Roots Of Heaven V Festival
Patronaat, Haarlem, NL
November 6, 2005
by Johanna J. Bodde
| ROOTS OF HEAVEN V FESTIVAL Patronaat, Haarlem Sunday November 6th, 2005 ----- It's Roots Of Heaven-time again, the fourth edition in the Spring left me with a very good feeling, so I'm curious about number five... One bus and three trains bring me to Haarlem, where I need to find the location of that brandnew building club Patronaat uses now. It's an interesting walk of about 20 minutes, passing along the streets of the city-center and the huge old church on the marketplace. What a perfect timing, after collecting my free ticket (thanks, Frank!) and a quick look around, the first concert in the Big Room is about to start. The time schedule doesn't get me very happy though, they're making the same mistake as Blue Highways and Take Root now: shows in two or three different places around the same time, so the music-lovers have to make difficult choices... Well, let's try to make the best of it! ---  ERIC TAYLOR just released a very good album, "The Great Divide" and I really want to see him live! He starts off with "Where I Lead Me", playing his acoustic guitar in a very focused way. He is joined on the big stage by a musician who plays lapsteel and a percussionist with a collection of handdrums and shakers. This sounds just wonderful! "Thanks for showing up! It's always so weird when nobody shows up...", says tall Eric and tells a story about the mother of Johnny Cash, who sold souvenirs in his museum-shop every Sunday afternoon. That's an intro to the song "Prison Movie" and the pretty blond lady who steps on stage to sing harmony-vocals, must be Susan Lindfors (Eric's partner), who always sends us nice E-mails. She even thanked Alt.Country Cooking for the airplay, while the Western tip of Hurricane Rita was already lurking on the horizon! More songs and stories follow, Eric is obviously having fun playing, in the meantime that lapsteel is switched for an electric guitar and the gentlemen enjoy swapping solos. "Big Love" is on the new album, just like that long bluesy improvisation on "Brand New Companion" -intertwined with "Dirty Dirty"- and the song written by Peg Leg Sam, "Ain't But One Thing Give A Man The Blues". Old favorite "Hemingway's Shotgun" is played and "Manhattan Mandolin Blues" with gorgeous slide-guitarparts is the last song. Good start of the festival! But I liked the temporary building much better, this is all so anonymous and there are no seats at all, not even proper steps that can be used as such... The Patronaat should keep in mind that this festival attracts lots of people between 40 and 60, not everybody can stand up for hours, to enjoy the music! Some long wooden benches might be a solution? ---  In the meantime JON DEE GRAHAM plays in the Small Room and that's indeed... a very small room, so the same problem occurs as we saw at Blue Highways and Take Root: too many people stuffed together, too much heat and here also (funny cigarette)smoke. I can stand it for two songs and that's too bad, as I really like Jon Dee Graham... He is all by himself, wearing his trademark grey gangster-hat, playing his acoustic guitar with some sort of flamenco-sound during a song in Spanish. He tells a funny story about one of his sons, who at age four used to ask him to play guitar for him, but when he started to sing, the boy would yell: "Stop!" Asked why, he said: "It's scary, when you sing!" I do appreciate Jon's unusual deep, somewhat growling vocals and the following song has a great line: "All my angels have gone home, let's use yours." ---  The next singer-songwriter with acoustic guitar, GREG TROOPER in the Big Room. He wears a black suit and shirt, pointing to his small black hat he says: "In New Jersey they think this is a cowboy hat!" Greg starts off with "Dream Away These Blues", followed by "Green Eyed Girl" as "Brown eyed girl was taken..." I've never seen him live, but I've listened to his Crossroads-sessions and he does here pretty much the same. "This I'd Do", with a story about Dan Penn, "When I Think Of You My Friends" and then surprisingly "Floating", an interesting song. "At the end it sounds like the character did the murder, which would be me, but I'm not a serial killer/songwriter!" he declares. "No Higher Ground" is very impressive, about a hurricane that hit Galveston and was predicted right by the Cuban (!) weather service. When Greg sighs: "I'm out of ideas!", the audience is so kind to yell some songtitles, "Trampoline" and "I Love It When She Lies". "Close To The Tracks" and "Inisheer" are real nice, but then the already not so inspired show takes a downward spiral with "Ireland", some sing-along tune ("Real Like That") and the cheesy "Muhammad Ali" as an encore. I'm not saying it was bad, it was routine. Greg has a good voice, but his guitar-playing is just mediocre, most of his songs are smart but often composed in the same way and his ego should shrink a little... ---  Time to have a drink and conversation with friends! Funny, about a metre away TV-host Jaap Jongbloed decides to do the same... I never stop to think that the Dutch & Famous also go out sometimes and maybe even enjoy the same music as we do! JACKIE LEVEN, I only know him from his work on Michael Weston King's album "A Decent Man". He sits on stage, a real large man with -again- just an acoustic guitar: "Every festival should have one Scotsman, just one!" He has the typical self-mocking humor from across the North Sea, talking about his "fantastic new record", Nick Lowe would say something simular! When Jackie starts singing "A Little Voice In Space", it just blows my mind, wow, we're talking about Singing with a capital S here!! At times he's got the soul