SOUNDTRACK: ROSANNE CASH-Tiny Desk Concert #894 (September 23, 2019)
I don’t know all that much about Rosanne Cash (I couldn’t recall how she was related to Johnny). I also assumed that she would be a country artist. Yet this set is anything but country. But I guess the key to that is that her voice isn’t country at all, it’s just good.
This blurb also blows my mind a bit about how quickly (or not) they post concerts. This show was posted in September but was recorded in January–she had to wait quite a while to see it.
Rosanne Cash and her band arrived at NPR to play the Tiny Desk on a freezing cold, bright sunny day in January — one of those brittle, crystal clear winter days when the snow reflects the sun and there’s nowhere to hide from the light. Her intense performance had that same balance of heat and ice.
Cash plays four songs
most taken from her 2018 album She Remembers Everything, have a lot of emotional heat, but they’re shaped and sculpted by the wry wisdom of age and experience. More than at any time in her career, her spirit and approach to performance these days reflects the influence of her father, the legendary country singer Johnny Cash.
“She Remembers Everything” opens with John Leventhal on with Rosanne on acoustic guitar. Like most of these songs, it feels slow and powerful–kind of bluesy with a dramatic chord progression. Mid song, Leventhal switches to guitar and plays a great little solo.
When the song is over she praises everyone: “So attentive. Like a listening room at the NPR offices.”
Up next is “The Only Thing Worth Fighting” which she co-wrote with T Bone Burnett and Lyra Lynn This song is not so much country as western-sounding. There’s more nice guitar work from Leventhal.
Zev Katz on bass and Dan Rieser on drums don’t do anything to single them out except for keeping the songs moving properly. The bass does do some nice lines, but mostly, these are simple songs which need little accompaniment.
For “Everyone But Me” she takes off the guitar. This is a lovely piano ballad after which she says, “I don’t know if the young people can relate to this song but it means more as you get older.”
The last song is from her album The River and the Thread. She says the album won a Grammy and the last time she won a Grammy, Ronald Reagan was president. From this she plays the cool bluesy “A Feather’s Not A Bird.”
This isn’t the kind of music I enjoyed, but I liked this Tiny Desk Concert a lot more than I thought I would based on what I thought I knew about Rosanne Cash.
[READ: August 26, 2019] The Adventures of Barry & Joe
After the election that has sent the country spiraling into a level of hell, Adam Reid wanted to do something to make decent-thinking people laugh.
When I saw first saw this, I assumed that Adam Reid was Adam Reed, the creator of Archer and other delightfully dark cartoons. It took a while for me to realize that he isAdam Reid who is responsible for The Tiny Chef Show.
Aside from that, I don’t really have any familiarity with him. So that’s kind of interesting, I suppose. (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: LOU REED-“A Gift” (1976).
This “soft rock” song features a slow guitar song with shuffle beat as Reed speaks his mind.
SOUNDTRACK: KAWABATA MAKOTO [河端一]-INUI 3 (2005).
Kawabata Makoto [河端一] is the guitarist and mastermind behind Acid Mothers Temple. The band is hugely prolific. But he still had time to record solo albums. Often times without any guitar.
