Autumn Souvenir

I first saw Joe Pernice in 1995, when his first outfit, Scud Mountain Boys, were the first of three bands, followed by Blue Mountain and Wilco, to take the stage at New York City's Tramps. Pernice and his band sat around candle-lit tables strumming beautiful tracks from the first few Scuds records. I was hooked. Massachusetts still stands as one of the best records in my collection. When he wrapped the Scuds (for then), and started the Pernice Brothers, expectations were high. The first Pernice record, Overcome by Happiness , released in 1998 on Seattle's Sub Pop, remains their best. Sub Pop co-founder Jonathan Poneman cites Happiness as the one record in the Sub Pop catalog that never really got its due. When I think of this record, I think of West Virginia. One of those records that remains stapled to a moment in time. I was driving from New Jersey to Cincinnati in 1999 or so to visit my brother, and I clearly recall pulling off an exit in W. Virginia and hearing my car...

Over the next month or two, I'm going to count down my favorite 40 acts of all-time. I'm doing this, well, because I love lists, and because I want to pay heed to some artists that may not have hit the masses, but have had a huge and lasting impact on my life.  Before starting the countdown, here are 20 that just missed the cut: Fleetwood Mac Luna Beck Whiskeytown Johnny Cash Bap Kennedy Jackson Browne The Velvet Underground Tim Easton The Kinks Freedy Johnston Marah Tom Waits T. Rex The Byrds Public Enemy Yo La Tengo The Clash Richard and Linda Thompson Elton John Low

This is truly a thing of beauty:

Looking back on 2017.... I've finally started to travel a bit (Colombia, Japan): I got to see my nephew grow up: Endless hours with: The Equality March in DC: My third Solid Sound in Massachusetts: Many great shows (Luna, Springsteen on Broadway): But nothing this year, or any year in memory, can top what I experienced on January 29th. I was in LA and, intentionally, left for the airport early. And below is what I saw. The moment I stepped off the elevator, into the sea of people, I lost it. I instinctively called my mother and told her that I was, "experiencing everything I've ever believed in, in a single moment. This is one of the most important moments of my life." I will never, ever forget it.

9.5 In a few days, Wilco will release deluxe versions of their first two records, A.M. and Being There . Both records played enormous roles in my, well, life. That may sound like an overstatement, but Wilco's first three records specifically, were so influential in how I view music and art, while also introducing me to countless new friends, many of whom I talk to regularly to this day.  A.M. , their first, was certainly well received, but it was their sophomore effort, the sprawling and adventurous Being There that quickly escalated the role that music, both recorded and live, played in my life. Being There was released on October 29, 1996. I was just a few months into my first job, post-college, and rumors were swirling in the corners of the (early) internet that Wilco's second album would be a huge departure from the alt.country label that was attached Uncle Tupelo and A.M. I was hearing influences from band names I'd never heard before: Pere Ubu, Captain Beefhe...

1 Mavis Staples If All I Was Was Black At 78, Mavis continues to make fantastic records. This is her third produced by Jeff Tweedy, and it's their best collaboration to date. 2 Jason Isbell The Nashville Sound Everything he releases will be compared to 2013's Southeastern . He'll likely never equal that masterpiece, but some of his best songs are on this record. 3 Aimee Mann  Mental Illness One of the greatest songwriters of my lifetime. And as courageous as they come. 4 Neil Young Hitchhiker This isn't *new* music so I'm not sure it should be eligible, but whatever, it's classic. 5 LCD Soundsystem American Dream I haven't given this record nearly as much time as it deserves, but every listen, I find something new to love. 6 Josh Ritter  Gathering Ritter's records aren't as consistent as they used to be, but all of his recent records have a number of gorgeous songs. 7 Ray Davies Americana I just discovered this brilliant...

9.5 Next to Springsteen and Neil Young, I probably listened to Van Morrison the most during my high school years. Whenever the fall season hits, especially Thanksgiving, I'm drawn back to Morrison, especially Astral Weeks . More than any other artist I know, Van Morrison simply feels like a season, the fall season. Just a gorgeous record top-to-bottom.

