In Memoriam: A Belated Appreciation of Justin Townes Earle

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Mar 262021
 

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

Last summer I was crushed by mail at my job as a mail carrier, at a time when everyone was ordering Amazon as they stayed at home. I was further flattened by a boulder with the news that Justin Townes Earle had passed away at the age of 38. The headline went by in a blink, like all the news last year, and although I had hoped to write about his career, full of a multitude of covers from several genres, a 100-year pandemic event of mail turned into a 100-year event of election mail, and then a 100-year event of Christmas packages. My timely tribute was not meant to be.

Earle, like all prodigies with musical DNA, was often compared to his father. Some wanted to compare the similarities of their Americana music, while others wanted to highlight the differences, such as JTE’s penchant for wearing traditional bluegrass suits on stage. I sometimes wonder if he defied comparisons on purpose, dressing in a summer suit while dropping f-bombs in a plethora of raunchy realness. But anyone that heard them would never confuse the two.

Earle was the latest victim in a slew of high-profile opioid deaths. Prince. Tom Petty. Jay Bennett of Wilco. After JTE died, Steve Earle came out with a tribute album of his son’s songs, heartbreaking evidence that the father defied the devil’s bookies and outlived the son.

The people who give us joy are suddenly ripped away. But in JTE’s case, some of that joy was recorded on camera. Here, on the ninth anniversary of the release of his album Nothing’s Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now, let’s take a look at some of his best covers.
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Five Good Covers: “Keep On Running” (Spencer Davis Group/Jackie Edwards)

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Oct 232020
 

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

Spencer Davis Group

Before this past Monday, we could have categorized this as a Five Good Covers post, or a That’s a Cover post. Alas, circumstances beyond our control have seen to it that it could only be an In Memoriam.

Spencer Davis, of the eponymous band, has died.

To commemorate this most shadowy of front men, whose band is now famous more for who else was in it besides him, let’s revisit Davis’s life and see why he is worthy of recognition in his own right. We’ll also be drilling down into “Keep on Running,” the first Spencer Davis Group number one.
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In Memoriam: John Lennon at 80

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Oct 092020
 

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

John Lennon (of the Beatles, the Quarrymen, the Dirty Mac, and the Plastic Ono Band, among others) was born on this day. He shares the birthday, oddly enough, with his youngest son, Sean. (Happy 45th, Sean!)

One way to celebrate the day is to sing the Beatles’ “Birthday” song (keeping in mind that Lennon considered the song, which he co-wrote, “a piece of garbage”). Another is to listen to his music with renewed appreciation. If we do that, we’re gonna have a good time, just like the song says.

John would be turning 80 today, an auspicious number: He lived for 40 years, and has been gone for 40 years (as of December). Forty years here, forty years gone: those are Biblical numbers. And how funny that this 40/40 business should happen in the year 2020.

John loved numbers and numerology, so it’s ok to fixate on this stuff for a minute. The number nine in particular held Lennon’s interest, the day of the month he was born on. Some of his song titles allude to the obsession: “One After 909,” “Revolution 9,” “#9 Dream” (which reached #9 on the charts). So guess how many covers we’ve lined up today?
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In Memoriam: Judy Dyble

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Sep 292020
 

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

Judy Dyble

Singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Judy Dyble occupies a unique place in music history. Dyble, who passed away in July at the age of 71, played a role in the origin stories of two long-running British musical institutions. She was a founding member of the folk-rock outfit Fairport Convention, and she sang with a band called Giles, Giles and Fripp; they would go on to morph into the legendary prog-rock group King Crimson.

Dyble’s music career spanned five decades. Whether it’s on her early recordings from the ‘60s or her albums from the 2010s, the quiet power of her voice resonates like a haunting echo from the past, carrying nearly every song she sang. Throughout her life and career, she performed many excellent cover songs, proving herself as a powerful interpreter of other artists’ music.
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In Memoriam: Joe Strummer

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Aug 212020
 

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

Joe Strummer covers

John Graham Mellor was born on August 21st, 1952 in Ankara, Turkey. He entered a boarding school in London at the age of 9. He was obsessed with music and went by the nickname “Woody” (he was quite the Woody Guthrie fan). In 1970 he had to identify his brother’s body after his estranged sibling committed suicide three days prior – something that would haunt him forever. After graduating he attended the Central School of Art and Design in London, and in 1973 he moved to Newport, Wales where he played guitar and sang for a band called The Vultures. In 1974 he moved back to London and started the band The 101ers. The following year, he told his mates to stop calling him Woody Mellor. He had adopted a new moniker, and for the rest of his life he would be known as Joe Strummer.
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In Memoriam: Roy Buchanan

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Aug 142020
 

The late great guitarist Roy Buchanan, who died on this day in 1988, liked to say he was the son of a preacher man. And that as a boy he attended church revivals with Black congregations, where he first heard blues music. He was the first white guy to absorb the blues, he liked to say, and to build a career around the form.

These claims may not be the gospel truth–Buchanan also insisted he was “half-wolf.” His own brother denies that their father did any preaching at all. The truth is that Roy Buchanan was a dark and complicated man and artist.

What is also unmistakably true is that few have mastered their instrument to the depth Roy did. Buchanan’s close listeners praise his array of astonishing techniques, and how he used them to express uniquely emotive statements. As with a good Hendrix solo, you catch your breath at the sheer intensity of sound and soulfulness that Buchanan summons up when he’s running hot. His Fender Telecaster screams and cries, whistles and whines in ways are piercing in one second and tender in the next—Roy could recreate the human voice in uncanny ways. But then he’d spin into machine-like rapid-fire notes that make your teeth hurt. He didn’t need effect pedals to achieve this sonic richness—he was a purist in his way, defiantly old-school in a period that expected progressive experimentation.
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