Anne McCue & The Cubists play Nashville! (Nashville Scene) 

Anne McCue & The Cubists - Nashville Scene Picks of the Week. Dee's Lounge 7 pm Saturday March 25th:

The rhythm guitar parts Australian-born ax master Anne McCue plays on Robyn Hitchcock’s self-titled 2017 album help make it a landmark of Nashville-meets-British Invasion rock. McCue moved to town in 2006 after stints in the Australian bands Girl Monstar and Eden A.K.A. led to her solo career, which got its start with 1999’s Amazing Ordinary Things. Along the way, McCue has toured with Americana singer Lucinda Williams, and you can hear the influence of North American music — and of Americana itself — on her 2002 Live: Ballad of an Outlaw Woman, which sports a nice take on Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile.” I also like something titled “Don’t Go to Texas (Without Me),” a track from 2010’s Broken Promise Land that ZZ Top should cover. McCue has a feel for Fairport Convention-style folk-rock, and the acoustic-guitar stylings she favors on Amazing Ordinary Things sound great today. Still, I relish her electric playing — McCue brings both subtlety and bite to her explorations of blues, rock and power pop. Saturday at Dee’s, McCue marks the release of a new single, “The Loneliest Saturday Night,” which hits ahead of her full-length Wholly Roller Coaster. Set for release in October, the album promises to be a take on circa-1967 rock as practiced by The Kinks, Fairport Convention and Pink Floyd. McCue remains a musician’s musician, which means she’s underrated. That’s an injustice — check out yet another world-class Nashville picker and singer.” 7 p.m. at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge, 102 E. Palestine Ave., Madison EDD HURT 

Anne McCue Joins Palm Ghosts on Haunting Cover of Song To The Siren 

     Nashville's Palm Ghosts & Anne McCue have teamed up once again, this time on Tim Buckley's sublime 'Song To The Siren,' released this week on all the streaming services.
 
     Joseph Lekkas takes the part of the sailor while Anne McCue provides the reverberating voice of the siren.
In the original version, says Anne, 'Tim Buckley sings from the sailor’s point of view. Then when This Mortal Coil recorded the song, Elizabeth Fraser echoed the sailor's song back to him - his own words - but in her Siren voice. Perhaps this was the way the enchantment worked. Both versions are otherworldly and what I call ‘divinely inspired.’ In this new version, we have combined the voices of the Siren and the Sailor in the one rendition.'
 
 
Listen to the song:
 
 
 

Manchester’s Analogue Trash describes Palm Ghosts as “Achingly beautiful, fragile and majestic music. An intoxicating mix of Shoegaze and Dream pop, taking from the 80’s but not in debt to it.”

South Africa’s Jangle Pop Hub has said the band has “An inimitable 80’s style dream pop that mixes the avaricious swirl of The Cocteau Twins, the atmospherics of The Cure and the grandiosity of Echo and The Bunnymen.”

Happy Accidents 

 

      I once had an old beat up red car. It was a little red station wagon. If you travelled over a certain speed the speedometer would spin around madly as if it was possessed like in a Stephen King novel and it would make a hell of a racket, too, with the needle banging against the glass. In those days, we listened to cassette tapes in our cars and I remember I was listening to a Beatles record, Rubber Soul or Revolver? - when one of the speakers stopped working. All of a sudden all I could hear was George’s guitar and the drums. That was an epiphany! Previous to that I had taken the music as a sum, listening to it all at once (as it’s meant to be heard), experiencing it emotionally. But now I could hear the different parts and how they would come in and then disappear for a while, then come back in again. The drums could be panned to one side and the vocals on the other. Mind expanded.

Fripp and Eno 

This is quite probably my favourite guitar solo - Robert Fripp playing on Brian Eno's song St. Elmo's Fire. It starts at the words "rested in the desert" and never fails to give me goosebumps. When I first heard it I asked, 'what is that sound?' and somebody said it was a guitar and I was hooked. I'd already been playing acoustic for a few years but it was a bit depressing because of all those horrible hair bands from L.A. that were dominating the scene. Then I heard this and I felt okay about playing guitar again and dived into electric. :-) 

A Song Being Born Every Moment  

 

(Originally published in Rhythms Magazine Jan 2022)

Karen Dalton’s song comes out of the dark night of experience, singular and alone and very human and speaks directly to our souls. We hear every emotion, not a performance, just a song being born every moment. The song of authentic experience. 

