SOUNDTRACK: TOM MISCH AND YUSSEF DAYES-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #49 (July 13, 2020).
Tom Misch and Yussef Dayes play a light jazz with lots of interesting elements floating around the songs. The blurb says the music “evokes a dreamy utopia, blending live electronica, psychedelia and avant-garde jazz.”
I didn’t realize that Misch was British until the chorus–the way he sings “the dash.” Actually I first realized when he spoke after the song, but then it was obvious when he sang.
Producer/guitarist Tom Misch and drummer Yussef Dayes released a surprising and stunning collaborative album earlier this year called What Kinda Music,. This Tiny Desk (home) concert — recorded across six different musicians’ homes — features two songs from that album, “Nightrider” and “Tidal Wave.”
“Nightrider” has cool echoing slow guitars and fantastically complex drumming. But the focus of this song seems to be the wonderfully busy five string bass from Tom Driessler. Jordan Rakei provides backing vocals and
special guest John Mayer provides a closing solo, just as he did at last year’s Crossroads Guitar Festival.
It’s weird the way Mayer stares at the camera at the end though.
“Tidal Wave” has a different cast. It features Rocco Palladino on bass, which is not as complex. Although Yussef’s drumming is fantastic once again.
There’s a nice lead guitar line before the vocals kick in. I almost wish the song were an instrumental until Joel Culpepper adds his wonderful high backing vocals.
This is some good chill out music.
[READ: July 10, 2020] “Calling”
I know I’ve read Richard Ford stories before, but this stories was so fascinating to me–it felt very different from so many other stories that I read.
Set around Christmas in 1961, the narrator’s father has left him and his mother in New Orleans while he has moved to St. Louis to be with a male doctor.
His mother, meanwhile, had begun a singing career, which essentially meant that she was sleeping with her African American singing coach.
What’s fascinating about the story (aside from how trasnsgressive his parents seem in 1961) is that the narrator is telling the story from the present:
They are all dead now. My father. My mother. Dr. Carter. The black accompanist, Dubinion.
These interjections of the present allow for some reflections on this tumultuous period in his life.
He describes men like his father in a wonderful lengthy paragraph with phrases like they “seem like the very best damn old guys you could ever know” and that “they seem exotic, and your heart expands with the thought of a long friendship’s commencement.” But after a while of socializing, you begin to see that “this man is far, far away from you… and you know you’re nothing to him.” He concludes that “it is not that there is anything so wrong with him, nothing unsavory or misaligned. Nothing sexual. You just know he is not for you.”
The “punchline” to this is:
of course it’s more complicated when this involves your father.
His father always called him Buck. And this weekend he said he’d be back in New Orleans and invited Buck to go duck hunting.
Buck wanted to go duck hunting, He always imagined going with his father and now that he was thirteen and had been taught how to shoot a rifle at school, he was especially eager. He just wasn’t sure he wanted to go with his father anymore. And his mother certainly had opinions about whether he should go with his father..
The phone call drifted until his dad asked how school was
“I hate school.”
He had liked his old school but when his father left his mother sent him away to Sandhurst where he “wore a khaki uniform with a blue stripe down the side of my pants leg and a stiff blue doorman’s hat. I felt a fool at all times.”
His father’s reaction was typical:
“Oh, well, who cares…You’ll get ito Harvard the same way I did.”
“What way?”
“On looks.”
There is a lot in the story about his odd relationship with Dubinion. Dubinion pretended to be the house gardener–it was less scandalous that way–but he had full run of the house. He was also well-educated and a little sarcastic about Buck. When he asked Buck what he was reading and Buck told him The Inferno, Dubuon quoted from it in Italian (Buck had no idea what he was saying).
But the bulk of the story is about the hunting trip.
Bucks father sent a taxi for him and when Buck arrived at the marsh, his father was already drunk (it was the hour before light). He was also in a tuxedo. Their guide, Fabrice Renard Jr had nothing but disdain for his father. The feeling was mutual, with his father calling him “Mr Grease-Fabrice. Mr Fabree-chay.”
Renard was known for his duck calling–tht’s why he was along. When Buck’s father had had enough of chit chat he demanded Rendard call. Ducks came flying down, but Buck shot too soon and his father was too unsteady. They both missed Renard scoffed that they both shoot like a couple of old grandmas.
The second duck to come near was saved for Buck. His father insisted. Everyone watched as he took aim.
The end of the story is set in the present with Buck reflecting back on this day and the rest of his relationship with his father (which wasn’t great).
I really enjoyed the tone of this story.
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