The Professor longs for the wide open spaces of the country with new works by Staples Jr. Singers, Turnpike Troubadours, Pokey LaFarge, Lizz Wright and Sleepwalker’s Station.
I look out the window and see the tower of a cathedral. The sermon cherry of a northern parish, it’s been there for almost a thousand years … And oh, I realize that I’m already mildly confused in the first sentence of our little soul review, I’ve just written “sermon cherry”. That’s what happens when you indulge your thoughts and at the same time give your fingers free rein on the keyboard. It’s wild thoughts, beautiful thoughts, lifting the curtains in the upper story at seven in the morning and coaxing the synapses out of the sheets … I had been bathing in music for a long time yesterday, dear friends, but more on that in a moment. It’s the memory of an evening a few days ago that won’t go out of my mind. The Rambler, Mr. T. and Professor P had once again hit the tracks to board the S-Bahn and rumble out to the outskirts of town, postmodern hobos that they are. The train kept a-rollin, to quote the unfortunately somewhat forgotten Johnny Burnette. There, on the outskirts of the city, in the backyard, alongside a Turkish car repair shop, a martial arts studio and a questionable creative workshop called “The Walking Braindads”*, there is also an establishment that I like to visit. It’s called “Happy Billiards”, and every Thursday it hosts the “Club on Thursday”, a project embedded in the German association system and run by a handful of retired suburban residents. They have managed (how, that remains their secret) to establish themselves in the international touring business to such an extent that bands from overseas line up to play here. That evening it was The Comancheros, a fun trio from Missouri, who mix the legacy of Johnny Cash, Motörhead and ZZ Top into a wild soul-rock melange. For my taste, the records are a bit too much dedicated to the motto “Hard and Heavy”, which is why you won’t find these discussed here. But the live experience, though … The way the three of them made their way through the cozy crowd of denim jackets in bright red western suits of the “Karl May fans at the cowboy carnival” type, then let their hamstring-length, hairdryer-conditioned manes fly unfettered for two hours straight while blasting out song after song with the hyperventilating joy of someone who’s standing in front of 200,000 spectators on the Glastonbury Mainstage and not in front of 23 suburban geezers in the after hours … Friends: Let your favorite warrior of words take up the cudgels for The Unknown Band. For The Tiny Club. For The-Concert-Nobody-Talks-About. Go out, good folks, put your 15 euros on the house table, wherever that may be, and support life. With a view of the tower of the sermon cherry: Amen.
*I made that up, of course. But it could have been, or I would have liked it to be for the collection of bizarre everyday professorial experiences. From now on, however, The Walking Braindads is real, as per the general conspiracy theory principle of “my-subjectively-perceived-truth-equals-globally-valid-truth”. So if you need a questionable creative concept – you know where to go. For the sake of completeness: car repair shops, martial arts studios and, above all, happy billiards also exist outside the professorial fact bubble.
Staples Jr. Singers – Searching
Let’s start right away with a work that I put on my top five list of my favorite albums of the year. And as I just metaphorically dropped my pants in the intro to today’s soul review, outing myself as a part-time forger of personal life experience, here is another disclaimer to preserve the objective truth (something that can’t happen often enough in this day and age, when fact and fiction are one and the same for many people): No such list actually exists. But if it did exist, I might even want to put the Staples Jr. Singers at number one. And lest there be any confusion among all those who think they know that only Mavis Staples still actively sings in the Staples Singers and that band patriarch Pops Staples went home to his creator a few years ago: this is the Staples Jr. Singers, a trio that formed almost 60 years ago as the children of the Brown family from Aberdeen on the banks of the Tombigbee River in the state of Mississippi. A family gospel band, as there were countless in the Bible Belt of the Underprivileged States of America at the time. They toured with the eldest brother at the wheel of the old family van and finally recorded a single album for a fistful of dollars when Annie was just 14, Edward 15 and R.C. 16. But they actually named themselves after the Staple Singers around Pops and Mavis Staples, because the latter were the first family band in the southern states to cross gospel with soul and funk – and achieved great fame with Booker T. And The M.G.’s as their backing band. The Brown family also mixed gospel with everyday lyrics and modern grooves on the album When Do We Get Paid. At the age of 14, Annie sang like the older sister of James Brown, to whom she was not related. After that, however, they returned to everyday life, performing in churches, community centers, etc., but since Annie’s marriage, they have sung separately as the Caldwell Singers and the Brown Singers. This actually remained the case for decades until the old album was re-released two years ago, the three siblings came together for the first concert in 50 years – and finally recorded only the second album of their strange career last fall. Searching was recorded in just two days in a church in West Point, Mississippi, with two sons and a grandson as the rhythm section. As for the way the gospel pensioners, now quite heavyweight, throw themselves into the songs with all their soul and voice, breathing them in and out again, the professor is, for once, at a loss for words. Just this much: I have seen the light!
