What a Difference a Year Makes...

Ah, I love September. While we all gear up for autumn to roll in, we're still promised hot weather, difficulties in school and work and a terrible end to another season for the A's (either by injury or failure to hit the ball). There seems to be a mental change with the month, though, and I don't know if it coincides with the traditional school calendar; fresh starts, new beginnings, friends and possibilities, new experiences thay may become lifetime memories. Many special birthdays roll through at this time along with glimpses of what the end of the year may look like. We will see the eventual drying up of leaves, their darkening and death and find beauty in it; soon will be the wisping winds and frost but not for some time, though every morning's day break promises the advent of cold weather.

Last year at this time, I was still unsure as to what life was ready to hand me. My oldest had enrolled in kindergarten and my wife's work schedule was changing. My class load had promised a change from the previous year's misery but the jury was still out as to the promise of the students and their performances. The summer was a blur, of daily trips to the park and naps and continual diaper changes and questioning of my sanity. When the summer heats up and I remain alone and lonely (as I become every summer when my beautiful wife works longer hours), I retreat into my love of music and the hope of discovering "the" album to carry me out of my summer funk. Last summer, that album was Stephen Stills's "Manassas", an album that I'd seen in the dollar lp bins and had read about and had always figured blah blah blah another overwrought album from someone whose previous group had done one or two great things but who'd never repeated that great act sort of thing. A review of the album's remastering finally convinced me to check the album out and upon purchasing and listening to the album, I was shamed into realizing I'd lost many years' memories of listening to this album and falling in and out of love with the songs, the album sides, the art, the whole thing. Sort of when you experience the Layla album or "Exile" or another sprawling masterwork. I spun "Manassas" for hours up on the deck of the place in Twain Harte, my own little piece of peace in the pines...

Then, to stumble over a review of "Before the Frost" and realize that I'd missed the release date of a Black Crowes album. Cripes! how's that slip by? I hadn't heard anything about it on the boards or from friends but a trip to the local retailer solved the problem of being without the latest album. "Before the Frost..." contained the codes to download "...Until the Frost", a second offering of music from the same recording sessions. How promising; a winter's furlough at Levon Helm's studios in upstate New York in the wintertime, an album of new material recorded live in front of a studio audience, the shows that had leaked out on the Internet from that fall. My dear friend, Steve, and I were dying to think of the possibility of the Crowes banging out an album similar to the Grateful Dead's beloved live '72 record.
Then to actually throw the cd into the player... and from "Good Morning Captain" through to the final song, what I found was the band giving its fans the most organic, mature, pure performances of its career. The singing, the playing, the soloing, the writing and instrumentation make for the band's best record. Two albums, or twenty songs or one double-length record (however it's organized, in each of its three incantations), the band's music is superior to every recorded output since "Southern Harmony and Musical Companion". The added instruments of Larry Campbell's fiddle and steel pedal guitar create a mournful, longing and ultimately beautiful quality. To take the the music "back to nature" in a way, while half the songs still are four-to-to-the-floor rockers, allowed for the band to explore avenues of music only so far traveled in cover songs in concert. Now, the band could sound just like Little Feat or the Faces or Gram Parsons and all the while sound like the same band that tore through Jealous Again or Twice As Hard in the early '90s. The whole thing just felt right. After digesting the first album only to find out about the second and then to discover that the vinyl release had an altogether different track listing, why one could be busy for days re-arranging the songs in their ebb and flow. Regardless of the track order, the band wisely ended the sessions with "So Many Times" and "Fork in the River" (not to mention "A Train Still Makes a Lonely Sound" and "The Last Place That Love Lives" from the first record), two of the most haunting and unforgettable ballads it had ever produced; again, Larry Campbell's steel pedal crying over the acoustic guitars and dual harmonies of the Robinson brothers' soul-searching lyrics. Here, the band was letting its fans know that a change was coming and soon, that a closure of some sort was approaching. News broke earlier in the year that the band was announcing an "indefinate hiatus" for personal and creative reasons after completing a tour (thank God we have tickets to the final night of that five-night run at the Fillmore!). I was neither shocked or saddened; let the band end at its peak. If the guys want to return after their kids are older and they're bored or broke or refueled in several years, I'll still give them a fair shake and some more money but know that I caught the band at its greatest. The only disappointment has been seeing just how much the band has already abandoned the albums only to cover its back catalogue in its final tour. I would be perfectly content to see the band play nothing but this double album and a couple of encore rockers but that won't be happening. Maybe that's for the better. It's probably for the best.

I'd have to say that "Before the Frost...Until the Frost" has been the most played album in my home for the last twelve months. Even with the discovery of the Truth & Salvage Co. (directly connected with the Black Crowes, mind you), this record has become one of my all-time favorite and most closely held albums of my life. Thankfully music can still hit me like that; not a "classic" album I've discovered late in life or a flash-in-the-pan release that overstays its welcome three months after its purchase but an album with true staying power. This one's it. I can't think of many other records that have hit me so. Therefore, nothing has resonated more than my chance encounter with a couple of Crowes after their December 2009 concert at the Fillmore. Waiting for some friends outside the venue, the band boarded the bus, which was parked in front of the club exit. Sven Pipien, the band's bassist, was signing people's posters and shaking hands. He signed my poster and probably shook my hand. I told him that their album was the album that fans like myself had waited "for ten years for the band to make". The look of gratitude and appreciation is one I'll never forget. Sven simply replied, "Thanks." 'Nuff said.