Sandy Denny - Who Knows Where The Time Goes

It's no exaggeration to say that Sandy Denny was one of the founders of the British folk rock scene, a movement that expanded the horizons of traditional folk music far past its traditional boundaries, much as the country rock movement broadened the landscape for traditional country music in the United States at around the same time.

Denny began studying piano at a young age, and soon after developed an interest in singing. After graduation from public school, she began training as a nurse, but the attraction to music apparently was too strong to ignore, and she left her medical studies to enroll at London's Kingston College of Art in September 1965. While there, she got involved with the campus folk organization.

It wasn't long before she began performing on the local folk club circuit, and in 1967, she left art college to devote all of her attention to music. Around this time, a member of The Strawbs heard her perform at a London folk club and invited her to join the band. She went on to record only one album with them, called "Sandy Denny and the Strawbs - All Our Own Work." Although recorded in 1967, it remained unreleased until 1973.

But that unreleased album included an early solo version of what would become her best-known song, "Who Knows Where the Time Goes." American singer Judy Collins acquired a tape of that version and decided not only to cover it, but to make it the title track of her next album, released in 1968. That song went on to be covered by a diverse group of artists, including Nina Simone and, more recently, Cat Power.

By 1968, Denny had decided that she needed more opportunities as a vocalist as well as a broader audience for her songwriting, and she joined the groundbreaking band Fairport Convention (which included Richard Thompson, a brilliant guitarist, songwriter and singer, but more on him another day). She recorded three albums with Fairport: the 1968 release "What We Did On Our Holidays"; "Unhalfbricking," in the summer of 1969 (which included another version of Denny's "Who Knows Where the Time Goes"); and "Liege & Lief" at the end of that same year. She left Fairport before their third album together was released and formed a new band called Fotheringay, once again to expand her songwriting more fully.

That band would only last for about a year and saw the release of one self-titled album. A second unfinished recording, "Fotheringay 2," would remain on the shelf until 2008. Denny exited Fotheringay to begin her solo career in 1971 and she released her first album, "The North Star Grassman and the Ravens," later that same year. Also in 1971, Denny joined Led Zeppelin in the studio as a guest singer, recording a duet with Robert Plant on the song "The Battle of Evermore" for the band's fourth album. She was the only guest vocalist ever to appear on a Led Zeppelin recording.

Denny's second album, "Sandy," was issued in 1972. She continued to broaden her musical boundaries further beyond traditional folk songs, recording her final traditional piece, a beautiful song called "The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood," for that album. In 1973, she married her long-time boyfriend and producer Trevor Lucas and recorded her third solo album, "Like an Old Fashioned Waltz." The title track is especially pretty, with a lush string arrangement that takes wonderful advantage of a traditional 3/4 time signature.

In 1972, Lucas and guitarist Jerry Donahue, who also had been a member of Fotheringay, joined Fairport Convention. Denny would rejoin Fairport in 1974, and after a world tour, the band recorded the album "Rising For the Moon," which took its title from the Denny-penned tune that also would be the collection's opening track.

Denny and Lucas left Fairport Convention at the end of 1975 and she began work on what would be her final album, "Rendezvous." A UK tour to promote "Rendezvous" in late 1977 would prove to be her last series of public appearances. Denny had a history of substance abuse problems, problems that had gradually become painfully obvious and noticeably worse by 1977.

In March 1978, while she and her infant daughter Georgia were on vacation with her parents in Cornwall, UK, Denny was injured when she fell down a flight of stairs and hit her head on concrete. After that accident she began suffering from intense headaches, and her physician prescribed a painkiller known to have severe side effects when combined with alcohol. As Denny's behavior grew more and more erratic, likely due to the combination of prescription and non-prescription drugs and alcohol, Lucas began fearing for their child's well-being. On April 13 he left London with Georgia to return to his native Australia. He didn't tell Denny he was going away

Denny collapsed on April 17 while visiting her friend Miranda Ward at Ward's home and fell into a coma. Four days later, Denny died. She was 31. Her death was ruled to be the result of a "traumatic mid-brain hemorrhage" and blunt force trauma to the head.

Sandy Denny's talent was considerable, but she never found much fame beyond a small legion of devoted fans. But she left behind a legacy that helped change the face of British folk music and a collection of music that will live on.

Squeeze - Up The Junction

While they may never gain the notoriety of other songwriting teams such as Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller or the legendary pairing of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook certainly deserve entry into that remarkable club.

As the songwriting team and musical partners that fronted the band Squeeze, Difford and Tilbrook wrote some memorable songs, and for a time in the early 1980's they often were compared to Lennon and McCartney. But they didn't quite manage to gain the popular mass appeal that The Beatles enjoyed, and they were mostly overlooked here in the States, A shame, since the combination of Difford's smart, often witty and nicely literate lyrics combined with Tilbrook's masterful melodies made for music that would have been perfect for American radio.

Squeeze has gone through three incarnations as a band: 1973 to 1984, 1985 to 1999 and finally, 2007 to the present day. During those off times, Difford and Tilbrook continued to write, record and perform together as a duo while they pursued solo careers.

It's hard to find only one song to feature in this post. Take Me I'm Yours is a great track from their 1978 self-titled debut album. It also was the first and only time they would have a different band name: U.K. Squeeze. Apparently, there existed somewhere another band with the name Squeeze. I never heard them, myself.