Wilco have just announced that the Solid Sound Festival will return in 2019. This will be the sixth overall Solid Sound, and should I go, which I definitely will, my fourth. I can't sing the praises of this festival enough. Taking place at MASS MOCA, deep in the Berkshires, first off, it's one of the most beautiful areas of the country. Add in the format for the festival, which includes a mix of known acts, up-and-comers, comedians, artists, an exceptional museum, and it's hands down the best festival I've ever been to. I wouldn't call myself a festival expert, but I've been to a few, namely Coachella '09, Fleadh (like 80 years ago), Hardly Strictly, Wavefest, Outside Lands, Treasure Island and a handful of others, but nothing compares to Solid Sound. In addition to the above, access to every set is pretty simple, the place appears to be mostly sustainable, the food trucks are all local shops from around the country, there's a full-on record store, and ...

10 Back in the 90s, this record was nearly impossible to find. On vinyl, in the pre-internet age, it was a massive collector's item. I don't think it was even available on CD. For years, I'd wanted to hear it top-to-bottom, but couldn't. Every single time I'd walk into a record store, I'd look for it. Empty handed every time. Somewhere in the mid-to-late 90s, my brother, while living in Cincinnati, phoned and told me to look out for something in the mail. He was so ecstatic that he called me back a few minutes later, "Ok, it's On the Beach . On vinyl." I nearly collapsed. This is a record collector's dream. When you finally land that long sought-after record. It's only happened a few times in my life, but when it does, it's like hitting gold. I remember the post office held the package for whatever reason. When I found out it was there, I drove down as fast as I could. I was handed the large square box. I ripped it open right ther...

Woke up this morning and, for reasons I can't explain, revisited some of the best and worst sports moments of my life. From Mattingly's home run in 1995 playoffs to the dreadful Hakeem swipe in the 1994 NBA Finals, here they are: The Good - Top 5 : 2001 World Series: Tino Martinez's Improbable 9th Inning Home Run In the words of James Murphy, I was there. Down two games to one, and trailing 3-1 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, Tino delivers the unthinkable. We were in the right field bleachers and the moment the ball cleared the wall, it was absolute pandemonium. Whether at a concert, a sporting event, or any other moment of euphoria, nothing in my life has topped this in terms of downright jubilation. Post 9/11, this was bringing magic back to the city. 1999 NBA East Finals, Game 3: Larry Johnson's Four-Point Play  Probably the loudest I've ever screamed. I was with a few friends at the Allendale Bar & Grill in Jersey, and the...

Tonight will close out my first visit to South America. It's been a solid trip. Some great, some good, some not so good, but overall, pretty happy with my first choice. My bullet points on Cartagena, Colombia: Positive: Weather reports will probably say thunderstorms....every.....day. This is a bit deceiving as there are only small pockets of this. I've been here five full days and four were good weather-wise, with small pockets of rain. Today was pretty much raining all day. The highlight, without question, was taking a day trip out to the Isle Grande. A beautiful island, inhabited by less than 1000 people. Incredible food and gorgeous little beaches. The food here is excellent. I've yet to have a disappointing meal. Negative: The street salesman are super overbearing. I went on a run Wednesday morning and was stopped by numerous people on the street. I walked the streets of Old Town yesterday and the experience was even worse. One guy was literally haras...

4.2 I bought a bourgeois house in the Hollywood hills With a truckload of hundred thousand dollar bills Man came by to hook up my cable TV We settled in for the night my baby and me We switched 'round and 'round 'til half-past dawn There was fifty-seven channels and nothin' on Well now home entertainment was my baby's wish So I hopped into town for a satellite dish That's the opening to the dreadful "57 Channels." I share this review as proof that 1) I can be objective and 2) Even the greats can stumble. Outside of the title track and a few mediocre numbers, this is just a full-on dud. My goodness, I'm listening to "Gloria's Eyes" right now and it's truly painful. And later comes "Real Man" which is arguably the worst song Bruce has ever recorded. 