of a Sam Cooke, mixed with folk, even a part of a sea-shanty. He tells great stories inbetween, about his mother, an Amnesty International poster, Ron Sexsmith and even Johnny Cash. "All the women I wanted to sleep with, were Johnny Cash fans..." He sings his "Elegy For Johnny Cash" and goes on about a concert in Stockholm, ending up in a limo with Alicia Keys, the four months of darkness during the winter in Northern Norway, mixed with more magnificent songs! "I don't do encores. More! More! You don't do that after sex, do you? When it's over, it's over..." Well, too bad it's over, I had the best possible time here, Jackie! ---  Am I going to risk my life again in the Small Room? ELLIOTT BROOD from Canada is playing there, never heard of. The show has begun already and a ballad is being played. After some careful manoeuvring I get a glimpse of three young guys on stage, the singer is playing a banjo, next to him sits a young man with an acoustic guitar, wearing a cap and the drummer in the back wears a hat. What is this? Roots & Hats Festival?? And who is Elliott Brood? The singer? Or is it the name of the whole band or is it just a fake name, like Clem Snide for example? The music is being described on the time schedule as "death country", hmm, interesting. They get all my attention with the next piece of music, lots of drums there, feet stomping and not too many words. There's enthousiasm about our country too, they joke about the "standard" car they have to drive, while they're used to all-automatic. In the meantime the singer also grabs an acoustic guitar, he apparently lost his strap and uses a piece of rope to hang it over his shoulder. They play in a very pithy, punky way and steal my heart completely with "The Bridge", a song about the border-crossing between Ontario and Detroit. "It's the hardest bridge to cross, especially nowadays, the Americans are very strict..." Even in the good old days this was the toughest border-crossing! I remember one night on the Greyhound, when they kept us for hours. All the male passengers had to give up their wallets (!) and one had a weapon-permit in it. He was not carrying a gun, just the permit was there. And yours truly, with her foreign passport, was a suspect too of course. The only thing they didn't ask me was my size of underwear... When I finally made it back to the bus, everybody including the driver, applauded! So, hats off for these Elliott Brood-guys, who address the problem. A song off their CD -"It's legal to sell it here!"- follows, which is a ballad with some nice harmony-singing, then the banjo comes back for "All Over Now", an ode to Neil Young and "The Banjo Song". The guitarplayer claps his hands and dances around the stage: "Speed her up! Stay with us!" He teases the singer, who's wearing a white shirt and a tie: "Don't trust him! He's wearing a tie!" The reply is: "I'm selling Bibles!" That's still nothing compared to the last song "A-One" ("That's a highway here!"), the singer plays a ukelele and the guitarplayer risks his neck by jumping from the high stage into the crowd, he twirls a few ladies around and even manages to jump back! He must have done that many times before... Definitely the most pleasant surprise of this festival! --- |
 Back to the Big Room for GREY DELISLE and her band, they started the show already. Grey, voice-actress for cartoons in daily life, looks like a princess in her red eveninggown, playing the autoharp, her act is a little less dramatic than during her first tour and that works better. The sound is mostly like her latest album "Iron Flowers", with a lot of whisper-singing and surprising electric lead-mandolin, that's Marvin Etzioni. Grey's husband Murry Hammond (from the Old 97's) plays bassguitar and there's a full drumkit in the back. They're playing songs from the new album, "Bohemian Rhapsody" (indeed, that one by Freddie Mercury), "Joanna" and a gorgeous "Who Made You King", but also older ones: "T Was Her Hunger" and "Showgirl (I'm Sorry)". Grey is always good for some spectacle! ---  As I want to see new sensation SHANE ALEXANDER, I leave Grey's show a bit early and find myself a "seat" on the steps of the balcony in the Small Room. Shane, another man with two acoustic guitars, wearing a cool t-shirt with some animal-head on the front and one of these highly-in-fashion balloon-caps. This is a very relaxed show for a very quiet audience, Shane has a real nice voice and he calls himself "a real romantic man". Somewhat like Brian Webb. Again a lot of praising words about our country, the bread and cheese, the funny small cars, Shane even considers to live in a houseboat on one of the canals! He knows how to get the songs from his album "The Middle Way" across in this acoustic setting, I hear "One Track Mind" ("I wrote mine, before Eric Clapton released his song!") and "The Open Road" ("Wrote this for a friend who was going through a real shitty streak of luck."), but he also plays brandnew things, he likes to play it the day he writes it and get it out there. He has been to the concert of John Prine here in Haarlem and tells: "For a young whipper-snapper like me, it was like: shit man, you have a long way to go!" I like that, he's honest. And he's from Los Angeles: "Don't hold it against me!" Why would we, Shane? ---  SOUTH SAN GABRIEL in the Big Room. I don't even bother to walk all the way to the Cafe, I never take time to eat during festivals anyway, but I would have liked to see Dave Doughman and Danny Schmidt, who played there. One of the charming attractions at former editions of this festival was the time-schedule: act finished in one room, act ready to play in the next. Too bad they abondoned that! I've seen Will Johnson with South