If only we could hear more voices like this. 

If so, perhaps humanity might slow down and take more of a reckoning of the truths of existence - the heart, the soul, the implications of one life upon another life. 

If only we could hear more voices like this. 

But how can we? Everywhere we go we hear the sound of shallow. The supermarket, the gas station, even the garden beds at the Nashville Malls spew the ugly sounds of bro country at our victimized ears. 

The sound of so-called popular music attacks us everywhere. Shallowness rises to the top and clangs like an ugly bell, “Look at me, look at me!” 

Empty vessels making the most sound and rising to the top of those playlists clanging in our ears, “Look at me, look at me!” Not truly popular, but actually enforced. 

Karen Dalton’s voice. If only we could make the space for more voices like this. 

Real voices, true voices, women’s real voices. 

The voices of humanity, not music business. 

A music business that historically has told women to put down their instruments and just sing… and dance and wear brightly coloured clothing. 

And to sing “perfectly,” not like true perfection, but like wonder bread, which dissolves in an instant because it is hardly there. A business that celebrates copies rather than originals. 

Karen Dalton’s voice, not separated from her instrument - guitar or banjo - but the same one sound, the same one song. Not one apart from the other but interwoven, threading and plaiting. 

At age 32 her voice is a kind of ancient. She sounds like a woman who has a thousand years of experience singing a song of all ages. 

If we could hear more voices like this with the silence in between. Imagine if humans were comfortable with the truth and with the silence. 

But the vacuous clang clang clang of contemporary existence fills our ears so that we forget what a song is meant to be - that human being aliveness. 

Imagine if people only made records when they had something to say and something to sing? 

That is, real people living genuine lives and every now and then making a record. Not dressed by stylists, tuned by engineers and photoshopped by graphic artistes. Imagine if the goal wasn’t fame and fortune? 

Heroin, hard drugs, amphetamines. There but for the grace of the goddess go many of us who thought we were immortal when we were young, or who didn’t care whether we lived or died, who were on that quest for an interesting life, who would try who knows what to feel that next experience. And while upper class opioid addicts called their doctors for a prescription, artists like Karen Dalton and Kurt Cobain grubbed around the streets only to find black gunk to shoot into their veins.  Imagine if they could have just got good quality drugs and continued with the rest of their lives? 

Saw a friend the other day 

He was sorry I’d gone astray… 

My sin was the sweetest love  ~ Karen Dalton 

The soft voices are there. It’s just a matter of dulling out that clang clang clang of the mainstream and listening, really listening. Searching out and finding that new music from the past. 

The reluctant performers play best around a backyard fire when hardly anyone is there. Reluctant performers shy away from the light and seek the darkness. They do not crave the spotlight and all the attention, they do not crave the praise of shallow star fuckers… 

Karen Dalton is the kind of artist who was drowned out by loud people with big elbows. But her beauty is infinite and now we can hear it. 

All that shines is not truth 

All that glitters does not shine 

Real beauty rarely glitters 

So refined 

Real beauty rarely glitters 

So I find ~  Karen Dalton 

The film Karen Dalton - In My Own Time is out now.

The Truth About The Giant Crop Circle Found In Nashville on the Morning of February 22nd, 2022. 

 

They said that aliens had not been seen in these parts for some years. 

They said that the giant crop circle appeared sometime overnight in Nashville on February 22nd 2022 near the corner of Someplace Street and Nowhere Lane. 

That date:  22-02-2022 is auspicious, they said. 

Because of the 2s and the 0s, they said. 

They said that no-one heard any strange noises. 

They also said that no-one saw a spaceship or any kind of alien machinery whatsoever. 

Apparently, someone remembered a similar crop circle appearing in their (giant) yard some fifty years ago or so, they said. 

But no-one was sure who it was that remembered this, they said. 

They are sure that the mysterious crop circle will inspire curiosity from all parts of the globe, they said. 

Was it true that a giant dog was seen peeing on the giant crop circle, they were asked. 

‘Yes, this is true!’ they said. 

And who were ‘they,’ the ones who said so much? 

No-one knows exactly, but someone said they were small folks, with very large eyes. 

Is this true? they were asked. 

No way of knowing for sure, they said.

Anne Plays First Show Of The Year 

Anne will join Jesse Correll for a show at City Winery, Nashville. Anne has co-produced Jesse's new album, Inner Shibori and both artists will play this show on the release day - February 11th at City Winery, Nashville. Buy tickets here.