9.1 It's perplexing to think that Kelly Willis never took hold in Nashville. Then again, it's of no surprise, whatsoever. Cash didn't. Waylon certainly didn't. Townes wasn't even on the "Music City" radar. The home for country music has never been home to the likes of Kelly Willis. I first discovered Willis' music when I came upon the EP Fading Fast . Joined by Son Volt, 16 Horesepower and Gary Louris, this four-song collection remains the best EP I own. Three years after this discovery, Willis released What I Deserve on Rykodisc, a label with a good/bad ratio of about 99/1. And this was the case with the first Willis full-length I discovered. Lyrically perfect, and backed by an army of incredible talents, including Gary Louris, Lloyd Maines, Mark Spencer, John Dee Graham and Chuck Prophet, as well as her husband/collaborator, Bruce Robison, What I Deserve remains Willis' masterstroke. A mix of originals and perfectly-selected covers (Nick ...

10 I would argue that Buckner's Devotion + Doubt, released just over 20 years ago, is the greatest break-up record ever recorded. Yes, that includes Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and Springsteen's Tunnel of Love . No separation record has ever merged unbelievably potent lyrics with a haunting backdrop that literally feels as though you're experiencing the split yourself. It's a masterpiece by one of the premiere songwriters of the past 25 years. It was the first or his two major label releases, and of little surprise, fell on deaf ears in the age of Chumbawumba and Collective Soul. Vapid "rock n' roll" left Buckner, and many of his brethren, including Kenny Roby, Scott Miller and man, even Steve Earle, to a degree, in the rear view. But those who took notice were floored. This was a songwriter renaissance. Gram Parsons, Prine, Townes, Cash and all the greats that preceded this "movement" decades earlier, were back in the conversation.  ...

9.5 I discovered alt.country (or Americana or No Depression or....) in early 1994. I was a sophomore in college. I'd just made a new group of friends, and our musical tastes were spread all over the place. I was still locked into "classic rock," despite hating that tag. I mean, I was really only drawn to certain areas of “genre”: Springsteen, Neil Young, CCR, Beatles, Stones. I didn't like Eric Clapton, Rush or Yes. Pink Floyd were ok. Zeppein  weren't  my thing (that would change decades later). My friends and I played a lot of the same music weekend-over-weekend: the aforementioned acts, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Public Enemy..... It felt like we needed a new sound. Something to keep things moving.  Crawling back to you now I sold my guitar, to the girl next door She asked me if I knew how I told her, I don't think so, anymore Sometime in early 1994, my buddies Matt and Cubby invited their friend Andrew Flanders down from Bowdoin. Quite possibly ...

Allendale, New Jersey. Not exactly a hotbed for social activism. Jammed in the upper right corner of New Jersey, this is where I was raised. Save a few years in Southern California that ended in my parents divorcing, I spent most of my first 18 years in this little suburban town. Almost entirely white, the politics were conservative and the worldview was limited. Reagan was championed and topics such as race relations and inequality in America were largely ignored. Most in the town had "made it." My household was a bit on the fringes. My stepfather, quite possibly the hardest working man I've ever known, was a town police officer (not great during those high school years) and put in as much overtime as the human body could take. Our home was quiet. I spent most of my pre-teen and teen years in local parks playing basketball. We lived right across the street from the town ballpark, where I'd shoot hundreds and hundreds of jumpers every night. Basketball pulled me in. A...

8.8 When I attended my first SXSW, in 1999, there was no band I wanted to see more than Damnations, TX. Fronted by sisters Amy Boone and Deborah Kelly, their debut,   Half Mad Moon , had the unlucky timing of being released in 1998, a year in which I probably bought 100 CDs and alt.country, a genre that the Damnations sorta fell into, was on supercharge. But they crept through, and when I finally got a chance to see them, if memory serves, in that huge park in Austin, I was thunderstruck. Those harmonies. The guitars. The songs were just perfect. Mind you, 1999 was wayyyy pre-Interactive, and SXSW Music was still home to up-and-comers. Damnations, TX were one of about 50 bands I intended to see. Bottle Rockets, Joe Henry, Spoon, Meat Puppets, Josh Rouse, Slobberbone, Calexico, Lucinda Williams, Freakwater, Flaming Lips. And I'm just getting started. But there was something about the Damnations, TX. Half Mad Moon was just a blowout, jaw-dropping debut. And as I'm listenin...

