Wide Open Skies
Pat Green Explores The Meaning Of Being A Texas Songwriter
originally published September 27, 2006
The term "Texas songwriter" is jammed with meaning. It doesn’t just describe anyone in Texas who writes songs - a set of criteria exists. It describes a unique troupe of poets; archetypal figures like Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Jerry Jeff Walker; recently, Ray Wylie Hubbard expanded the term "Texas songwriter" to encompass an elite group of storytellers who speak mainly to the working class. Hard times and heartache in songs like “L.A. Freeway” and “White Freightliner Blues” hit the mark among regular Texas folk.
Pat Green
Pat Green appeared on the Texas horizon about seven years ago. Like many of his colleagues (including Willie Nelson and David Allan Coe), Green released a Live at Billy Bob’s Texas recording. The disc was an instant college-crowd favorite and received nods from prominent Texas troubadours. Green even buddied up with Walker’s son Django, and eventually recorded his song “Texas On My Mind.”
In tracks like “Here We Go,” Green discusses trying to quit chewing tobacco and the monotony of playing in honky-tonks every night (“Here I go again, singing in this dive/ a Lonestar Beer in my cereal is what’s keepin’ me alive”). In the same song, Green ends each chorus by saying, “I gave up on Nashville a long time ago.”
With his more recent albums, the prominent question among fans and critics seems to be whether Pat Green really, actually did give up on Nashville. Green’s last three releases each lean more toward mainstream, commercial country. His newest release, Cannonball, epitomizes that trend. “This record is a big record," he says. "It should be played in big spaces. I wanted to make the move forward and this record is a big sound that does that."
Many of Green’s fans have questioned his new style, some even suggesting that the day he got his record deal was the day he quit making good music. Green agrees that his music has changed, but disputes the notion that he "sold out."
“Earlier in my career, I was writing about drinking and road trips, but now with a wife and two kids, I’m writing about what’s important. I guess different things matter more to me now,” says Green.
He makes a good point. His days of penning songs like “John Wayne and Jesus,” “Whiskey,” “Me and Billy the Kid” and his initial breakaway hit “George’s Bar” have long been over. But even before his first child was born, Green’s music had begun to give way to pop overtones and suppressed lyrics.
The roster for BNA Records, Green's label, features Nashville hit-makers like Kenny Chesney and Rhett Atkins. Green’s original heroes like Walker and Clark peddle their records through smaller, non-corporate outlets like Walker’s own Tried and True Music and Clark’s now legendary home Dualtone Records. But these records don’t sell nearly as many copies as Green's. Green chuckles at the mention of his recent commercial success, but veers the conversation towards his track record of extensive touring. “Right now the new album is number two on the Billboard. And that means I have to get out there on the road - take as much action as we can,” he says.
Despite Green’s deep commitment to his family over the past few years, he tours almost non-stop. This may be one of the few aspects of his career that Green has left alone. He knows each town well, including Athens. “Athens is a great town. It’s a very powerful show to do. I love the Georgia Theatre and just the history that you feel playing there,” says Green.
Green’s career moves have certainly brought his music to larger crowds, including lending his 2002 hit “Wave on Wave” to George W. Bush’s last campaign. Despite the success, it’s difficult to say whether or not this current direction will persist. Jerry Jeff Walker answered the criticism of newer, family-centered material in 1991 with the first track on the album Hill Country Rain: “Well I’ve seen it in the papers, how Jerry Jeff is getting old / He’s an aging desperado, he’s too old now to rock and roll / Well at least I was one, not some writer talking to the wall / In fact I want it written down here, I’ll live long enough to do it all”.
Walker proved he still had the balls that set him apart from other country artists. Green chose not to do that with Cannonball, but perhaps the reactions will wake him up; Texas songwriters have a knack for reinvention.
WHO: Pat Green, Patrick Davis
WHERE: Georgia Theatre
WHEN: Thursday, September 28
HOW MUCH: $27.50
Every Waking Moment
Citizen Cope's Clarence Greenwood Is Back For Another Round
originally published September 27, 2006
Danny Clinch
Clarence Greenwood of Citizen Cope
Citizen Cope has apparently confused more than a few radio programmers - not to mention music fans - who struggle to pin down his music stylistically. The only thing that’s difficult for Clarence Greenwood, the band's frontman and primary songwriter, to understand, though, is why people find his music so tough to define and embrace. “I guess it’s been a blessing and a curse,” Greenwood says of his sound, which blends urban music and pop influences. “It has probably kept me away from a certain radio format. Also, it’s been a thing that’s kind of distinguished me. I think it’s kind of kept me away from mainstream popular music, but to me I’ve got a verse, a chorus and melodies, and it’s essentially pop music. I don’t understand why people think my music's different. Maybe it’s just because it doesn’t follow certain trends.”