Label: Luaka Bop Records
Format: CD, LP, DL 24/96
Turnpike Troubadours – A Cat In The Rain
A gingerly plucking and plinking banjo makes its way through the dust of East Oklahoma, while a male choir softly begins to sing. Oh yes, the inner projectionist twirls the celluloid reels. Thorny shrubberies in the Panhandle state, the screech of coyotes in the Dustbowl of the Midwaste. Tumbleweed blows across the highway. In the distance, the metal roofs of a hog farm’s megastables shimmer in the midday heat. It is images like these that pass before the professor’s inner eyes like a perpetual freight train at a lonely railroad crossing in the middle of nowhere … Well, friends, the wide open country. The breath of the prairie, the smell of dusty prairie grass and pig piss. I have my eyes closed, my headphones on and let A Cat In The Rain by the Turnpike Troubadours seep into me. A wonderful album by this outlaw country band, who have distanced themselves as far as possible from classic Nashville feel-good country. It is a comeback album that the band from the dry, arid expanses of Oklahoma has presented here after singer and founder Evan Felker had found himself unable to cope with fame and alcohol five years ago. After all, the band had already formed in 2007 as a pub band, then experienced an unexpected breakthrough in 2012 with Goodbye Normal Street and subsequently top chart positions. Now the reunited sextet has enlisted Shooter Jennings as producer, the only son of Waylon Jennings, the founder of the outlaw country style and eternally rebellious voice against the conformist, sweet-sounding Nashville country establishment, who died in 2002. Perhaps you know his biggest hit, sung as a duet with Willie Nelson: “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys”. Son Shooter now got everything out of the Turnpike Troubadours in the legendary Fame Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama: gentle steppe cajun soul (“Mean Old Sun”), country gospel folk (“Lucille”) and juke joint party rock (“Black Sky”). Good, no, excellent work.
Label: Wedge/Rough Trade
Format: CD, LP, DL 16/44
Pokey LaFarge – Rhumba Country
Oh, I’ve just had a little flash of joy, friends. Because while Rhumba Country by Pokey LaFarge was playing in the background once again, I gathered my thoughts from the furthest corners of my shotgun booth and then sat down at the typewriter, I wanted to know one thing above all else: When can I see the man live? Now I know, a quick peek into the internet has revealed it. In the fall and winter, Andrew Heissler, who has been calling himself Pokey LaFarge ever since graduating from high school in 2001, as he was enjoying the few recordings of folk musician Peter La Farge, who died of an overdose far too early, is on tour in Germany. So, straight into the diary goes the date, followed a big exclamation mark. Who is this Pokey, anyway? Well, after leaving school, he picked up a guitar and banjo – given to him by his grandfather, a member of the St. Louis Banjo Club, as a start in life – as a young man and headed west from the banks of the Mississippi to earn a living as a street musician. In 2006, he recorded his first record, Marmalade. Rhumba Country is now the eleventh work by this strange, exceptional artist. He mixes blues with jazz, calypso with Cajun, ragtime with rhumba and writes wonderful little song miniatures which, for some reason I don’t need to know, make various vines in my inner emotional jungle swing. Rhumba in the jungle, if you like. One example is the song “Run Run Run”, a western swing shuffle with a subtle Latin infusion, which could either be the soundtrack to an erotic movie from the sixties or a questionable spy movie. Professor’s heart, what more could you want?
