Neil Morton
FEATURED SONG OF THE WEEK:
Fruits Of My Labor: Cris Jacobs
We are so relieved Cris Jacobs decided against jettisoning his music career. We would never have heard his latest album One Of These Days or his new single, Fruits Of My Labor, a Lucinda Williams cover and our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com. A triumph of self-discovery.
Jacobs’ joyous collaboration with dobro guru Jerry Douglas was a defining moment in the revival of a Baltimore musician who had lost his way. Douglas produced the album, backing the singer-songwriter on a number of tracks, before embellishing his rendition of the Williams classic.
‘I was on the verge of giving it all up,’ Jacobs said at the time of the album. ‘I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with music anymore, because it felt like I’d been scratching and clawing for years – just never quite getting there, even though, when I zoom out and look at the life and career I’ve had, well, 20 years ago I would have been ecstatic if you’d told me these things would happen.’
Williams’ Fruits Of My Labour original was released just over those 20 years ago. Jacobs’ choice of cover, one of his desert island discs, could not have been more appropriate. After 10 years fronting The Bridge and another decade on his solo journey, Jacobs has earned the endorsement of bluegrass doyens Douglas and Billy Strings.
‘I met Jerry at a festival a couple years ago and I remember him watching my set,’ Jacobs told Live For Live Music. ‘Afterwards he was really nice to me and told me to keep in touch. As I was putting together my ideas for my next album I was wanting to take it back to a more bluegrass-y thing so I called him and he was into it right away. That solidified the idea. I hadn’t even written any songs yet but if, in the back of your mind, you know that Jerry Douglas wants to produce you, you get to work.’ Eleven fine tracks are the product of that new-found motivation.
He added: ‘I know he’s a great player but he’s also a great producer and person. When a guy like him is telling you that your songs are great and he’s patting you on the back, it’s pretty encouraging.’
Williams’ song about the loss of profound love, from her superb World Without Tears album in 2003, hardly requires improvement with its echoes of Sam Cooke but Jacobs gives the poetry therein a powerfully tender reimagining…
Baby, see how I been living
Velvet curtains on the windows to
Keep the bright and unforgiving
Light from shining through
Baby, I remember all the things we did
When we slept together in the blue behind your eyelids, baby
Sweet baby
Got my Mercury and drove out west
Pedal to the metal and my luck to the test, baby
Sweet baby
I been tryin' to enjoy
All the fruits of my labor
I been cryin' for you, boy
But truth is my savior
Meanwhile, Williams herself has been promoting the art of the cover by reworking the Beatles album Abbey Road, a delightful version of George Harrison’s Something providing the first single. Like all skilled interpreters, she somehow inhabits the song with her distinctive Louisiana drawl and makes it almost her own.
Lucinda Williams Sings The Beatles From Abbey Road, a mouthful of an album title, is eagerly awaited before Christmas. One of America’s greatest songwriters has always found time to honour her forebears and peers. The Beatles salute is part of her Lou’s Jukebox series she began streaming during the pandemic; there have been tributes to Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, the Rolling Stones, southern soul from Memphis to Muscle Shoals, and country classics of the Sixties.
Jacobs’ One of These Days, influenced as much by folk and blues as bluegrass, boasts an impressive support team: Billy Strings, mandolin master Sam Bush, Lee Ann Womack, the McCrary Sisters, Lindsay Lou and rousing house band The Infamous Stringdusters with Douglas on dobro as well as the dials.
Jacobs’ storytelling style of songwriting is brutally honest as he confronts years of depression and self-doubt. Just listen to the beautiful Wild Roses And Dirt, the haunting Poor Davey, Queen Of The Avenue, the deeply personal Daughter, Daughter and Everybody’s Lost. Compelling reasons to reaffirm his calling.
‘As kids, we always had that feeling of, things are going to work out, the way I dream they’ll work out,’ Jacobs says. ‘But then, the goalposts keep moving. And you wake up one day, and you’re 45 and still reaching.
‘I’ve always found so much comfort in roots music – in string band music. There’s just something about the sound of all those instruments together that resonates with me to my core and brings me grounding and peace.’