San Gabriel before, but this is apparently the full line-up... Drums, various keyboards, pedal steel, electric bass and guitars, plus Will of course. Sitting down, singing and playing his acoustic guitar, completely into his mostly quiet, intimate songs. I think these are from his recent album, "The Carlton Chronicles". I really should listen more to this type of music... ---  But now I have to go back to the Small Room, I won't miss one minute of PETER CASE's concert! He was originally billed with Michael Weston King and John Doe, but Mr. Doe disappeared mysteriously... The stage is still dark, but I can see somebody sit with one leg across the table, rummaging in a bag, that's Peter! He rarely ever visits The Netherlands, the one time I saw him was during an in-store at Borders Books & Music in San Francisco. He played for 45 minutes, then took another 45 minutes to talk with us about songwriting... He explained that all his songs are based on true stories, or at least on a dream. He made it a point to say that one line of "Two Heroes" (about the two girls being models in Rome) was made up! "Start off with one I wrote...", a long time ago he started as a street-musician in San Francisco, he has still something of that rowdy behavior in him. He gained quite a few pounds too, since I last saw him, or maybe it's the unflattering black jacket he wears? And where's the grey hat? Cool statement: "The Republicans in power, that's good for the folk-music!" He wrote this "Put Down The Gun And We'll Talk" already when Mr. Reagan was the president. Peter plays his acoustic guitar with various finger- and thumb-picks, it's a great sound. He's somewhat agitated though, probably from the jet-lag, he tells that he arrived at 5.30 this morning... The style of the next song about his hometown in New York state is called "Celtabilly", according to him, that's a new find! From folk to blues, another style he loves. "Who's Gonna Go Your Crooked Mile" and "Bumble Bee", the old "insect-blues" written by Memphis Minnie in 1928. MICHAEL WESTON KING joins Peter on stage, hey, where's his hat?? The guys who always wear them, don't tonight! They play one song together: "You got a hole in your soul, that the wind blows through", then Peter leaves the stage, he's so disoriented that he has trouble finding the door! Michael takes over the show, he and his wife, singer Lou Dalgleish, have a brandnew baby-girl, Mabel. (I heard that from music-bizz people. Congratulations, folks!) There's a struggle with a stubborn guitar-cord going on, Michael points, still with some hope: "Could it be down there? No? Oh, shit!" He takes the advice from the audience to play unplugged, then tries another cord, finally a microphone is placed in front of the guitar. "Very nineteen-seventies..." That's Michael as we know him, with funny stories and of course some great songs: "You're My God Shaped Hole", "Broken" ("about the lovely, but damaged city of Liverpool"), "I Fall Behind", "Always The Bridesmaid, Never The Bride" ("I dreamed of being on the cover of New Music Express"). He is serious when he asks what day of the week it is... Peter comes back: "Am I still close to your guitar?" and together they play "Lay Me Down", about Townes Van Zandt, ending with "Waiting Round To Die". It's already time to close off, but Peter says: "I flew 4000 miles to play just four songs..." and goes on with "Beyond The Blues" and an encore of another song from the 1920s by Tommy Johnson. "I forgot to bring some CD's..." We luv you, Peter, you should have got a full hour-spot on the festival!! ---  Then there's still one act left, THE HACKENSAW BOYS in the Big Room. I'm getting really curious what the hype is all about, I never saw them live, although I've been in the studio of their old producer Rod (now working with The Pones), out in rural Virginia. Six guys, an acoustic guitar, upright bass, fiddle, banjo, mandolin and that funny percussion-thing made of spoons and other kitchenware... They play instrumentals -mostly fast- and ballads, the guitarplayer and the banjoplayer trade leadvocals, everybody joins in with the harmonies. Some songs are from the new album "Love What You Do", like "Cannonball", "Mecklenburg County" and "Kiss You Down There". The nicknames are mentioned all the time of course, a Dutch Canadian named Thomas brings another guitar (from 1930) on stage and also plays on a couple of tunes. It's certainly not bad, not very special either, they've done this many times before, that's obvious. A great moment comes when the three Elliott Brood-guys are pulled away from their groupies and asked to come on stage for a song, DANNY SCHMIDT (wearing a cap!) joins them too and together they sing and play "Why Did You Come To Nashville". The singer urges what's left of the audience around midnight, to "dance around" in case we think: "Hey, I didn't shake my ass any!" The ballad "Bordertown" is dedicated to promoter Robbie Klanderman and "We Are Many" is perfect as the last song. "How many of you have to work tomorrow?" Almost everybody. The encore is unplugged and unusual quiet, "High Faller". How about the hype? Hmm, I still think I can find a band like this in any given American town out in the rural states. --- Time to find the friends who are so kind to give me a ride. The artists were great, especially Elliott Brood and Jackie Leven. The sound was very good, the Patronaat-people nice, the ticket-price reasonable. Just think about seats, smoking-corners and especially the schedule, then this could be the perfect festival! ===== ===== Written by Johanna J. Bodde, November 6th 2005, for Insurgent Country, Germany. www.insurgentcountry.net ===== |
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