I got a real kick out of the movie "Brother Where Art Thou", especially the old time Appalachian country music. This one could have been my Daddy's theme song when he was young and stupid. I love the yodeling. Next time I'll post the song about how the Cowboy Yodel Was Born.
A whole bunch of folks in the country music and bluegrass singin' business contributed to the amazing batch of songs that made this weird little Cohen Brothers movie memorable. This was the rock n' roll music of the depression era South and it feels very familiar to me. This is the stuff my kinfolk used to sing on the back porch in the cool of a summer evening.
Here's the clip from the movie where they sing "He's in the Jailhouse Now.":
I don't think Dougie Maclean meant for this to be a Christian song, but
if you think of the lighthouse as Jesus, this song comes into sharp
focus. I particularly like this live version done with a choir for
backup. I love the rainstorm opening put together by the choir. It's
lovely and kinda breath-taking. Then the choir joins him later in the
song and makes it awesome.
In this day and age I am seeing things
happening around me that the old preachers warned us about when I was a
kid going to evangelistic meetings. Now it's all happening before my
eyes. I have walked for 46 years with Jesus. I am ready for the storm
and I am not afraid.
Here's Dougie and the Perthshire Amber choir in my favorite version of Ready for the Storm.
Someone once belittled this song as being from Pearl Jam's "Daddy Issues" period. Me thinks the critic doth protest too much. We all have to come to terms with who our Fathers are. Mine ran off on my Mom and us when I was five, was an alcoholic, then a convict, then finally a recovering alcoholic. He was shot and killed in 1987 by my stepmother - ironically the one he left my Mom for. It tore our family apart.
For all his flaws and failings, I loved my Dad, though. But for most of my life, I stayed at arm's length. Dad tried to close the gap one summer when I worked for him setting foundations and laying brick. Dad even tried to apologize to me for his colorful past in front of an AA meeting. The gesture meant a lot to me. A former rodeo cowboy and fisherman, Dad was something of a character. People liked him. And like a lot of colorful characters, Dad died too young.
I'm not a big Pearl Jam fan, but this song speaks to me. I heard it first during the credits to the film Big Fish which was a film about a son with father issues and how he resolved them by accepting his Dad as he was. I think I may have closed the gap with my own sons, though maybe not as well as I would have liked. It was just in time with the middle boy. He died at age 28 and I failed to revive him. Fathers should not outlive their sons. I hope we got everything said between us. For some reasons our last few weeks together were a series of heart-to-heart talks. I miss him. The eldest is also far away so that we have to communicate in writing.
Daughters are another matter for fathers. My own daughter is more comfortable around me to say the least. She is all prepared to take over bossing me around if my wife ever falls down on the job. She calls a couple of times a year to give me a lecture. I was actually hoping my grandkids would like me, but I fear my branch of the King genetic line is fixing to become extinct. And I was already ready for them too.
Here's Pearl Jam with "Man of the Hour".
Happy belated Father's Day to anyone I missed. Hug your kids. They need you whether they know it or not.
This lovely little ballad captures my mood sometimes living out here on the left coast 3000 miles away from Texas, my own, my native land. Dougie Maclean has a habit of writing songs I like. I think I'll post another of his for Sabbath. It wasn't exactly intended to be a Christian song, but Dougie captured another Christian theme quite inadvertently. The Scots have a gift for that, given their long and turbulent Christian history. Whatever the Lairds were up to, the crofters and the workmen of Scotland were drawn to the infinite. I think it may be the hills and the skies.
This is an old Beatles song as done by bluegrass sensation, Alison Krauss, who has won more Grammy awards (27 wins, 41 nominations) than any other female singer in any genre and who ranks tied for second overall. This song was written by Paul McCartney, though Lennon-McCartney gets credit on the album cover, though it contains several signature McCartney marks. It was released on the album "The Beatles", the one with the green apple on the record.
This live version is nice, though the one on her album has a more prominent banjo line that I like much better. In fact, I think I'll include a link to it and to Paul McCartney's own recording (sans Beatles).
This song gets me. It's got a permanent place on my love songs playlist. Here's Alison live:
Here's the better version with the nice strong banjo line:
And here is Sir Paul all by his lonesome with his left-handed acoustic guitar with a very nice version of his song, "I Will".
I love that signature McCartney high note in there. This song expresses the longing for that one special person that makes your life complete. Here rattling down toward the end of my life, I realize what an awful hole it would make to lose that person and how much I have to trust in God to make it come out all right end the end.
Okay, Audio Adrenaline is not solemn worship music. It's a bunch of hyper guys singing songs about Jesus and they do get a bit rowdy. I've included the studio version which keeps the song between the ditches a little better than it does when the boys are over-stimulated by being before a crowd.
That said, we stole this song and sang it for Sabbath School at Tyler. The kids loved it and my guitar playing youths began taking it to, shall we say, more energetic levels. For an old guy like me the song gets me woke up on Sabbath morning so I can make it through the sermon without snoring. Hey, I'm old. It happens. The pastor used to use all those white heads doing the Sabbath sermon head bob as his cue to wind it up and get everyone off to potluck before he lost half his congregation to the sandman.
Anyway, here's the studio version of a song that seems to be based on an old camp meeting song we used to do when I was a kid - "Come and Go With Me, To My Father's House". We used to put that kind of enthusiasm into the original when we were kids.
Once in a while it's good to do an old-fashioned gospel song that makes you want to shout for joy. This song is one of those!
The Zimmers recreate the Beatles iconic Abby Road photo.
This week I got deep into a federal grant and didn't post any new songs. This is my secular song for the week. It's by a lovely group of senior citizens. The thing was first done about ten years ago. The group is called The Zimmers. Their lead singer here is 90 years old. He's since passed on and more boomers have filled in the lower ranks. They had a run on both Britain's Got Talent and America's Got Talent and people really love them. It's appropriate that their first number is The Who's "Talkin' 'bout My Generation".
These guys are really fun and the song is on my mp3 player don't ya' know!
And THAT my friend was the world's oldest Rock Band. They are collectively 3000 years old between them. I find that inspiring and encouraging.
It's another Sabbath and it's kind of lonely up here in Washington. I miss my Tyler Church. This song is dear to me. It was written by my sons Matt and Micah and sung by my daughter, Meghan, her friend Lexa Arante, and my son Matthew singing and on guitar and accompanied by Scott Houghton and Dunn Arante at the Tyler SDA church. Micah was already gone by then. I remember how nervous he would have been up front. He used to visibly tremble when he got up front to sing. What was amazing was how willing he was to get up front and tell a story or do something. His children's stories were epic. Matt wrote the tune, but the lyrics were Micah's.
