I’m on vacation in Virginia Beach, Virginia this week but I just had to check in with this venue tip.

The Jewish Mother, located in the Boardwalk area, is a deli full of delicious Jewish food, with a stage for live music in the evenings. In the past, they have hosted Hootie & the Blowfish, Pharrell, Dave Matthews and the Little River Band. Coming up in the next month are Ben Taylor and Tab Benoit, both of whom have recently been reviewed on this blog.

Unfortunately we won’t be able to catch a show while we’re here, but we did have an incredible lunch. I had Mother’s Sister Adele, a hot corned beef on marble rye with coleslaw, a side of macaroni salad and a kosher pickle. The corned beef was incredible and I probably would’ve been happy with just a huge pile of that! The pickle was excellent, and I am picky about pickles. Mac had a reuben that she says was at least as good as anything available in NYC (and she’s from there, so she knows reubens) and her kid had the huge Mother’s Sub. All three of our sandwiches were packed (packed!) with meat. It’s probably a miracle I can move right now (I only ate four hours ago). The two of them had fries which were pretty good, too, at least the one I stole… heheh.

I took a look at the beer and wine list. They offer several organic wines and a couple non-organics. The beer list is huge. There definitely should be something for anyone there.

If you find yourself in Virginia Beach, definitely make the time to stop by the Jewish Mother, either for lunch or for an evening of good music. And check out the photos on the walls — or just check out the photographer on myspace. Pretty cool.

Welcome back to my hit tutorial! In our last installment, I covered hit dance songs. Today, I’m covering the other major genre of hits, the mid-tempo ballad.

The best way to illustrate the hit ballad is to examine the songwriting successes of Diane Warren. I cannot stand her songs, or her personally, but she has had more hit songs than any other songwriter in the 20th/21st centuries, so where better to start?  Artists to look at are Mariah Carey and Celine Dion.

With dance songs, we built from the bottom (the beat) up. With ballads, we move in the other direction, starting with the lyrics. Lyrics should be about love, or miracles, or other inspirational things, or occasionally about lost love. Think of your average American Idol “coronation” song — you want a song that conveys both grandiosity and happiness.  (There actually used to be a random word generator on the Internet that would create a random AI song.  If anyone still has the link, please let me know!)  Use a lot of words, too, especially in your verses, and make sure to have a bridge. The bridge will come in handy later when you get to the chord and key changes. When you write the chorus, make sure to include lots of open vowels — oohs, ohs, and ahs. Avoid ee’s, because they sound screechy when held and hiccupy when Mariah goes into melisma (a/k/a “runs”).

Which brings us to the melody. Long, sweeping phrases and an opportunity for the eventual singer to show off his or her vocal range and breath control are key. (Unless you know you’re writing for someone with no vocal range or breath control, like Madonna or Britney.) Don’t write too many notes, as a basic outline is fine. The singer will have their own style for filling in the blanks, honed over years of impressing Star Search judges. The singer’s style will also serve as a reminder of the genre they have been pigeonholed into: a country singer will be more yodely and a pop singer will be more punchy. Also, your chord progressions will provide them with a guide.

So what’s all this about chord progressions and key changes? 
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Welcome to the Vault!  As part of an ongoing feature of our new music blog, we’ll be bringing you band/artist/crew “spotlights” and interviews.  Names I’m sure you’ll find familiar if you follow the music and career of Taylor Hicks!

Our first spotlight is on the band SPOONFUL JAMES based in Auburn, AL

After a journey that included three cds and opening gigs for the Allman Brothers Band,  Little Feat,  Gov’t Mule,  Buddy Miles, and The Jerry Garcia Band, unfortunate circumstances forced Spoonful James to make the tough decision to split up.  Lucky for us,  they found their way back to each other.  This is the story of how the current band came together. 

Wynn Christian, Taylor Hicks, Quinn Borland and Patrick Lunceford. Photo courtesy Elizabeth Borland.

 PART ONE:  The story of Spoonful James

Spoonful’s history from bass player Quinn Borland:

The band is myself, Wynn Christian (lead vocals/guitars), Eric Baath (piano/organ), and Patrick Lunceford (drums).  The band started back in 1996 with  Wynn Christian and me.  We were actually in a band in high school called  “March of the Fishers Wives”.  Terrible name, I know.  We had a real brainy guy in the band and he’d just read some Russian revolt story or something.  Anyways, we both ended up going to Auburn University and started playing acoustic for a while, until we had some original songs under our belt.  We formed Spoonful as a trio, adding Lee Vartanian on drums.  We cut our first album (self-titled), in 1997 and it is currently out of print and vaulted (for good reason).   All I can say is, it was a good stepping stone for us.

