From: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org (shindell-list-digest) To: shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Subject: shindell-list-digest V2 #97 Reply-To: shindell-list@smoe.org Sender: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk shindell-list-digest Friday, June 2 2000 Volume 02 : Number 097 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [RS] Hill of Beens [RockinRonD@aol.com] [RS] Richard, Fame Mini-Essay ["Young/Hunter Mgt." Subject: [RS] Richard, Fame Mini-Essay Dick-sters, A couple of things.... First, I was tickled pink to see Kerry's note. She hits the nail on the head about our roster - all are incredibly talented IN DIFFERENT WAYS. And, all are great human beings, as are virtually _all_ their fans! Carol and I are really fortunate to get to work in a community that is so mutually supportive (and to have a wonderful co-worker in Kerry). The impulse to dis music that isn't exactly to ones taste is easy, and a sin to which I must plead guilty (I tend to refer to Van Morrisson's voice as 'sounding like an angry duck' far too often). As per the recent discussion, I wouldn't worry about 'fame' per se spoiling Richard. I think my essay about Richard's record deal is still up on the www.richardshindell.com website. I explain in there how Richard's record deal pretty well takes him out of the fame game. What is does do is allow him to make a good middle-class income from his work without anyone telling him what to do (except me, but that's okay, 'cause I'm nearly always right). Believe me, mainstream media is about as interested in devoting space to someone who's not playing by their rules (telltale symbols of which include skeletal thinness (unless you're a rapper), designer clothes, 'attitude') as they would be to hosting a good, frank multi-part discussion about polyps. Moving to Argentina is what Richard wanted to do for his family. His wife is Argentinian, and the deal was that once he was a step beyond struggling-to-survive, they'd go down there. As far as I'm concerned, it's fine with me -- again, it won't help make Richard a household name, but it won't particularly hurt him. Maybe he'll sell fewer cds than if he were up here, but I bet he'll write interesting songs for a longer period of time than if he were touring constantly. As Steve Earle says, "once you start writing songs about the music business, you're basically finished. Most people don't want to hear about how tough it is to ride around in tour buses for weeks at a time." Believe me, the wheels of fame grind slow and fine. Richard's not even in the queue. Shannon Curfman, Sinead Lohan and Tara MacLean are having hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on them to make us think we're getting to 'discover' their music. One of _those_ three will end up a superstar. BTW, here's a review of PATERSON from CD Now (we're at 9,000 SoundScan, 15,000 sold, btw - which is excellent). - -- Charlie By Drew Wheeler CDNOW Senior Editor, Folk/Blues "Confession," the opening song on Richard Shindell's newest album, Somewhere Near Paterson, is sung from the standpoint of a successful young Wall Street operator whose high-stakes, drug-dependent life is hurtling out of control. In a world-weary, embittered tone, Shindell sings of a soul running on empty. There's an imploring hook in its chorus, and the narrator's dissolution is played out in a clamor of voices and guitars. Directly following "Confession" is "Abuelita," another first-person exposition, sung from the perspective of a collateral victim of institutionalized terror: a grandmother of an Argentinian child, raised by members of the military junta after he was stolen from the doomed political prisoners who were his parents. To a gentle gait that suggests Latin folk, Shindell's voice is laden with emotion as he intones the lines: "In my mind / There are pictures of your face / As it might be now / And I pray I would know you ..." As powerful and affecting as these songs are, Shindell wants people to know that he's been neither a stock exchange dealmaker nor a South American grandmother. In fact, he's weary of the suggestion that singer-songwriters gather source material exclusively from their own lives. "That's sort of the default assumption that people have about singer-songwriters," he says. "Because they're standing up singing -- and because of the history of songwriting in the past 30 years -- they just assume that when I am singing a song, that I must be talking about myself. So people think that if I'm singing a song about a truck that I must have driven a truck, or if I sing a song about a war, I must have been a soldier." While Shindell's portrayals are brilliantly etched, he considers his own identity to be less relevant. In fact, the cover of Somewhere Near Paterson sports a photo not of Shindell's face, but rather, the back of his head. "I hate having my picture taken. It's like going to the dentist -- or worse, because usually there's no pain killers involved when you're getting your picture taken," he