Category Archives: Singer Songwriter

Country, Music Calendar, Rock, Singer Songwriter

Today: Lyle Lovett is 55

Lyle Pearce Lovett (born November 1, 1957) is an American singer-songwriter and actor. Active since 1980, he has recorded thirteen albums and released 21 singles to date, including his highest entry, the number 10 chart hit on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, “Cowboy Man”. Lovett has won four Grammy Awards, including Best Male Country Vocal Performance and Best Country Album. (- Wikipedia)

Lyle Lovett – Simple Song:

From Allmusic:

by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Lyle Lovett was one of the most distinctive and original singer/songwriters to emerge during the ’80s. Though he was initially labeled as a country singer, the tag never quite fit him. Lovett had more in common with ’70s singer/songwriters like Guy Clark, Jesse Winchester, Randy Newman, and Townes Van Zandt, combining a talent for incisive, witty lyrical detail with an eclectic array of music, ranging from country and folk to big-band swing and traditional pop.Lovett’s literate, multi-layered songs stood out among the formulaic Nashville hit singles of the late ’80s as well as the new traditionalists who were beginning to take over country music. Drawing from alternative country and rock fans, Lovett quickly built up a cult following which began to spill over into the mainstream with his second album, 1988’s Pontiac.

Read more at allmusic.com

His eight best albums are not at any streaming services (that I can find), but we present his ninth best, which is pretty damn good too!

Lyle Lovett – Step inside this house:

Other 1 November:

1970: American Beauty by Grateful Dead was released

American Beauty is the sixth album by the rock band the Grateful Dead. It was recorded between August and September 1970 and originally released in November 1970 by Warner Bros. Records. The album continued the folk rock and country music explored on Workingman’s Dead and prominently features the lyrics of Robert Hunter.

In 2003, the album was ranked number 258 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

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Concert Review, Country, Live, Rock, Singer Songwriter, Video

Ida Jenshus live in Haugesund

We had a fantastic night at Høvleriet in Haugesund last night. We want to come back, what a venue and what an atmosphere! Thank you.
– Ida Jenshus (on her webpage)

Ida Jenshus has recently released her third album, Someone to love. The album is a departure from the country on her two previous records, into a more airy sounding country/rock/songwriter style. The obvious comparison is Emmylou Harris’ collaboration with super-producer Daniel Lanois, but I can also hear Kathleen Edwards and Mary Gauthier in the quiet stuff, and Lucinda Williams in her more uptempo stuff. I like the direction she’s taken. I like the first two records but I think her concerts have showed a truer Ida Jenshus, and finally it is reflected in her recorded work.

The wonderful Tender Leaves:

We saw Ida Jenshus with a great group of musicians at Høvleriet in Haugesund last friday, there she dedicated a very fine version of Tender Leaves to Chip Taylor. An artist that Jenshus has worked with lately and have played with on several occasions. Chip Taylor is the man who wrote Wild Thing and Angel of the morning.

It was a lovely show that varied from tender moments into full blown guitar jams, never dull and, man, what a great group she’s touring with! The audience clearly liked what they heard, quiet listening and attentive, and it was great to see this many people coming out to see Ida Jenshus. Country flavoured music isn’t always the biggest audience puller.


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Country, List, Singer Songwriter, Video

Dwight Yoakam Top 10 Music Videos

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I’ve liked Dwight Yoakam since the late eighties. There was a music magazine here in Norway, Beat, that really championed those new country artists and I was smitten. His first two records really got worn out at my student home in Bergen.

Today I am going to list his 10 best videos (you know he came up at the same time as MTV and he’s always had great music videos). This is my own list and it is not discussed with Egil (the other half of JV) before putting it out here.

1. Guitars, Cadillacs:

2. Streets of Bakersfield (with Buck Owens):

Dwight Yoakam to the magazine Country Guitar in 1994:

‘Bakersfield’ really is not exclusively limited to the town itself but encompasses the larger California country sound of the Forties, Fifties and on into the Sixties, and even the Seventies, with the music of Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, the Burrito Brothers and the Eagles — they are all an extension of the ‘Bakersfield Sound’ and a byproduct of it. I’ve got a poster of Buck Owens performing at the Fillmore West in 1968 in Haight Asbury! What went on there led to there being a musical incarnation called country rock. I don’t know if there would have been a John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival had there not been the California country music that’s come to be known as the ‘Bakersfield Sound’.

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Country, Great albums, Rock, Singer Songwriter, Soul

Great Album: No Other by Gene Clark (update)

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Gene Clark (1944-1991) was one of the founding members of the legendary The Byrds, and this is what he is known for among the majority. This is too bad…In 1974 he made a solo album “No Other”. It was released on David Geffen’s Asylum Records. Apparently, after spending more than 100 000 $ to record the album (with an all-star cast of musicians, singers, and Thomas Jeffereson Kaye at the helm producing), the album was  named “uncommercial” , it was considered  the “Heavens Gate” of records.

When it finally came out it was not appreciated by his contemporaries and sold very poorly. Before 1976 it was out of distribution.
Today, most critics will agree that this is a so-called “Lost Masterpiece” or “Burried Treasure”. They are certainly right about that.

I had heard and read about the album for nearly 20 years, before I finally bought it after having heard it in passing in a local record store.
Holy shit!

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List, Singer Songwriter, Sound, The Best Songs

Happy Birthday Jackson Browne – Top 10 songs

 

I’ve listened to Jackson Browne for about 30 years, I have a friend who has  a couple of older siblings who introduced him to this incredible songwriter/singer, I got it from my friend. I am eternally grateful.

allmusic says:

In many ways, Jackson Browne was the quintessential sensitive Californian singer/songwriter of the early ’70s. Only Joni Mitchell and James Taylor ranked alongside him in terms of influence, but neither artist tapped into the post-’60s Zeitgeist like Browne.

He is a true music enthusist and he has produced albums by The Eagles, J.D. Souther and Warren Zevon and more. When he was inducted into The Rock’n Roll Hall of Fame, Bruce Springsteen said that even if The Eagles was allready in the hall of fame: “You wrote the songs they wished they had written”. Bruce says all the good things that I would like to say about Jackson Browne, take ten minutes and listen to this very fine speech:

Here are my ten favourite Jackson Browne songs.

1. Sleeps dark and silent gate, one of the most beautiful songs ever written:

“Don’t know where I’m going
Wishing I could hide
Oh God this is some shape I’m in
When the only thing that makes me cry
Is the kindness in my baby’s eye”

2. Tender is the night, official video:

“You’re gonna want me tonight
When you’re ready to surrender
Forget about who’s right
When you’re ready to remember
It’s another world at night
When you’re ready to be tender”

…and a live version from Rockpalast in 1986:

3. The Pretender (with Crosby, Stills and Nash):

“I’m gonna find myself a girl
Who can show me what laughter means
And we’ll fill in the missing colors
In each other’s paint-by-number dreams
And then we’ll put our dark glasses on
And we’ll make love until our strength is gone
And when the morning light comes streaming in
We’ll get up and do it again
Get it up again”

4. For a dancer:

“I don’t know what happens when people die
Can’t seem to grasp it as hard as I try
It’s like a song playing right in my ear
That I can’t sing I can’t help listening”

5. Before the Deluge:

“For the resignation that living brings
And exchanged love’s bright and fragile glow
For the glitter and the rouge
And in a moment they were swept before the deluge”

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