Notes on Weeds
Musically, Weeds is is an arbitrary collection, consisting of some songs I wrote, others that I played in the past, and still others that I learned recently, either because I liked them, or because I didn’t.
The most distinct, and unifying, feature of Weeds is the use, on over half of the selections, of a Weisssenborn lap slide acoustic guitar. Last year (summer, 2013), I went out on a Sunday afternoon to Le Martin Pêcheur, an unlikely Scottish pub and blues club, located here in the center of France, and set down on the banks of a canal, accessible chiefly by happy accident off a series of gravel roads that have never suffered a GPS survey. There I heard Olivier Gotti, a young man from Aix-en-Provence, singing American blues and accompanying himself on a Weissenborn. Gotti is excellent, and I encourage you to look him up on YouTube or, best, see him in person. His guitar was something new to me. I loved it, and went home and ordered one immediately.
As mentioned, I used the Weissenborn as lead or backup on over half the songs here. It is the only instrument on two of the songs, As You Whisper Goodbye, and Sittin’ By The River. I wrote ‘Whisper’ the first week I had the guitar, and ‘Sittin’’ is my most recent effort.
Evil Twin: Yes, I wrote it, but I have no idea where this song came from. If you listen to the first verse, you can tell I was just stringing words together, until I got to the last line, at which point the theme fell into place.
Achy Breaky Heart: Country line dancing is a big thing here in France, so I thought I’d add one song to my repertoire especially for my line dancing friends. I settled on the traditional folk tune John Henry for the purpose, and “researched” the appropriate tempo, etc., by turning to the mother of line dancing tunes, Achy Breaky Heart. I never liked the song back when Billy Ray Cyrus was riding it to stardom; but once I began listening to it closely, it turned out to be a brain virus, and the only way to exorcise it was to record it. Voilà!
Casey Jones: A Grateful Dead tune, that, surprisingly, I’d never played before, except alone and in secret. So here it is, another deep psychological need finally expressed.
As You Whisper Goodbye: The product of my first explorations of the Weissenborn. Kate loved the guitar part, and said it would be nice if there were lyrics. So it got lyrics. The tune seemed to demand that things not end well.
The Hunter: This is one we used to perform with our San Diego-based group, The Mississippi Mojo Electric Blues Band. I learned it from the recording by Albert King. King was a Stax Records artist. The composers of the song were members of Booker T. and the M.G.s, who were the house band for Stax, recorded many singles of their own (Green Onions being the best-known of these), and later became famous as the Blues Brothers band. The importance of Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Al Jackson, Jr., and Donald “Duck” Dunn can’t be overstated; as a group in their own right, and as the backup for Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett, Albert King and others, they were the principal architects of the Memphis sound known as Southern Soul. If you compare Memphis soul to its northern, Detroit, kin, Motown, you’ll hear that the southern music is much looser and more spontaneous; Motown, much more tightly arranged. This is an accurate reflection of what went on in the studio, the Memphis musicians creating their arrangements on the fly, without charts, making it up as they went along.
John Henry: As mentioned, this one is for the line dancers. Plenty of verses and guitar breaks to make time to work up a sweat and inspire beer drinking.
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry: Elvis called this great Hank Williams tune “the saddest song ever written.” I’ve been singing it since I was 14 (a very long time ago), and thought the voice of the Weissenborn was perfect for the song.
My Girl Josephine: Used to play this Zydeco piece with the Nick Kearns Combo at the University of North Carolina. Nick played piano and his vocals were indistinguishable from Fats’. I snuck a little MIDI piano into the background, and gave the horn section to the Weissenborn.
Sittin’ By The River: This one started as the little backup blues pattern worked out on the Weissenborn. The second verse borrows some stock blues lyrics from other songs - an acceptable practice in blues music. The last verse demonstrates that I’ll always be 14 years old in my head.
The John B. Sails: One day in my late teens, I walked into Manny’s Music in New York, and found Danny Barrajanos, Harry Belafonte’s drummer, there playing a conga drum. He was making the drum “sing” by sliding a finger from the edge of the drum to the center as he struck it with the other hand. I’ve tried to approximate that sound here on the bass. You wouldn’t know it from listening to the better-known recordings of this song, but it’s actually rather sad. I learned it in my mid-teens, if I remember correctly, from a recording by Blind Blake (Blake Alphonso Higgs), an entertainer at the Royal Victoria Hotel in Nassau, Bahamas.
Who Loves You Better: Lyle Lovett singing a sad song. Irresistible. Had to learn it, so here it is.
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door: I’d heard it, of course, but never thought of performing it until Ysabel Do, daughter of the owners of the Bar du Donjon, suggested we might try singing it together at an upcoming concert. I loved playing the song with Ysabel, and decided to record it. The only recorded version I had on hand to learn from was Eric Clapton’s, and he had given it a reggae treatment. When I showed up at home with my own reggaed Knockin’, Kate’s brow darkened and she said “No!” in a voice that would extinguish the sun. “You don’t do that to that song,” she said. “It’s a dirge, an anthem. Listen to Dylan!” So I listened to the soundtrack of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and re-did the recording. The sun came back out at home, and Ysabel and I got a great response from the audience at the Donjon. Case closed.