Ain't Satisfied

If you listen widely to blues & blues inflected music, one theme that reemerges in various guises can be simply put: Ain't Satisfied. "Mississippi" John Hurt recorded a song by the name "Got the Blues (Can't Be Satisfied), where the singer tries whiskey, but it don't seem to satisfy him. So then he buys his gal "a great big diamond ring," then catches her fooling around, disavows her, breaks down his gun barrel, kills her, then cuts up her bedmate, and ends by saying that he "still ain't satisfied." I love the song, not just because John Hurt was a phenomenal guitar picker and performer, or because it shows the futility of changing the way you feel without changing the way you think. It is also powerful because it reflects something deeper about the bluesman's ethos, and about the nature of this country's people. First let me show you what I mean 'bout blues.

Many other seminal bluesmen & women touch on this theme--take Robert Johnson's immortal lines, "A man is like a prisoner, and he's never satisfied." It can be love, work, dreams, or many other experiences that prompt dissatisfaction in a soul. That feeling of restless disquiet is significant to me because in blues that I love, the feeling applies to the experiences conveyed by the music and the music itself--the blues musician constantly innovates; not because he's merely restless, not just because the act of performance allows him to transcend the draining embroilments of the lonesome world:

his innovation is an act of hope, it says, "I can make this better. Ain't satisfied yet, but I'm bound to strive for my personal vision of greatness--in my music and my life."

Obama gave a much-quoted and noted speech in Philadelphia last year, which is often called his "race" speech, but really had another theme running just as deep throughout it: a more perfect union. Obama is an effective politician because he is in many ways sensitive like a bluesman: he feels the urgent need in his audience (the country) for something that is lacking, and he has the passion and compassion to lead the audience to transcend wrenching struggles. Of course, he also has the necessary leadership tools, adaptable perspective, and patience to draw reality into the world he envisions. [That's a post for another day: exploring the way blues musicians are agile at shifting perspectives.]

It's not just that blues music tinges or saturates every genre of American song. In the restless spirit of the archetypal bluesman, the innovative jazz musician, a rock revolutionary like Hendrix or Dylan, the folksy mystic dynamism of Joni Mitchell, or the diabolical words of Immortal Technique, a common thread runs throughout; it is the belief that this world I see can be transformed for the better, and I'm damned if I won't do my part, and contribute to that betterment in my own way.

I still ain't satisfied, and don't believe I ever will be satisfied, and I probably wouldn't want it any other way. I love a heritage that instills a sense of visionary urgency and wry hopefulness in its people. This is the land where the recognition that it isn't and never will be perfect exists before the first word of the Constitution itself. It's the Preamble that states it: "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union..."

You ain't satisfied, so find that music and that way of living that makes you believe you're moving toward somewhere better than today's circumstance. That's a true blues life.

The Great Compression Sonnet

The pressure mounts until you hold forth or
you freeze. The day is primed for seizin'.
Whoever grasps the hollowness of the score
will win just by the elegance of reason.
Seek out what you believe without relent.
Our times and lives have nothing--but demands
that none wait round for what heaven never sent--
Instead they rise cold and clear as fire brands.
For this was never what forefathers wrought:
This sick, passionless dive for means too mean,
this epidemic sweeping soul and thought
has left too many raw and fraught and lean.
Hold out or let the tide carry you through,
There's little choice in what I'm bound to do.

I wrote that at my friend Dustin's house last fall in New York City. It interests me, I wonder if I'll end up plundering from it for a song.

Harmonizin'

Today my buddies and band mates Luke and Austin are meeting up with me to practice singing harmonies for a few of our songs. It's something I should have been doing with my bandmates for years now but have just gotten around to implementing. I love rehearsals of all sorts (the reasons why will be another post)--but these ones are a favorite for a few simple reasons. All I have to do is sing and listen as they settle upon their parts, so it's quite relaxing. I let each singer have final say on what he sings, because he'll sing it better if he's created it himself.

So really the only frustrating part is that I'm made to keep singing the same phrases the same way--I come out of jazz and blues music as much as anything, so I love changing rhythms and altering harmonies when I sing as a matter of course. These harmonizing practices make me stick to the script, but it's probably good for me to do so. All the better, really, because it allows me to step back a little and listen close to the others, and weave something that meshes well with what they're doing.