After this, we started touring around the southeast for a few years and this is about the time we met Taylor Hicks, Clay Connor, John Cook, Bill and Wes Williams and the whole crew you know and love today.   We all became friends fairly quickly and would stay up ’til the wee hours watching my collection of old concerts.  Rick’s Music in Macon had a HUGE archive of old footage, and for $20 you could get 120 minutes of any concert you wanted.  Needless to say, we spent everything we made every time we played in Macon.  This is where Taylor got to see Sam & Dave/Otis Redding for the first time live on video.  He still asks me for copies of that.

We started gaining popularity and cut our second album in Hueytown, AL, titled “Leave That Door Open”.  We had just opened for Buddy Miles of the Jimi Hendrix Band of Gypsys in Tallahassee, FL and during our set Buddy liked our music so much,  he made security keep his door open so he could listen, hence, “Leave That Door Open”.  Eventually we became great friends and got him on our next album, ”7 Mile Breakdown”.

We had met Patrick when he was with Taylor’s band, Passing Through.  At the time we had Jay Knorr on drums, who recorded on “Leave That Door Open”.  We parted ways with Jay after the album and picked up Patrick.  Lucky for us, Passing Through was dissolving at the same time, so it worked out for everybody.  I must say, Patrick is hands down the best drummer I have ever palyed with.  

At one point, we and some of Passing Through, Iratowns, and Highly Kind formed the supergroup known as “Fletch Lives”.  Taylor sang lead, of course, and at one point people started paying us outrageous amounts of money, even though combined we only knew about 8 songs.  With 8-10 members, we knew it couldn’t last too long, and due to previous band commitments we were only able to keep it together for a few months.  Our proudest moment came at the Florabama,  when the managers told us to stop playing or we would start a riot.  Good times!

After this we picked up a few different organ players and eventually got back in touch with Eric Baath.  I knew him from my freshman year at Auburn, where I was a member of his band, “Soul Patch”,  before Wynn and I started writing together.  This guy is awesome.  He actually flew back from Germany to do the opening gigs for Taylor’s last tour.  Total dedication, great guy.  Our music has been coined “Southern Fried,  hard driving, original rock & roll.  That kind of stuck and I like it!

Eric Baath. Photo courtesy Wes Williams.

Check out Spoonful James at www.Myspace.com/Spoonfuljames and at www.cdbaby.com

 Coming soon……Part 2 :  Interview with Quinn Borland

Photo Credits: Spoonful James and Taylor Hicks courtesy Elizabeth Borland; Eric Baath courtesy Wes Williams.

New England Soul Patrol has a weekly feature called New Music Tuesday, where we highlight some of the more interesting new music releases for the week. If you click on the nifty Amazon boxes, you can usually sample the music. If you like it, buy it and your Amazon purchase will help defray the costs of NESP and OFTV projects. Many albums can now be downloaded directly from Amazon — no shipping (yay!), no waiting (yay!!) and frequently cheaper than the physical CD. Individual songs can be downloaded as well.

This week’s blurbs are all written by Alicia (ain127 on NESP). She’s great at finding what’s fun and current. If you want to write a CD blurb, send an email to margaux@oneforthevault.com with the Amazon link and your blurb, and I will consider it for an upcoming edition of One for the Vault.

Let us know in comments if you find something you like in our suggestions.
Margaux

What makes a song a hit? Is it a fashionable genre? Is it a (f/ Akon) notation in the credits? Or is there something more universal that gets radio requests and mass downloads? Considering that hits come from all genres and certainly existed before the advent of the professional guest artist, I’m inclined to go with that universal theory.

My personal experience is that there are two “usual” types of hits: the uptempo dance number, and the midtempo ballad (a/k/a makeout song). In this blog, I’m going to examine uptempo songs. Later, we’ll cover ballads, and the third, rogue category, the novelty song (which can occasionally fit into one or the other of the first two categories). Now, on to the hits!

The backbone of a danceable song is the backbeat. (It even has “back” in it!) This usually consists of drums (or some kind of percussion, drum machine, etc.) and some kind of bass line, either from bass guitar, “stand up” double bass, or maybe the left hand of the piano or organ player. This is what you tap your feet or fingers to, it’s what you move and groove and shake your booty to. It’s what made people on American Bandstand say, “It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it, I give it an 8.5″ for many, many years. If you haven’t got a beat, you haven’t got a hit dance song.