The following year, with their name shortened back to its proper original form, Cool For Cats was released, and the band was settling into a somewhat more musically-evolved sound. The title track features Chris Difford on a relatively rare lead vocal, his oh-so-British baritone gliding over a somewhat funkified backing track.

There are so many terrific songs on their 1980 release Argybargy it almost sounds like a greatest hits album. Indeed, with tunes like Pulling Mussels (From the Shell), Another Nail From My Heart and If I Didn't Love You, the mistake is understandable.

East Side Story is another wonderful collection from 1981 that yielded the band's first big hit in America, Tempted. The lead vocal was split between Tilbrook and Paul Carrack, the keyboard player and vocalist who came in to replace the amazing Jools Holland. Carrack would eventually become known as the lead vocalist for Mike + The Mechanics, a side project of Genesis founding member, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Mike Rutherford.

There are a lot more. Trust me. But for this post, I decided that Up the Junction from Cool For Cats would be the one to showcase. It's a lovely (and ultimately heartbreaking) song that describes a relationship from beginning to end in one beautifully-told story.

The world is a better place because of bands like Squeeze, and because of the world-class songcraft of Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook.

Townes van Zandt - If I Needed You

Steve Earle is not shy about letting the world know what he thinks of his favorite songwriter: “Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan‘s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.”

Hyperbole? Perhaps, but Van Zandt was a gifted writer whose troubled life didn't stop him from penning songs that have influenced generations of Texas songwriters as well as writers far beyond those borders. Even Bob Dylan, with Steve Earle's bootprints on his coffee table, has covered "Pancho and Lefty," one of Van Zandt's most enduring classics.

Immensely talented, immensely self-destructive, it seemed he drifted between writing songs because of his demons or in spite of them. He stood out as being especially out of control in the music circles of 1970's-era Austin, a time and place where out of control was considered normal.

Here's the story of how Van Zandt wrote the classic song "If I Needed You," as reported by John Nova Lomax in his story "Codeine Country," published in the May 5, 2005 issue of the Houston Press:

Van Zandt wrote "If I Needed You," his second-biggest hit, while under the influence. Van Zandt was staying at Guy and Susanna Clark's house near Nashville, and all three of them had the flu. A bottle of codeine was produced, which they drank, and then all three of them went to bed. In an excerpt from Rain on a Conga Drum, his upcoming biography of Van Zandt, author John Kruth picks up the tale:

"Stumbling down the sidewalk of his subconscious, Van Zandt had a remarkable dream that night, 'in blazing Technicolor' as he later recalled it. He was a folksinger on stage, singing a strange and beautiful new song. The dream was so vivid that he sat right up in bed and wrote the lyrics down just as they had come to him only moments before. The melody rang in his head so clearly he knew he'd have no trouble remembering it the following morning. So he pulled the blankets over his head and fell back to sleep.

"The next morning Susanna and Guy sat around the kitchen table in a fog, sipping coffee. Eventually Townes sauntered in, disheveled, with his guitar. 'Hey, y'all, listen to this,' he said as the song just rolled off his tongue and fingers as if he'd been playing it for years. Of course they loved it. 'When did you write that?' they asked. 'Last night,' Townes replied. The bemused couple looked at him doubtfully and explained it wasn't possible as he'd gone to bed before them and in their tiny house they surely would've heard him working away in the middle of the night."

After years of abuse, his body finally gave up, and at 52, Townes Van Zandt died of a heart attack on New Year's Day, 1997. It seems darkly appropriate that it was the same day that his hero Hank Williams had died in 1953.

Van Zandt is gone, but his legacy lives on in the musicians he influenced, and continues to influence, every time one of them picks up an instrument and steps up to sing.

Just a deck of cards and a jug of wine
And a woman's lies makes a life like mine
Oh the day we met, I went astray
I started rolling down that lost highway

From Lost Highway
By Hank Williams

NPR Tiny Desk Concerts: Maya Beiser

Unfashionably tardy and back by no demand at all, yet here we go again. Let's see what happens this time around with In a Perfect World...

I first became acquainted with cellist Maya Beiser's playing through her work with the Bang on a Can All Stars (she is a founding member of the group). A very non-traditional band of classical and jazz musicians, I discovered them through their magnificent re-imagining of Brian Eno's classic piece "Music for Airports," a recording that I've loved for decades. Eno's work was composed and performed on acoustic and electric pianos, synthesizers and some wordless vocals sung by three female vocalists and Eno himself. This all was then processed and manipulated through a variety tape loops and recorded. As I understand it, Eno has said that "Music For Airports" was never intended to be performed in a live setting, since it was conceived as a composition to be presented in recorded form as opposed to a performance.

The All Stars changed that, developing an arrangement that used traditional acoustic instruments typically reserved for classical and jazz performances. And it was brilliant. Maya Beiser's playing in particular was beautiful. Now she has a new recording out, Uncovered, and she covers songs by AC/DC, Nirvana, Led Zeppelin and many others. Here is a recent NPR interview with Beiser where she details her fascination with different styles of music that she grew to love and that inspired her to detour from her strict classical music training. In discussing her new recording she says this: "If you look at the trajectory of all the things I've done, this is very much within line, because my whole kind of career mission has been to re-introduce new ideas and new sounds for the cello."

In a perfect world, breaking down barriers between different styles and approaches to music would be the rule and not the exception. In the meantime, take a trip or two outside your musical comfort zone sometime soon. You might enjoy what you find. Take it from a practiced traveler...I've never regretted a single trip.