Don’t look for Greenwood to rein in his stylistic tendencies or dumb down his music to try to reach a bigger audience. “For me, I kind of get a little more pleasure out of testing people,” he says, noting that the topical slant of some of his songs may have scared off radio.
“It’s like 'Bullet and a Target,’ that song in itself, it asks a lot of questions, and that’s a single,” Greenwood says, pointing to a disappointingly received single from his second album, 2004's The Clarence Greenwood Recordings. "I think it touches on issues of self-destruction, of confusion or rebellion… that kind of stuff might fly in New York. But everybody wants a John Mayer record in Middle America, so that’s what they’re going to get. They’re going to get the innocuous pop stuff that doesn’t really challenge anything.”
Greenwood, currently based out of New York, is back to take another crack at expanding his audience with the new Citizen Cope album Every Waking Moment, released on RCA two weeks ago. Like the two earlier albums, Every Waking Moment melds diverse influences, including blues, hip hop, rock, reggae and folk. But the music isn’t hard to digest; songs like “More Than It Seems” (with its booming rhythm track), “Every Waking Moment” (with its quiet, brushed percussion) or “Brother Lee” (a skittering ska tune) may be all over the map in tempo and intensity, but they aren’t schizophrenic. Like all tracks on Every Waking Moment, they share Greenwood's obvious affection for warm melodies and straightforward arrangements that don’t require directions to follow - and perhaps, most importantly, Greenwood’s distinctive laid-back and soulful vocals.
The simplicity and inviting feel of Citizen Cope’s music, coupled with lyrics that take more of a personal slant, would seem to give Every Waking Moment a chance to connect with radio and reach a larger audience, after enduring years of false starts and disappointments.
A native of Memphis who started his career as turntable player in the hip hop/ rock group Basehead, Greenwood signed with Capitol Records in the mid-1990s, only to see his 1997 album Shotguns get shelved by the label.
“It had real underground, kind of darker themes,” Greenwood says. “I think it was, for a major label, a little too depressing… They kind of didn’t get it and it didn’t fully reach its capabilities. But I thought lyrically, if they would have put it out, it probably would have been like an underground kind of classic.”
Citizen Cope was dropped by Capitol without releasing an album, but landed a deal with DreamWorks Records, which released the band's self-titled debut in 2002, only to see it stiff commercially. “They spent a lot of money on recording the record, but didn’t know how to market and promote [it],” says Greenwood. “So that was tough.”
But during this time, Greenwood got a break. A demo of his song “Sideways” was sent to Carlos Santana; the guitarist decided to record the song for his Shaman album, and had Greenwood produce the track. This project introduced Greenwood to L.A. Reid, who was then the president of Santana’s label Arista. Once Greenwood freed himself from his DreamWorks deal, Reid signed him to Arista.
Then Arista, however, closed down and merged into RCA Records, a move that resulted in Reid leaving for Def Jam Records.
Greenwood considered following Reid to Def Jam, but instead stayed with RCA. Even though that label didn’t sign Citizen Cope immediately, the partnership has now resulted in two CDs - The Clarence Greenwood Recordings and Every Waking Moment - and for the first time some forward progress, albeit modest.
In addition to the new album, Greenwood also puts in a guest spot on the rapper Rhymefest's track "Bullet," and his cover of Radiohead's "Karma Police" was included on the recent Radiodread compilation.
Greenwood says he realizes now that the key for him is to keep touring and build a grassroots following with a live show he thinks brings a fresh energy to his music.
“On The Clarence Greenwood Recordings, I got to tour with my band and get tight and just start playing it and have it be about playing shows and not be about opening for somebody or doing a marketing kind of thing,” he says. “It was just about playing, and then there was a little momentum happening, and the momentum helps you. People come out and start hearing you. So I feel that way still, with this record, because there’s not any mainstream thing going on with it. It’s all word of mouth.”
WHO: Citizen Cope, Alice Smith
WHERE: Georgia Theatre
WHEN: Friday, September 29
HOW MUCH: $15
Winds Of Change
The Strange Evolution Of California Jam Band Particle
originally published September 27, 2006
Casey Flanigan
Particle
The first edition of Particle was hardly well represented on recordings, considering that in a six-year existence, the band released only one album, 2004's Launchpad. When the group shifted its lineup at the start of 2006, the bandmembers decided to waste no time in creating a document of the new version of Particle.
This time, the band both recorded and filmed the very first show to feature new guitarists Scott Metzger and Ben Combe, who replaced Charlie Hitchcock, and in doing so, expanded Particle to a new five-person lineup. The CD/ DVD Transformations Live: For The People also features several special guests, including hip hop act Blackalicious, guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani and Doors guitarist Robbie Krieger on a cover of “L.A. Woman.”
While the decision to record the debut concert, which was held Feb. 24 of this year at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles, was planned all along, what wasn’t foreseen was that the five-man lineup of Particle would last only a few months.