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Given my admiration for James Taylor and Cat Stevens, it probably is not surprising that I’m also a fan of Carly Simon. 

As a singer/songwriter, she paved her own way in the early 70’s and was able to almost seamlessly achieve and blend critical and commercial success – not an easy feat.  Of course, her success is even more impressive given that she’s rarely toured, suffering through bouts of debilitating stage fright throughout her career. 

Interestingly, when I listen to Carly’s music, it sometimes doesn’t feel right for the stage anyway; her delivery and lyrics are so intimate and personal, often, that it feels more like you’re sitting across the table from her sharing a cup of coffee and that she’s not really singing so much as speaking to you – not some generic audience, but YOU – with her carefully crafted words.

While she, indeed, possesses a distinctive voice – you know it as soon as you hear it – Carly’s gift isn’t necessarily her vocals per se, but her ability to tell stories through her songs, stories that draw you in, but always remain open to interpretation, and never offer an easy resolution.  I love that about her music.  That 30 years after the fact, people are still guessing the mysterious subject of her hit, “You’re So Vain,” is a testament to her ability as a storyteller. 

Many artists sing about relationships gone bad, or cheating lovers, but there was something about Carly’s composition and delivery of this song that raised the stakes somehow – people just HAD to know, and they still want to know.  “You walked into the party, like you were walking onto a yacht…” — one of the best opening lines of a song ever.

Speaking of opening lines, while each of her songs, as a whole, tells a story, her brilliance as a songwriter is showcased in the power of her individual lyrics to tell stories of their own, apart from the larger narrative of the song.  I’ve been moved sometimes by a simple lyric – a phrase or two that plays over again in your mind and evolves and becomes imbued with new meaning each time you hear it. 

One of my favorite songs of Carly’s is one of her earliest hits, “Anticipation,” a song that she wrote (no lie) while getting ready for a date with Cat Stevens (yes, this all geeks me out).  The song is interesting because given that it was written by a songwriter in her early 20’s,  it’s so smartly reflective about love, lust, the angst of dating, and the heady mix of elation and insecurity one often feels in the early stages of a relationship.  The line I love best in this song, though, is the last line of the final verse:

And tomorrow we might not be together
I’m no prophet, I don’t know nature’s way
So I’ll try to see into your eyes right now
And stay right here, ’cause these are the good old days.

Normally, you hear mature songwriters pining away about the stolen days of youth or the innocence they lost along the way – if they’d only have known then, what they know now, they would have appreciated those “good old days.”  But it seems like Carly always knew, and this is what makes her so special.

One of my favorite songs by two of my favorite artists:

Here’s another of my favorite Carly songs, that she wrote about her children, featuring her son Ben in the video: 

The Song of the Day will be the coolest song I hear during the day.  Not every day will have a song..  it’s one of those serendipity things, the song has to present itself.   I am a definite believer in the Oracle of the Car Radio.    Sometimes when you really need to get a message, the Car Radio will deliver.     Sometimes when you just need to smile, the Car Radio will give you what you need.

My car radio is a much happier oracle than it was a few months ago, since I have a new car that came with built-in XM Radio and a three-month trial.    Of course now I don’t know how I lived without it.    And I like just about all the stations.    I don’t care if it’s praising Jesus or having sympathy for the Devil, honky tonk, power pop or grunge, when it comes to music, I’m Universalist and omnivorous — it just has to be interesting.   When I’m bored, I just turn the dial to the next station and wait for the surprise. 

The first road trip with the new radio, before too long I came upon a sixteen-beat piano chord intro that made me think I might be at a Taylor Hicks concert – Traffic’s “Medicated Goo”.  I knew this XM radio was a great thing. 

Best of all, there are plenty of stations that play Songs You Love But Haven’t Thought of In Twenty-Five Years.    For pop, Sixties on 6 is what you always wished your oldies station sounded like.  For anyone who went to college in the 70s, Deep Tracks sounds just like your college dormitory on a Friday night.   

The other day, I came upon a tasty psychedelic jam, guitar, sax, amazing drum solo, with that organ overlay that lets you know it’s the 70s, there was something familiar about it, but it just kept going.. finally some classic riffs revealed the song — “Get Ready”, Rare Earth’s cover of the Temptations’ hit, one of those covers that has surpassed the original as the definitive version of the song.   Rare Earth was unusual, in that it was a band of white musicians signed to Motown.  The 3-minute single peaked at #4 in 1970, but the twenty-one minute album version (that was a whole side of the big round record!) is the one you want to download.  