Label: New West Records
Format: CD, LP, DL 24/48
Lizz Wright – Shadow
From deepest Georgia, where sweet peaches grow under the southern sun and soul on top of that – just think of “Midnight Train To Georgia” by Gladys Knight and the Pips – yes, from deep, deep down south, a beautiful record reaches me. Lizz Wright, child of the Peach State and a preacher, now a formally trained and praised jazz vocalist, has released her eighth album. The Professor likes it, even if it sounds almost too perfectly produced in places, with every note sounding like a statement. But many readers of the hip influencer medium FIDELITY are sure to be delighted: an ideal record for the inner and outer examination of your high-end equipment. Having recently devoted herself increasingly to the gospel tradition of her family heritage and recorded an album dedicated to the classical church genre with Fellowship, Wright now returns even deeper to her roots with Shadow, mixing gospel with African rhythms, soul with jazz and allowing the gentle grooves of different genres to intertwine and dance out of the speakers. Listen here: “Sparrow” (almost seven-minute intro duet with the French-African singer Angélique Kidjo, in which a double bass makes friends with a violin and various analog and digital percussion instruments – beautiful! ), “Root Of Mercy” (uptempo gospel with church credibility and a fat B3 organ) and “I Made A Lovers Prayer” (sounds like a lost ballad by Simon & Garfunkel with four enchanting violins and a gracefully swinging bass).
Label: Blues & Greens Records/Virgin
Format: CD, LP, DL 24/96
Sleepwalker’s Station – Manitoba
I don’t really know which genre to assign to this record. Soul? Chanson? Death metal? Well, I can say this much: death metal it is not. If I had left it at that, Daniel del Valle would probably have boarded the ICE in Munich and confronted the professor in his hut in the Arctic Circle. The German-Italian-Spanish singer-songwriter has set up his base camp in Bavaria, from where he apparently trots across the globe in search of musical comrades-in-arms and creative input for his artistic work on the banks of the Isar. But what’s a writing professor to do when the booklet is already overwhelming him with the recording notes alone? Del Valle’s band Sleepwalker’s Station is made up of musicians from Germany, Spain and Italy. On their latest album Manitoba, which has just been released, they sing in five languages and various dialects (including Beer Garden Bavarian) and play trumpet, trombone, violin, clarinet and the box-necked lute gitalele in addition to the classical line-up. And because a lot of personnel is needed if all the songs are to be recorded live and together in the studio on the Atlantic coast in Portugal, guest musicians from distant shores (including Iceland and Baden-Württemberg) have also been invited. The collective then let off steam in a colorful variety of genres, mixing bossa nova, chanson, waltz, pop, cumbia rhythms with soul and pop – and yes, however and for whatever reason, sometimes more is simply more: the album is good. Recommended tracks: “Fading Names” (song that reminds me of Elliot Smith in its discreetly melancholy appraisal of life, and that’s always a compliment!), ‘Prohibido’ (Spanish track that won’t be a summer hit anymore, too melodramatic in terms of seasons and character, with wonderful blues folk guitar, Texmex trumpet and Spanish lyric lisp) and ‘München’ (pretzel blues? Beer garden folk? In any case: anthem with a slight reggae undertone and a Bavarian twang, plus clarinet and tuba, weird & wonderful).
Label: Timezone Records
Format: CD, LP, DL 16/44
PS: And if Daniel del Valle should ever turn up in the Arctic Circle, after studying old interviews with his early idols, among others, I have a nice topic for small talk: the professor was once an enthusiastic fan of Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung. But the world can be grateful that it didn’t make me follow the career path of singer-songwriter.