5 Songs Friday, Apr. 4

Songs this week from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 10s

Vic Chesnutt – “Betty Lonely” 1995 from Is the Actor Happy? Vic Chesnutt was a remarkable songwriter who died way too young due to the vagaries of the United States health care system – he couldn’t afford the surgery he needed, so, depressed, he took an overdose of pills. At age 18, he was in a car accident which left him confined to a wheelchair the rest of his life, and with only limited use of his hands That didn’t stop him from playing guitar and writing beautiful songs like this one. “Betty Lonely” paints images which keep shifting, of a woman living alone and reminiscing in a duplex of stucco near a noisy airstrip. The second verse gets surreal, as Chesnutt describes her heart which “lives over a drawbridge” and her brain which “is wet like a stucco net.” In verse three we learn she is Spanish and that she once lived near salt flats and a mossy area. The last verse returns us to the apartment, where she speaks only to her grandchild and laughs in a way that makes people uncomfortable. Chesnutt, as always, sings this with a lovely dry tone, delivering the incandescent melody over twin guitars playing contrapuntal arpeggios of chords most people would never use in a song like this. It’s mesmerizing.

Brothers Lazaroff – “Keep It Dark” 2012 from Science Won. I remember back a mere 13 years ago when a title like Science Won didn’t make me cry, realizing that right now, it’s in a battle for its life. But that doesn’t have anything to do with this little gem of a song by St. Louis’s Brothers Lazaroff. David and Jeff Lazaroff have been working together most of this century (well, they probably worked together before they had a band, too), and for a good chunk of the time they’ve had bassist Teddy Brookins along for the ride. On this album, drummer Grover Stewart and keyboardist Mo Eggleston rounded out the band. This song is built on a delicately plucked acoustic guitar figure doubled on the repeated title line by piano. The bass is rumbling, the drums are shuffling, and I think it’s Jeff singing lead on the track. (I confess I’ve never been able to remember which Lazaroff sings which, even though I’ve seen them at least a dozen times live.) The lyrics are a little opaque, since it’s rare to have the constantly repeated line “Keep it dark” serve as incentive to the struggling characters in the song. I love the imagery – the wind at your back, the babies being born, the kiss you finally got, the fall from the tree and the nursing of the wounds. It’s concrete and seemingly random, though I have off and on spent years trying to connect the pieces.

Lynn Anderson – “Here I Go Again” 1971 from How Can I Unlove You. When I was a kid, the children of my parents best friends, and my brothers and I used to pretend we were the full-time back-up singers on every pop record of the early 1960s. We would hold copies of the Readers Digest which we thought would serve as the necessary songbooks these singers had to use in the studio. I assume we lip synched, but maybe we actually sang – that part I can’t remember. Anyway, by 1971, the smooth male and female backing choruses were just about completely out of style, so if we’d kept our game up, this record might have been the last one we could have played with. I still love that sound, and I love especially the way it works with Lynn. Anderson’s rich vibrato at the forefront of this song. (Also – man, the way they echo the zylophone notes rising up at the beginning of the record is kinda spine-chilling.) This wisp of a song was written by Ted Harris, a songwriter who doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, so I’m guessing this album cut was his entire oeuvre. It consists of two choruses telling us she’s missing him, and one verse explaining that she keeps trying to stop, but he is still on her mind. I think it’s a stunning record.

June Tabor – “She Moves Among Men (The Bar Maid’s Song)” 1983 from Abyssinians. This is a downbeat song about a depressing subject. While I believe sex workers deserve respect and rights and consideration as actual human beings, there is little question that by using the term “bar maid” in the song title, Tabor is singing here of a time when prostitutes were given little chance to affirm their humanity. Tabor sings – beautifully, as she always does – from the point of view of a woman who has been working in bars during an older time, when men stared over tankards of ale. ‘”Speak to me gently before we begin / She pleads but they laugh and pull her down.” These men are little more than beasts. The woman has no pleasure in life. Tabor lets us feel this desire for some spark of decency and the resignation that it does not exist. The song was written by a man, Bill Caddick, an English folk singer/songwriter I haven’t heard, but he made several records back in the 70s and 80s. Dave Bristow plays the haunting piano accompaniment and solo.

Tracy Nelson – “The Summer of the Silver Comet” 1978 from Homemade Songs. You never know where to look for Tracy Nelson in a record store. While her band Mother Earth was active in San Francisco in the late 60s and played gigs at the Fillmore with all the major rock groups of the time, her interests have always been wider spread. She sings country, blues, gospel, soul, rhythm and blues, and whatever else crosses her mind. Her remarkable voice is the link between all these genres – she can belt out her alto at full throttle, but is more likely to let it simmer with shimmering vibrato. This train song, written by Robert Jones, another guy about whom I know nothing, is gently evocative of a long-gone time when locomotives were romanticized representatives of energy and progress. She sings it as a peaceful memory of something precious.