Jeff Tweedy Helms New Mavis Staples Record

Back in January, we were excited to learn that soul legend Mavis Staples had entered the Wilco Loft studios in Chicago to record a new album. Now comes word that the record, produced by Jeff Tweedy, will be titled You Are Not Alone with a release date of 14 September.

Ms. Staples was interviewed recently by Stephen M. Deusner for Pitchfork. Her first exposure to Wilco didn't come until last year, after Tweedy had approached her about producing some songs. Ms. Staples' agent called her and told her to turn on the local PBS station; seems the band was performing on Austin City Limits: "Man, I tell you, I almost jumped out of my skin. They were dynamic and just so unbelievable. They are all so talented. All these guys are stars in their own rights. Many of them could go out on their own and be successful, I feel. But they are a band . . . I'm so happy to be connected to Wilco, the band, period." Keyboardist Patrick Sansone and Tweedy play on You Are Not Alone, joined by members of Ms. Staples' touring band and frequent Neko Case collaborating vocalists Kelly Hogan, Nora O'Connor and Richard Parenti.

The album features traditional gospel titles as well as two new songs written specifically for Ms. Staples by Tweedy, along with covers of tunes by Allen Toussaint, Pops Staples, Randy Newman and John Fogerty.

The results were pleasing to the artist, to say the least. "I really hate that the session is over. I wish we had one more song . . . I told Jeff, I said 'It's cartwheel time for me. I can't do it, but I'll get one of my nieces and nephews to do a cartwheel for me.' "

Mavis Staples is set to perform live this summer at Lollapalooza and Wilco's Solid Sound Festival.

The track listing for You Are Not Alone:

01 "You Don't Knock" (Pops Staples/Wesley Westbrook)

02 "You Are Not Alone" (Jeff Tweedy)

03 "Downward Road" (Pops Staples)

04 "In Christ There Is No East Or West" (Traditional, arranged by Tweedy)

05 "Creep Along, Moses" (Traditional)

06 "Losing You" (Randy Newman)

07 "I Belong To The Band" (Rev. Gary Davis)

08 "Last Train" (Allen Toussaint)

09 "Only The Lord Knows" (Jeff Tweedy)

10 "Wrote A Song For Everyone" (John Fogerty)

11 "We're Gonna Make It" (Little Milton)

12 "Wonderful Savior" (Traditional)

13 "Too Close To Heaven/I'm On My Way To Heaven Anyhow" (Prof. Alex E. Bradford, Jr./Brad Pathway)

This Date In Rock History: 7 June

On this date in 1958, Prince Rogers Nelson was born to John Nelson and Mattie Shaw in Minneapolis, Minnesota. But musically he was to become the son of an extended family, which would include James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Sly Stone, Miles Davis, The Beatles, Maurice White and George Clinton.

UPDATE! Antiquiet reports that Prince took to the airwaves of Minneapolis' The Current and introduced a new single, "Hot Summer." The site captured the audio and you can listen to the song here.

Music On TV This Week

CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS FOR TIMES AND REPEAT SHOWINGS; ALSO CONSULT WEB SITES AND YOUTUBE

TONIGHT, 7 June
The Tonight Show (NBC) - Hole
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (CBS) - Eric Idle
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (NBC) - Kings of Convenience
Last Call with Carson Daly (NBC) - Mishka

TUESDAY, 8 June
The Tonight Show - Chris Rock; Sting
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Circa Survive
Last Call with Carson Daly - Surfer Blood

WEDNESDAY, 9 June
The Tonight Show - OK Go
Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC) - Massive Attack
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Phish
Last Call with Carson Daly - The Living Sisters
Tavis Smiley (PBS) - Melissa Etheridge

THURSDAY, 10 June
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Damian Marley & Nas

FRIDAY, 11 June
The Late Show with David Letterman (CBS) - Robert Klein; Allison Moorer
Jimmy Kimmel Live - Miike Snow
Last Call with Carson Daly - Circa Survive

"Popical Island" - New Irish Collective

TNOP County Clare correspondent Celtic Ray reports on an interesting batch of songs gathered by an Irish collective of Dublin indie bands. Dubbed Popical Island, the 15 tracks run the gamut of musical genres and tastes. Here is a mini-mix of five songs that Ray recommends, with a few comments on the bands:



Lie Ins - "This duo reminds me of the early days catching The Violent Femmes busking on street corners."



Tieranniesaur - "This playful rhythm bops along, perfect for driving on a summer day. Unpretentious, like the old Tom-Tom Club records."



I Heart The Monster Hero - "Gonzo electronica! I dare you not to groove to it."



