SOUNDTRACK: DON BRYANT: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #116 (November 24, 2020).
I was not familiar with Don Bryant, although I must have heard his music over the years.
Bryant, almost 80, has been in the music business since the early days of rock and roll; he wrote his first hit, the Five Royales’ “I Got to Know,” in 1960. He went on to his biggest success as a songwriter for Hi Records in Memphis …. For a number of years he only recorded gospel music, until 2017 when he began releasing soul records again, backed by members of the Bo-Keys.
Although
Classic soul music feels best in a club, with a lead singer and big band, preferably with horns, playing off the excitement of a sweaty crowd, drawing them in to stories of love, or love lost, or love reclaimed. It’s a hard feeling to find in our pandemic times.
Bryant manages to play some gorgeous old-school soul with just a guitarist (Scott Bomar) and a keyboardist (Archie “Hubbie” Turner). And his voice, of course.
Wearing an elegant black and grey jacket matching his salt-and-pepper hair, Bryant evokes style and experience – someone who has been in it for the long haul.
This set is three songs from his latest record, You Make Me Feel, all written by him.
His voice is powerful and resonant, deeply rooted in gospel. The keyboard sound is a classic soul sound and the guitar provides a mixture of rocking riffs and mellow accompaniment.
In “Your Love is to Blame” he even gives some good James Brown yelps.
Between songs he sounds like a preacher: I’m going to give these songs to you as strong as I can.
“Is It Over” is slower and more mellow. His voice sounds great, hitting high notes and unlike contemporary singers, his grace notes sound great–strong and not whiny.
“Your Love is Too Late” is a classic soul kiss-off track: “I found somebody new to do the things I wanted you to do.” It opens with an old fashioned guitar riff and moves on from there with grooving guitars and fleshed out keyboards.
I don’t listen to much soul, but I do rather like it.
[READ: December 26, 2020] By the Way 2
This is Ann Lane’s second book about public art in Ireland. She compiled the first in 2010. I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know what is in it.
She says that in the ten or so years since the first book, more art has been added and she had been made aware of all of the art that she had missed.
But the fact that there are over 1,000 images in this book, that this is her second book and that in the introduction she says that she pretty much ignores the big cities (due to size constraints of the book) makes me think that Ireland is absolutely amazing with the amount of public art that the country has. Ireland is about the same size as Indiana, and I would bet a ton of money that Indiana does not have 2,000 (some absolutely gorgeous) piece of public art to look at.
This book is broken down by county. Lane includes many pieces of art from each county and provides some context for the piece, whether it is the impetus for the creation, some comment about its construction or even an occasional personal reflection.
It isn’t easy to photograph pubic art. Some pieces absolutely fail when taken out of context or when trying to encompass an entire piece of art with a tiny photo. Sometimes you cannot do justice to a piece because it must be seen from different angles to be really appreciated. But Lane does a great job conveying these pieces. And if her main goal is to get you to want to come to Ireland see them, then she has succeeded.
I marked off dozens of pictures in here because they were either my favorites or they were interesting in some way.
I followed this format.
COUNTY
Town: Title (Artist) Location. Comments. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 