, and one day at Newport. What amazes me about both experi-ences is how intently the crowds listen to the performers.

I remember a couple of years ago when the Decemberists first played Newport, Colin Meloy told the crowd, “We’ve never played to a more attentive festi-val audience.”

What makes Green River special is that it is family-orient-ed. Situated on the grounds of Greenfield Community College in Greenfield, Mass., the main stage is the big attraction for music fans, while kids have free

reign on the lower field, where the second and third stages share the ample space.

For Newport, at Fort Adams State Park, it’s the history that drives everything. Yes, the festival’s main stage idyllically sits on a peninsula surrounded by a harbor filled with yachts. But it is Pete Seeger, the legend of Bob Dylan, etc., that inspires the promoters of the festival to bring in acts that want to be part

of that history. It’s no longer just folk music, and that’s fine. It’s a desire by the artists and the fans to experience the rush of contemporary music just as when Seeger, Joan Baez, and others performed there.

If music is what matters, there are no better festivals in the country than right in our own backyards.

Click HERE to read the entire post.

One music fan’s boycott of spotify

Two N.E festivals are all about the music

Green River Music FestivalPhOTO BY RICh KASSIRER