Land Lovers - "Gentle ballad that takes a subtle left turn into Kinks-ville."



Pantone247 - "A beautiful pop breeze that brings to mind the days of The Dream Syndicate."

You can stream the entire Popical Island compilation for the next two weeks. On 18 June it will be available in digital and physical formats. A free, all-day celebration of the record release will be held at Whelans (upstairs) in Dublin on 19 June.

Your Weekly Dylan Cover (#6)

Cassandra Wilson
"Shelter From The Storm"
Original Dylan version found on Blood On The Tracks (1975)

Although categorized as a jazz singer, it would probably be a mistake to pigeon-hole Jackson, Mississippi native Cassandra Wilson into one genre of music. Her records the past two decades have been adventuresome affairs, interpreting songs made famous from as varied artists as Hank Williams, Miles Davis, Jimmy Webb and Robert Johnson.

So it comes as no surprise that on her 2002 release Belly of the Sun, Wilson tried on Bob Dylan's "Shelter From The Storm" for size. The cover is marvelous; it has always struck me that this adaptation was influenced by the general feel and sound of Joni Mitchell's Hejira (1976). Wilson's vocal echoes Joni's cool, elegant approach and Mark Peterson's bass is a direct descendant of the unmistakable sound of Jaco Pastorius. Here, "Shelter From The Storm" seems to be sung by Wilson in the third person, as an observer of an allegoric tale; she's trying to make sense of the darkness surrounding her but senses that grace abounds in the unidentified "she" who promises "shelter from the storm."

=============================================

Like so many Dylan songs, "Shelter From The Storm" has provoked strong opinions as to its meaning, which would no doubt both please and infuriate the author: religious metaphor, "safe ballad", parallel to the then on-going war in Southeast Asia, and (fail safe for the time) broken relationship are just some of the balloons floated out there for discussion. Since its original pressing on Blood On The Tracks in 1975, to me it has always been a fascinating hodgepodge of symbols illustrating moral ideals and religious principles. But that's just one person's aside.

What I find equally compelling is the adaptation of "Shelter From The Storm" to so many effective melodies. In addition to Wilson's version discussed above, there is a fascinating dirge by Scottish musician Steve Adey and a hopeful, warm take by Rodney Crowell and past Dylan collaborator Emmylou Harris. But the most indelible cover may be Dylan's own, memorialized on the otherwise mediocre Hard Rain. This live performance - more striking because it came within a year of Blood On The Tracks' release - is literally and figuratively electric, driven not only by Dylan's vocal but his guitar playing as well. As a teen who had not yet seen Dylan live, this dynamic take opened up the great world of the master's tinkering with rhythm and harmony. It's a great introduction for those who erroneously expect that a Dylan concert will simply be a night of album reproductions.

Original Listening: Bob Dylan, "Shelter From The Storm"

Live Listening & Viewing: Bob Dylan, "Shelter From The Storm" (Rolling Thunder Revue Tour, Fort Collins, Colorado, 1976; recording found on Hard Rain)

Alternate Take: Bob Dylan, "Shelter From The Storm" (Jerry Maguire Soundtrack, 1996)

Other Cover Versions:
Steve Adey, "Shelter From The Storm" (All Things Real, 2006)
Rodney Crowell with Emmylou Harris, "Shelter From The Storm" (The Outsider, 2005)

The Decemberists Recording Album #6

This e-mail from The Decemberists arrived in TNOP's in-box late yesterday. Always nice of Colin and the gang to remember to write.

Let me, the disembodied voice with which your brain voices everything you read, be the first to welcome you to this moment, this day, this glorious first day of June. In fact, I would appreciate it if you allowed this selfsame disembodied voice to take on the lilting cadence of an Italian shepherdess, speaking in a charmingly clumsy patois as you both lay supine under a Florentine sun -- you can do that for me, can't you?

Good.

***********

In other Decemberist news, you might be pleased to know that we are currently recording what will no doubt become our SIXTH record at a barn in an undisclosed location near Portland. Our esteemed management has suggested that you might appreciate a photo documentation of this endeavor, so I conclude by attaching the following snapshot above.

Yours truly,

The Decemberists

Milwaukee Hip-Hop For The Holiday

Two great cuts to start the holiday weekend off with infectious old school beats and blaring speakers.