 Wouldn’t you love to see what Taylor and his boys could do with this tune?

The YouTube is a shorter live performance..  

Many of our readers are directed here through the Taylor Hicks fan network, so I will introduce Pet Sounds by reminding you that it was Taylor’s first album of the month on HQ back in October 2007.  To people who like to read Top 10 lists, you’ll find Pet Sounds or songs from it at the top of many lists, including “Greatest Album Ever” and many artists’ “Most Influential Albums”.  This jewel of an album, clocking in at just over 30 minutes and packed with some of songwriter Brian Wilson’s best work, was released in 1966 and was a direct influence on its more famous and popular contemporary, the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album.

Like many great works of art, Pet Sounds was not appreciated by the general public in its own time.  The vaguely symphonic sound, more mature lyrics and comprehensive feel of the album were confusing to Beach Boys fans who were anticipating another record full of happy, sun-surf-and-cars pop songs.  It was better appreciated by the tastemakers of the time, the other musicians who were outgrowing the “teenage” phase of rock & roll and getting ready to move into the drug-fueled psychedelia of the late 60s.  Unfortunately for Brian Wilson, a man of fragile confidence, he was about six months ahead of the rest of the world.

In the above video, Brian sings lead on a demo version of “God Only Knows,” which was named “Greatest Love Song” several years ago.  I’ve chosen “God Only Knows” as representative of the entire Pet Sounds album, because it is one of the best known cuts and also because it really is well representative of the album.  It also happens to be one of my favorite songs.  The album version is sung by Brian’s youngest brother, Carl, because of the emotion Brian felt Carl could bring to the song.  (If you were going to classify the Wilson brothers according to genre, Brian is pop and jazz, Carl was soul and blues, and Dennis, the middle brother, was raw rock & roll.)

“God Only Knows” is a love song, but it is a curious love song.  It begins with the phrase, “I may not always love you,” which does not seem particularly committed until you continue along to, “but long as there are stars above you, you never need to doubt it.  I’ll make you so sure about it: ‘God Only Knows’ what I’d be without you.”  (Please note that the punctuation is not original, this is just how I see it when I hear it.)  Imagine, for a moment, your significant other confessing, “I don’t know what kind of person I would be without your influence on me.”  That is the emotional impact of this song.  Pet Sounds is full of these not-so-obvious turns of phrase, and it requires the listener to actually listen, to stop and think about the words.

For those musically inclined, the music itself should stop and make you think.  Brian was greatly influenced by the jazz harmonies of the Four Freshmen and by the compositions of George Gershwin. At the same time, he was also being influenced by the same thing that everyone else in the music scene was influenced by in 1966: marijuana. He became obsessed with creating the perfect album, and with experimentation in the studio. He spent hours getting exactly the right sound for his songs, hours that his record company saw as dollar signs going down the toilet. To get Capitol off his back, the Beach Boys released the semi-live Party! album and the single “Barbara Ann”. Compare the howling of “Barbara Ann” with the delicate instrumentation of “God Only Knows” or even the island-influenced arrangement of the cover “Sloop John B” and you can understand why teenage fans might have been confused.

However, to certain fans, those who were growing up along with the Beach Boys (all, by that time, in their 20s), or perhaps those who had always been more mature than their peers, Pet Sounds became the soundtrack to a more angst-filled time of life.  The themes of love, loss and pain were laid bare, but always with Brian’s signature hopeful music.  And that is what keeps the album from becoming a vat of depression in which to wallow (although I and many other fans will admit to having done that): there is always a major chord, an uplifting progression, a quirky turn of phrase to draw you out of your despair and appreciate the genius of this music and the beauty of love.

Brian Wilson will be performing at the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom on Sunday, July 13.  If you would like to experience Pet Sounds for yourself, I recommend listening to it in mono first, as Brian mixed it, and then listening to the later stereo version.  It is available on Amazon.com.

Welcome to One For The Vault!

This bright shiny new blog is brought to you by New England Soul Patrol.  Our authors will be posting on all manner of music topics and events, whatever strikes our fancy.  There will be artist, album and song discussions, interviews with bands, photos, videos, audio clips — you never know what you’ll find, so check back often or click up on the top right to get our RSS feed!

You’ll be able to comment on our posts and we encourage you to register and reserve your preferred screen name.  If you ever have any questions, please feel free to ask me as I am the chief admin.  And if you’d like to request a topic for discussion, ask any of our bloggers!

Again, welcome to OFTV, where it’s all about the music (again).