The hard part is that my fellow singers aren't as experienced as I with singing this type of music, so I've got to find ways to convey to each of them that, "Hey--there's no hiding here. You've got to sing with a voice that Is You or else you're coppin out. This needs to be sung with joy, conviction, playfulness, and our trademark wry and jovial spirit." I don't put it just like that, but maybe today I will...

Please listen to the results--just come out to one of our two shows in Portland next week. You'll hear harmonies on "Nature's Gospel," "Common Ground," "Funeral Pole Blues," and "Freeways at 3."

Virgo & Pisces Show Last Night, comma, Why Blog

Resolved: the Ramble-logue will be used for honest consideration and reflection of where Renegade Minstrels are at as a band--I want this to be genuine and real as the music is, and not an internet ploy that advertises my band. I'm going to bet that the Ramble-logue will be much more interesting and engaging if I tell it like it is, like my great folkster forebears did and do, n' taught me to, than try and sell you on what we want this band to be. This is the Great Compression we're living in--front all you want, the seething webs will ultimately reveal who you are.

That brings me to last night's gig at Virgo & Pisces Restaurant. There was no way to know two months ago, when I booked the show, that the Blazers would be playing a do or die game 6 on Thursday, May 30. But they were, which meant that by 9pm when we were due to play, the place was fairly full of people who had just sat around for 2 hours watching the game on a big projector screen. We started to play, our six friends stayed, and a few strangers stuck around to check us out.

Dang, we're getting paid a percentage of the bar tab, we're not going to make a dime, there's barely 10 people here and few passing through. At least we got free food. The fact that it's a rather nice little place on the corner of a busy intersection that has a stage and its own sound system makes it more painful--"Damn, wish we could had a good night here in order to get asked back." We play our first set, during which my high E string snaps = awkward pause to put on a new string... You probably understand by now that the gig ain't lookin' too good.

Somehow, it turns around. The bartender, Brian, who booked us, is generous and buys us a round of drinks, and at night's end he pays us $20 apiece and says he thinks we rock, he'd like to have us back. I talk to him and we both understand that playing a show on a Last Thursday (meaning big crowds across town up on Alberta St, few folks on NW 21st) the night of the Blazers' last game of the playoffs is less than ideal. We're going to set something up for a weekend gig there in June, and there's even talk of perhaps a monthly Thursday slot.

Now my challenge is to find a clear and concise way to lay out these overlapping stories of the different places we play and how each venue changes the times that we get asked back, how one gig leads to another, how the audience waxes and wanes, the personnel fluctuate, the press won't give us the time of day, rehearsals are never a chore or a bore, the recording studio becomes a mighty frustrator, the interactions between bandmates, the clashing visions, the flashing moments of stiletto harmony... Is that a story you'd like to hear? Because I will tell it true.

Fortune is a strange beast. I love that I never know where our music work will lead.

My Love for the Hip Raps

I first got into rap music back in the mid-90's when OutKast's album Aquemini became popular. Since then I've delved a little into underground hip-hop, but I need to expand my ears more into that realm. A few years back my friend Henry Chanin introduced me to Immortal Technique, an artist with a strong vision who is revelatory not just for his fierce conviction and righteous wit ["My metaphors are dirty like herpes--but harder to catch," ... "I leave you full 'o clips like the moon blockin' the sun..."], but also because he samples classical music along with more standard electronic fare in his beats.

Anyways, rap music can be quite devine, and it is the most recent offshoot of our land's blues roots to swell up from underground and explode throughout pop culture, so it's very important to me as a source of inspiration; it has an urgency and ache in it that makes it immediate in the best of ways. Of course, most of what one hears on pop radio is "rap" music that someone forgot to put the "c" in front of. If you hate rap, go back to it and try again, either listen to people like Common or Immortal Technique or go back to the earliest era of the music and hear the buoyant spirits of folks like Grandmaster Flash.

What rap lacks, generally, is highly varied orchestration. When you're building a song on a computer, you have an infinite orchestra at hand--why not capitalize on that? Beat producers need to delve much deeper into what folks like Beethoven and the Duke did to forge masterpieces. Many rap lyricists are highly intelligent, and a few don't let posturing get in the way of their wit n' wisdom.

I would really love to see more live hip-hop, where a DJ and a band are featured onstage backing the rapper.

All of which is to say, I like this song & video featuring Nyle. Listening to it makes me feel good.

Nyle "Let The Beat Build" from Nyle on Vimeo.