Frankie Flowers
"Koolness"




Kid Millions
"Victim To The Beat"

John Prine & Yim Yames: "All The Best"

The wonderful John Prine visited The Late Show with David Letterman last night and sang a duet of his "All The Best" with Yim Yames. My Morning Jacket's cover of the song is included in the upcoming Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine, to be released 22 June on Oh Boy Records. Here's the track listing:

1 "Bruised Orange" - Justin Vernon

2 "Wedding Day In Funeralville" - Conor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band

3 "All The Best" - My Morning Jacket

4 "Mexican Home" - Josh Ritter

5 "Six O'Clock News" - Lambchop

6 "Far From Me" - Justin Townes Earle

7 "Spanish Pipedream" - The Avett Brothers

8 "Angel From Montgomery" - Old Crow Medicine Show

9 "The Late John Garfield Blues" - Sara Watkins

10 "Daddy's Little Pumpkin" - Drive-By Truckers

11 "Unwed Fathers" - Deertick feat. Liz Isenberg

12 "Let's Talk Dirty In Hawaiian" - Those Darlins

The Daily News Asks TNOP For The Dope

If your bus from downtown doesn't stop until 82nd Street uptown, TNOP's got some news to keep you company and while away the time . . .

A double CD of a 1966 Otis Redding show at Hollywood's Whisky-A-Go-Go, Otis Redding - Live On The Sunset Strip, was released this week. Pop & Hiss brings us a great story on the gigs, taped over four nights, using a noted eye-witness as its main source: Ry Cooder, who was playing guitar at the time for the warm-up act, Taj Mahal. "It was unbelievable," recalled Cooder. "He'd get up, stomp his foot, wave his arm, grab a microphone and sing with such searing intensity, I thought, this man's going to have a heart attack if he keeps this up. He's not going to make it. But it was good -- a great R&B show, the likes of which I'd never seen."

Step right up! Mr. Tom Waits edits the 200th issue of Mojo, on newstands in the UK soon. Wait a couple of weeks for it to show at your favorite bookstore in the US. Features in the July edition include Waits' interview of Harry Belafonte, a 15-song CD selected and sequenced by the singer and the magazine's guide to all of the Waits album catalog.

U2 had to cancel as the headliner at the massive Glastonbury Festival on opening night, 25 June. But The Guardian reports that Gorillaz have stepped into the breach. Speaking on behalf of 2D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russel Hobbs, Damon Albern said, "it was us or The Beatles, and they split up years ago."

The new Arcade Fire 12" will be released in the next couple of days. Nialler9 has posted both songs, "The Suburbs" and "Month of May" for you to sample in full.

The Cute Beatle visits The White House next week, feted by a number of noted musicians, including Stevie Wonder, Elvis Costello, Jack White and Emmylou Harris. Click Track gives us a Macca song wish list. TNOP agrees wholeheartedly that "We Can Work It Out" is the hands-down choice for The Wonderous One.

Drew Olson of OnMilwaukee.com speaks with Kurt Neumann of the BoDeans and provides a historical timeline of the underrated band. TNOP still fondly remembers the shows in the early 1980s at The Landing at Humboldt & North.

OK. So you are in your cap and gown at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute and thinking what boring commencement speaker am I going to have to suffer through? And out walks . . . Patti Smith! And she not only is funny, entertaining, name-dropping and emotional, but sings a couple of songs too! And how can't you love this send-off into the world: "be happy, take care of your teeth, always let your conscience be your guide. well, i wish you god and good luck." The Awl gives great video and The Smoking Bop Gun provides the transcript.

TNOP UK music correspondent and all-around bon vivant Miles Gallagher has been talking up Rock Island, Illinois singer-songwriter Lissie Maurus over the past couple of weeks. Now a great new video of a live performance with Ellie Goulding at the Brighton Great Escape has surfaced. Enjoy Lissie's composition "Everywhere I Go" (via TwentyFour Bit).

Here's a great excuse to escape to a great city: NXNE takes place 14-20 June in Toronto. Billed as "650 Bands - 7 Days - 40 Films - 50 Venues" the festival music headliners include Iggy & The Stooges, De La Soul and The Ravonettes and screens Don Letts' documentary on the late Joe Strummer.

Band of Horses, touring behind their third LP, Infinite Arms, played Los Angeles' Roxy on Tuesday night. Spinner was there.

Hot Press reports that the new Ra Ra Riot album called The Orchard will be released in both the US and Ireland/UK on 24 August.

Damn! They beat us to it. All Songs Considered solicits nominations for best opening tracks on an album. The blog is at 450 suggestions and counting.

To coincide with the 1974 release of Brian Eno's Here Come The Warm Jets (which, by the way, contained the classic track "The Paw-Paw Negro Blow Torch"), a pre-Pretenders Chrissie Hynde was sent by NME to interview the ex-Roxy Music chameleon. He answered the door to his London flat in a red satin kimono and black satin dress pants. Ah, those were the days . . .