As Williams wrote in Fruits Of My Labor: ‘Take the glory any day over the fame.’ Jacobs would concur.
Empire Of Love: Amythyst Kiah
In the domain of soulful, rootsy folk Amythyst Kiah is a force of nature. The Tennessee singer-songwriter celebrates her spiritual side on Empire Of Love, one of many powerful tracks on her latest album Still + Bright and our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com.
After her meditation on grief and trauma with 2021’s Wary + Strange, Kiah explores the struggle and wonder of self-discovery. She has made the album she has always wanted to make, revealing a deep affinity for Eastern philosophies and spiritual traditions and an almost mystical connection with the natural world, particularly the Appalachian landscape of home.
‘On the last record it felt so cathartic to write about all the pain I was dealing with, but this time the songs came from a place of finding joy in the music,’ she says. ‘In the past I felt so mired down with anxiety that I sometimes held back from what I really wanted to write about; I felt like I needed to play it safe and keep certain thoughts to myself. But now I’m at a point where I’m confident in what I value and love.’
Kiah calls Empire of Love her ‘personal theme song’ as she builds her own belief system, with her customary compassion. As her website declares, here is an impassioned declaration of devotion to her journey as a spiritual seeker, with grungy guitar and defiantly delivered poetry.
Concrete pillars, golden domes
There are kingdoms that have come and gone
That we’ll never know
My religion is none at all
I build my own cathedrals and let them fall
Cause I don’t want a theocracy
Or some idle/idol ideology
We all came from stars from above
I pledge allegiance to my soul
I’ll follow where she needs to go
I’m a pilgrim for the empire of love
A repudiation of organised religion, echoing Lennon’s Imagine; she will build her own cathedrals and let them fall. ‘I believe in carving a path in life that honours my own experiences in the context of the wider world,’ says Kiah, who wrote the track with Sean McConnell. ‘As a seeker in the mountains, my sense of spiritual connection stems from nature, which is connected to all of the cosmos. And there is no religious or social dogma that can change that.’
Her voice is gaining muscle and scale without diminishing her capacity for tenderness. ‘One of my main goals was to show a new side of myself as a singer. I’ve always loved really strong, gospel-style vocals, and I put a lot of work into increasing my range for this record.’ It is an impressive instrument.
The album was produced by Butch Walker (of Taylor Swift and Green Day renown) and recorded in Nashville. On Empire Of Love Walker contributes electric guitar, bass and keyboards with Ellen Angelico on pedal steel and Matty Alger on drums. Other highlights are the dazzling Play God And Destroy The World, featuring guest vocals by SG Goodman, the fiddle and mandolin delight that is SPACE, I Will Not Go Down (with bluegrass wizard Billy Strings), Let’s See Ourselves Out (‘Sometimes I wonder if we’re just a mistake/ Millions of primates who can’t seem to find their way’) and the menacing Die Slowly Without Complaint (with Avi Kaplan). She is more comfortable as a collaborator these days; working with her soul sisters in Our Native Daughters – Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla and Allison Russell – was an inspirational foundation.
‘With all of my music, I’d love to leave people with the feeling that it’s OK to go off the beaten path and to structure your life in a way that feels right to you,’ says Kiah. ‘And just like with the last record, I hope that these songs can help people out if they’re going through a difficult time. That’s what I always hope for more than anything: for my music to be part of the healing process for anyone who might need it.’
Kiah was raised in Chattanooga and later moved to Johnson City. She says of Play God And Destroy The World: ‘To fit in, you had to go to church and have conservative values – and I know that being black wasn’t doing us any favours either. This song was written for the 15-year-old version of me who suspected that there was a big world out there that allowed for many beliefs and a more connected humanity.’
Johnson City, Tennessee
My home in Appalachia is still calling me
Give me a mountain, something divine
A river that can carve its way through stone and time
Wild Turkey, a song that mourns the loss of her mother who took her own life in the Tennessee River when Kiah was just a teenager, was a Song Of The Week from her last album which also featured the Grammy-winning anthem Black Myself. Empire Of Love is just as memorable. Daring, original, uncompromising. The plaudits for this pilgrim do not exaggerate.
Comentarios