In late July, the band announced that Metzger had left Particle, making the group a four-man configuration of Combe and original members Eric Gould (bass), Steve Molitz (keyboards) and Darren Pujalet (drums).
“What happened actually was an unforeseen medical emergency in his family came up and he was confronted with a really tough choice: whether or not to be there in that time of need for his family or continue the 50 shows we have on the books now,” says Molitz. “Obviously health and family always come first. So it was a tough decision, but it seemed like we had to play the hand that was dealt to us. And I think for some reason, I’ll look back in six months or a year from now and realize this was the right thing on a larger scale. I’m surprisingly comfortable with this change and wish Scott the best.”
As a result, Transformations Live, which also includes a few songs from the revamped band’s second show four nights later in San Francisco, may be even more of a historic document than Particle originally intended. “The cool thing about those releases is that they really are a snapshot in time, even more so now that Scott’s not in the band,” says Molitz. “If you want to see Scott Metzger in Particle with its five-man lineup, your only chance is to get that DVD.”
To be sure, Particle could have played things safe and either waited until the band had toured for a time before recording a concert or even gone into the studio and introduced the new lineup with a studio album. But Molitz says other considerations made the band want to release the very first show by the five-man lineup, even though the group had only two weeks to rehearse a set that included a good deal of new material, plus only a couple of hours of practice with each of the guest musicians who joined Particle for that first show.
“There was a tremendous amount of pressure on the band,” says Molitz. “But it’s always been Particle’s style to roll the dice and bet big and say, 'hey, let’s have some fun here.' We knew we were out of our minds for doing it. We were joking with each other, 'We’ve got to be crazy. We’ve lost it, to record and release this concert. What if the harmonies aren’t right or what if people forget parts of these new songs or what if the chemistry just isn’t all it can be yet? Why don’t we go play a tour and then record the album?' Obviously, it would be much stronger. And the truth is it would be. If we were to record tonight’s show, it would be a much stronger representation of this band. But we weren’t going for that. We were going for the risk. I think that DVD and live album capture the emotion and the intensity and just the unpredictability of what those first two concerts were.”
It’s also fitting in a way that Particle chose to unveil the new lineup with a concert DVD and CD, because touring has been crucial to the band’s success. The group, after all, has spent the vast majority of its time on the road, building a large core following on the jam band circuit, despite until recently having only the Launchpad CD in its catalog.
Particle formed in fall of 2000 when Los Angeles-based musicians Gould, Molitz, Pujalet (drums) and Dave Simmons (guitar) decided to form a group with a grooving electronic sound at its core.
The band, though, had a huge setback to overcome, when just a couple of months later, Simmons died from complications due to diabetes. Despite the loss, Gould, Molitz and Pujalet knew almost immediately that they were going to push forward as Particle.
“After Dave died, we kind of looked at each other and we were just like, ‘All right, well what do we do?’” Gould said in a 2005 interview. “We all recognized the value of what this was, and we actually had a gig a few days later, and we decided to do it as a trio… We did a benefit for him. He left a daughter behind. We did a benefit for him as a trio. We actually played the gig and then we just flew right out and went to Pensacola, where his funeral was, and we met his whole Florida family and friends out there. I think that experience got the three of us, it just made us closer than we already were. And just as a result of that, we knew that keeping this thing going was the thing to do.”
Guitarist Hitchcock, who brought a more aggressive, rock-edged style of playing to the band, was soon chosen as Simmons’ replacement, and Particle plowed ahead into the future.
The group barely paused, in fact, when toward the end of 2005, Hitchcock left the band due to musical differences. After auditions, Gould, Molitz and Pujalet realized they liked Metzger and Combe equally and decided that rather than choosing between the two guitarists, they'd bring both into the group.
Metzger, in an interview just days before he left Particle, said the band’s danceable mix of rock, soul and electronica already had evolved since the first two concerts. And now that the group has returned to a four-man lineup, Molitz says Particle will remain open to any new musical directions that emerge - so long as the music grooves and has soul.
One new twist that will definitely remain part of Particle is vocals. That facet of the band was introduced on Transformations Live, as Metzger and Combe took lead vocals on songs like “Fiyo On The Bayou” (a song made famous by the Neville Brothers) and “Losing It” (one of two songs Combe brought into the band). “The joke is we’ve been threatening to add vocals for years,” says Molitz. “We decided, 'What better time to add lyrics than this time when we’re changing the lineup anyway? If we’re going to do it, let’s go big.' It just seemed like the right time.
“I just think music and lyrics [were] a natural step for us because [they] allow us to paint a more detailed and emotionally colorful picture,” he says. “I just think it’s important having the ability to tell stories and paint pictures with words.”
WHO: Particle, SoJorn
WHERE: Georgia Theatre
WHEN: Saturday, September 30
HOW MUCH: $10
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