TNOP told you. Janelle Monae's The ArchAndroid has garnered rave reviews from Pitchfork, The Boston Globe, and The Chicago Tribune, among many others. Greg Kot interviews the exciting young singer in Turn It Up.

The Telegraph profiles the legendary Booker T. Jones.

Well, our stop's coming up. Before we step off into the hustle and bustle of the big city, slip on your earbuds and listen to Stevie Wonder sing maybe the best Beatles' cover ever.

This Date In Rock History: 25 May

On this date in 1926, Miles Dewey Davis 3d was born in Alton, Illinois. He would have been 84 today, had he not gone a-way.

Miles Davis grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois, the son of an affluent dental surgeon. On his thirteenth birthday, he was given a trumpet and music lessons with a local musician. By the age of 15, young Miles had obtained his union card and was performing in and around St. Louis with Eddie Randall's Blue Devils.

Trumpeter Clark Terry, one of Miles' idols, became his mentor and his local reputation grew. The Davises spurned offers for Miles to join several big bands. But when he was 18, the singer Billy Eckstine (another of Miles' personal favorites) came to town with his band, which included Charlie "Yardbird" Parker on alto sax and Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet. After another trumpeter took sick, Miles sat in with the band on a two week stand. It made him decide to move to New York City.

With the promise to his parents that he would extend his formal musical education, Miles attended The Julliard School of Music starting in September 1944. He studied by day and performed at jazz clubs in Harlem and on 52nd Street at night. Seduced by the unique rhythm of be-bop that Bird and Diz introduced him to, Miles put Julliard in the rear-view mirror and concentrated solely on jazz. In his autobiography he notes that "Up at Julliard, I played in the symphony, two notes, with be-bop, every 90 bars, so I said "Let me out of here,' and I left." With that unique musical bedrock, he began to craft his own musical style.

Early gigs saw Miles perform with saxophonists Coleman Hawkins and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. By 1945 he was part of a quintet with arguably the most talented and influential jazz saxophonist of all time, Charlie Parker. Jazz historians note recordings of "Koko" and "Now's The Time" with this group as the first be-bop sessions.

By the late '40s, Miles was striking out on his own, with a quintet that sometimes included Bird. But the sound was evolving, as it would throughout Miles' entire career. This phase is now identified as "cool jazz" because of the elaborate orchestrations he forged with arrangers Gil Evans and Gerry Mulligan. The movement was particularly influential on the West Coast.

The early 1950s saw Miles swallowed up by heroin use and his work in the first half of the decade is spotty. But he beat the addiction and once again was at the vanguard of the latest jazz variation: "hard bop." In 1954, he recorded with the giants Sonny Rollins (sax), Horace Silver (piano) and Thelonious Monk (piano). Miles triumphant return to the public arena is still considered his appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1955 with his first seminal quintet in tow: Red Garland on piano, John Coltrane on tenor sax, Paul Chambers on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums. This group would go on to record six albums in two years; supposedly the ferocity of the work was in part due to fulfilling a contract with Prestige Records, in order to sign with recording giant Columbia. These albums would bring Miles his first general notice of the music public at large.

In 1957, Miles had an operation on his vocal cords. As recounted in his life story, two days after the surgery he got into an argument and began shouting at someone "who tried to convince to go into a deal that I didn't want." The damage left him the now famous low tone, gravelly voice for the rest of his life.

Adding Julian "Cannonball" Adderly to the quintet in the late 1950s, Miles introduced a more sparse, stripped down style to the harmonies. The albums produced in this era, particularly Milestones and Kind of Blue (with Bill Evans replacing Garland on piano), are widely considered masterpieces, and have served as a literal introduction to jazz to millions of listeners. A great start if you've never heard Miles is "So What":

Electrified sound was the next stop on Miles' musical journey. In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew continue to be touchstones for not only the jazz set (the advent of "fusion") but the rock and roll community as well (fueling the impetus of what was to be known as "funk"). And once again, Miles introduced the music world to phenomenal musicians, who would go on to have significant careers in their own right: saxophonist Wayne Shorter, guitarist John McLaughlin, drummer Tony Williams, bassist Ron Carter and keyboardists Joe Zawinul and Herbie Hancock.

Miles' later years in music were marred by various physical maladies and probably fans and critics with overexpectations. He died in 1991. Almost 20 years later, Miles Davis is securely atop popular music's Mount Olympus.