9.4 Across my record collection, there are maybe 40-50 records that I believe deserve a nod alongside the likes of  Born To Run , Highway 61 Revisited and Exile on Main Street, yet never really made it beyond a core group of followers. Over the next year or so, I'm going to shed a little light on some of those records. These aren't good records; these are classics, somehow lost, having never found their commercial stride.   If I span my entire collection, there isn't a record more deserving of a spot on this list more than the Philadelphia-foursome Marah's debut. I heard this record not long after its release and it immediately lurched my life in a million different directions. This was Mick and Keith but in the 90s. Before I could even catch my breath, I was driving from NYC to Philly nearly every weekend to see the Brothers Bielanko, Ronnie and Danny. Thrust into the center of the already brimming alt.country scene, Marah stretched across the Americana plain an...

I learned via Facebook this morning that Whiskeytown's Strangers Almanac turned 20 yesterday. By about a thousand-fold, people probably know the name Ryan Adams more than they do Whiskeytown. In the 17 years since Adams disbanded Whiskeytown, nothing he's released touches his work with Caitlin Cary, Steven Terry, Phil Wandscher, Skillet Gilmore and Brad Rice in Whiskeytown. And across their impressive, yet sloppy catalogue, they hit their stride and released one masterpiece, Strangers Almanac . I was 23 and living in New York when SA was released. And looking back, 1997 was, without question, the best year for music in my lifetime. Stand out records by Old 97's, Richard Buckner, Son Volt, The Jayhawks, Elliott Smith, Yo La Tengo, Modest Mouse and close to a hundred others, inspired my friends and I to literally live in the New York rock clubs. Irving Plaza, Mercury Lounge, Bowery, Tramps, Bottom Line -- we were often out 4-5 nights a week, many nights until the sun ro...

1 Lucinda Williams / Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (1998) 2 Emmylou Harris / Wrecking Ball (1995) 3 Gillian Welch / Revival (1996) 4 Aimee Mann / The Forgotten Arm (2005) 5 Damnations TX / Half Mad Moon (1997) 6 Aretha Franklin / I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967) 7 Aimee Mann / Bachelor No. 2 (2000) 8 Cat Power / The Greatest (2006) 9 Kelly Willis / What I Deserve (1999) 10 Joan Shelley / Over and Even (2015) 11 Gillian Welch / Soul Journey (2003) 12 Emmylou Harris / Red Dirt Girl (2000) 13 Liz Phair / Whitechocolatespaceegg (1998) 14 Neko Case / Middle Cyclone (2009) 15 Alice Coltrane / Journey In Satchidinanda (1971) 16 Camera Obscura / Let's Get Out of This Country (2006) 17 Kelly Willis / Easy (2002) 18 Lucinda Williams / Lucinda Williams (1988) 19 Freakwater / Old Paint (1995) 20 Victoria Williams / Loose (1994) 21 Gillian Welch / Time (The Revelator) (2001) 22 Beth Orton / Central Reservation (1999) 23 Lucinda Williams / World Without Tears (...

Travel bans. Insurance catastrophe. Sexism. Racism. Mocking the disabled. Cuba. Climate change. The wall. Russia. Endless lies. I could on for, literally, ever. This is the most disengaged I've been from politics and the daily happenings in DC in at least two decades. The fact that 62M Americans voted for this monster remains, now many months in, impossible for me to stomach. I simply can't understand the utter lack of humanity, decency and empathy that has swept over this country. We should be utterly embarrassed and disgusted by this man's "leadership." He is a bad human being and he governs without a sliver of self reflection or integrity. And I'm embarrassed to say that I'm so distraught by where we're at that my only solution has been to tune out. Turn it off. I see an article that includes his name and I pass. Every time. So what do I do? Or what have I done? Well, as many have responded, I'm trying to be a better person in my daily life....

When I lived in San Francisco, I went through a period where, at least once a week, I'd listen to an entire record without any interruptions. No checking of the phone, nothing. I can still recall what it felt like to listen to Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska like that. The songs and stories came alive. It was like watching Indian Runner but being inside of the movie. Like many short-term ideas, after a few months, it faded. I kept reminding myself about the exercise, but I never went back. It's probably been about five years. I mean, I still listen to music every day, but it's often how we all listen: headphones on the run, in the car, in the office, in the background. Then, this evening I got home after a sweltering day in the sun, on a day that I never do well with, and I saw this gorgeous Big Star record sitting on my shelf. This is the "test pressing" that was released on Record Store Day 2011. I remember waiting on the Amoeba line in SF with only ...