says. "In a way, I wish I were a novelist or a short-story writer. If there's any picture at all on their books, it's a little tiny picture on the back inside jacket. And I much prefer that -- to be one step removed, in a way, from the authorship. And I think this goes back to what we were saying a minute ago, about the confessional thing in the songwriting. I'm just a little bit uncomfortable with the focus being on me as a person, as opposed to the focus being on the work." This is not to say that Shindell has any trouble facing audiences in person, as he ably proved at a recent engagement at New York's Bottom Line. There he was backed by artists featured on Somewhere Near Paterson: Lincoln Schlieffer on bass, Denny McDermott on drums, and Bob Dylan sideman Larry Campbell on lead guitar, fiddle, mandolin, and Irish bouzouki. Shindell says that Campbell, who's been involved with all of Shindell's albums, is also a wizard on pedal steel and lap steel. ("Basically, anything with strings he can play pretty well," says Shindell. "It's kind of scary.") Although the Bottom Line show was a kickoff to the new album, Shindell and company also performed songs from his 1992 debut, Sparrow's Point, ("Are You Happy Now?" and "The Kenworth of My Dreams") as well as a solo-guitar version of the title song from 1997's Reunion Hill, which was also recorded by Joan Baez. Also from that album came one of the evening's harder-rocking tunes, "The Next Best Western," as well as the pop-worthy "Fishing" from the 1994 set Blue Divide. For a folk artist, Shindell included plenty of rock-oriented numbers -- which raises the question of whether such a designation is restrictive. "That's sort of the default assumption that people have about singer-songwriters -- they just assume that when I am singing a song, that I must be talking about myself." "The upside of being considered a folk artist is being in this community," says Shindell. "There's a very, very strong community of songwriters and fans and agents and record labels. It's a great group of people and a very supportive community, and that's great. But just from a purely artistic point of view, it's a little bit confining ... I've listened to all kinds of music my entire life, and folk, or acoustic-based music, is just one part of what influences me. I've listened to rock and roll and Celtic music and art-rock and God knows what, since I was a kid." In addition to "Confession," Shindell's group played some of his newest songs, including "You Stay Here," which builds a glowing soundscape in hypnotic, circular guitar figures, and "Wisteria," a moving, crystalline depiction of a couple's return to their old homestead, finding it irrevocably changed. Campbell's guitar makes the sound of traffic roaring by on "Transit," a flamenco-inflected tale of interstate highway hell with the drama of a blood-on-the-sand bullring. Crazed commuters meet a nuns' choir bound for a penitentiary performance in a surreal scenario that comes off like an Italo Calvino fantasy invaded by the nightly traffic report. Its caricature of the tangled highways of the Northeast gives listeners the impression that Shindell might spend a lot of time driving from gig to gig. "That's mostly what I do," he says with a laugh. "People think I'm a songwriter or a performer. That's incorrect. Primarily, I am a driver. I'm like a long-haul trucker. I spend way too much time in my car." ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2000 11:33:13 EDT From: Gf212121@aol.com Subject: [RS] The fame thing, among others Hello, All this John Denver talk...WAY back, in the very early 1970's, just after Edison invented recorded sound, John Denver was played on Rock stations line WNEW-FM in New York. He was considered progressive, for cryin' out loud. And, like millions of others, I owned 'em all. Was it Calypso that turned the tide? It was for me. I am not a musician, but I can only imagine that the taste of popularity is quite intoxicating. Sorry kids, but the Elton John that recorded 'Madman Across the Water' simply cannot be the guy on the 'Lion King' soundtrack. Absolutely no way. Will this sort of thing happen to Richard? Only he really knows how much he wants to be widely popular, but I don't think that a success-driven folk singer who is looking to go 'pop' would up and move to Argentina. Definitely a career limiting move. It's true that SNP contains some songs that reach wider than anything on the first three CDs, but I don't think any of us want each new release to follow a formula, any more than Richard wants to write a new twist on 'Are You Happy Now?' for each CD. As much as we may like or appreciate an artist, deep inside we're all saying 'show me what you've got.' And, the true fan will hang on through the odd misstep. Just don't follow 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road' with 'Captain Fantastic' and 'Rock of the Westies.' THAT is the beginning of the end. Gene F. ------------------------------ End of shindell-list-digest V2 #97 **********************************