Today’s post is a three for one. I realize this is a bit of a cheat on my part. I had one song in my but I had a couple of alternatives up the sleeve if I needed. However all the songs had problems when I was searching for them on Youtube. On two of the tunes the problem was an issue of audio quality and the third one had an issue with video that I have posted before but the music quality is good.
The artists involved on these songs are the unifying elements. Richard Shindell and Robert Earl Keen are singer/songwriters. Shindell has a wonderful voice, am excellent way with a lyric and is a damned competent guitar player. Keen, well he is a damn fine songwriter and his heart comes from a place where I have been and I think most of my friends have been. Both have caught my attention over the last ten to fifteen years.
As you may know I have been following and going to see Shindell since he was playing in church basements years ago. In an intimate setting his music has an immediacy and warmth that is hard to resist. This artist has a couple of songs that just amaze me every single time I hear them. One is the Ballad of Mary Magdalene. The other is Reunion Hill. Both have a sneaky depth to them that leaves you thinking even after you have finished humming along on the catchy choruses.
What I had intended to post was Shindell’s cover of a Robert Earl Keen song called Shades of Gray. He performed it about a decade ago with a group called Cry, Cry, Cry. The whole depiction of tipping over porta potties and doing a little dance just outside the law reminded me of Pedricktown if you had grown up there 1969-1975. The bit where the guy is referring to the main actors in the song as just a bunch of sorry kids well yeah that kind of summed it if you were male and from Oldman’s township.
Given there was no good post of it I went with the Shindell cover song of Cold Missouri Waters because the audio quality was great and the story compelling. In order to at least offer a nod to my original choice I decided to post Keen’s version of the song. Alas there are no really clean copies of the song out there. Most were from hand held concerts and the audio was dicey. Well what the heck I decided I will post the best of the mediocre renderings of the tune and tack on my favorite Robert Earl Keen tune as a bonus.
Walking Home was a CD my niece gave me back in her days as a record promoter. It took me about six months to put it in the CD player but when I did I just loved it. Being Robert Earl Keen there are a couple of throwaways on the disk, but there is also a suite of songs that reminds of Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy. (If you haven’t read those books you really should at least read the first one if I remember it right it is called All the Pretty Horses. It is much better than the movie they made of it. ) Any how there was one song that just stuck out on that disk, Feels So Good to be Feeling Good Again.
Good golly that song just sounds like the perfect night. First you walk into a bar. Next you find all your friends there. Then you discover you have more cash that you thought you had. How wonderful would that be? Anyway this post was going to be Cry, Cry, Cry singing Shades of Gray, but because I couldn’t find an okay (to my taste) version you get these three songs. Enjoy.
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