Sunday, November 6, 2016

Larry Long--Dove With Claws--The Melvin James Sessions--A Review--Kinda



by Eddie Allen
Melvin and Larry


The late Johnny Cash coined the phrase "a dove with claws" to describe the fierce pacifism that grew from his first-hand look at America's endless wars while entertaining soldiers in Vietnam. Cash's words are a perfect description for the life and work of Larry Long. And they are now the title of Larry's newest recording, the subject of my words that follow.

But first, this.

I have been friends with Larry  since I saw him walking up my quiet little street on a cool autumn day in 1982.  I was not yet thirty years old. I had been getting up wood for the winter and was resting on the deck of our small house looking out over the river. He walked erect with his shoulders squared back and his chest thrust out before him. He was dressed in blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a denim jacket. It could have been James Dean. It could have been Eddie Haskell. He was a little of both. He reached out a lanky arm to shake my hand and introduced himself. We had never met but I knew who he was and I admired him and I was flattered that he had purposely sought me out but, in the first moments of this initial encounter, a sense of skepticism fell over me. I felt like he was going to sell me something.

And he did.

He was recruiting musicians and writers and performers of all ilk and anyone else who would sit still for his pitch.  We would create a revival movement in which the joined artisanal forces would travel the length of the Mississippi River--in any manner of floating conveyances--organizing river clean-ups and community festivals to celebrate past and present cultures of the river and to bring focus on the environmental hazards that needed to be confronted. At this point I thought he was crazy. And it turns out he was. But I signed on anyway and for the next year he and I and hundreds of others did exactly that. 

In the course of that year and the thirty four that have followed Larry and I have remained fast and loyal friends. I have collaborated with him on many projects both personal and professional. We have shared stages and ideas. We have tested newly-written songs on one another. I have watched him marry his wife, Jacqueline, and seen the two of them raise their children. I have chronicled his work with elders and children,  and observed proudly as he has accepted awards for his humanitarian efforts. I have sat with him around kitchen tables, campfires, and on bar stools. We have fished from the same boat. I was with him making prayer ties on the night he buried his dog in a miserable steady rainfall.

I offer the above information, in part, to establish the fact that Larry Long is one of my dearest friends but also to make it clear that it is not possible for me to write an objective review of Dove With Claws.  I simply want to offer my personal response to his latest recorded work.

Now, with my biases declared, I begin:

One of the greatest joys of aging is watching people get better and better at what they do. Larry Long is a troubadour in the classic sense and he is one of our very best. The impression of a wandering musician who casually improvises songs to regale the uninformed masses is a false one. Larry is a trained artist, even if mostly self-trained.  He has been mentored by other great artists whose mention here would be impressive but little more than name-dropping. He has been at it for over forty years and his work speaks for itself. Like the troubadours of old his songs are meticulously crafted and while clearly intended to woo and please his audiences they are, above all, potent and convincing. 

Most people who will buy a Larry Long record already own a Larry Long record and think they know what it's going to be like before they play it. They will be right in many ways.  

In Dove With Claws Larry has rounded up the usual suspects with which he peoples all of his work: the indigenous, laborers, farmers, lovers, strugglers, jugglers, outlaws, and scofflaws. Like all good writers, he adds a little of himself to each song. His songs explore the same themes as they always have. What is the source of courage? Of justice? Of freedom? Of grief? Of redemption? 

Also in keeping with the usual nature of his art, Larry relies only sparingly on metaphor. Lyrically, he uncovers his ideas with the use of literal narratives of lived experience. In so doing he evokes imagery beyond the story he is telling. In Lay Hatred Down, a celestial paean to honor the unjustly imprisoned Native American activist Leonard Peltier, one can easily envision Martin Luther King writing his Letter From Birmingham Jail. 

Most of the songs in this collection will justify the faith of Larry's followers in his mastery of creating ethereal melodies delivered with a voice somehow incongruently powerful in contrast to their delicacy.  None more so than Walkin' Like Rain, a haunting introspective musing on friendship, loss, and resurrection.  The beauty and elegance of Circle Time and Joshua Tree will also strengthen that faith.

So now that you think you're ready for a nice taste of the Larry Long we all know and love, I implore you, think again. There is a delightful surprise awaiting.

Enter Melvin James.

Nearly fifty years ago the first leg of Long's adult journey took him from his childhood home in Minnesota to his mother's ancestral home in Iowa. While visiting his uncle's family there he couldn't possibly have known the indelible influence his first songs would make on his eleven-year-old cousin, Melvin, whose passion was immediately and evermore directed to the guitar and the music he, too, would come to create.  

Melvin James went on to achieve outstanding successes as a charted artist with MCA Records in the 80's, for a time holding a number one position with video renditions of his pop/rock performances on MTV. With his son, the drummer Melvin Veach III, he produced acclaimed work as Planet Melvin that included scores for major films and some great records with Crash Street Kids, all new to me but work I am quickly coming to love and admire.

While I've known Larry for a long time I only caught up with Mel recently when I joined them at a rehearsal for an upcoming performance to celebrate Larry's 65th birthday and the release of this record.

In Minneapolis, by the river, in a warehouse converted into dank, dingy 12' by 12' rehearsal studio spaces Larry and Mel demonstrate that the intensity and passion they share for the music they make is a product of their shared DNA.  It is Melvin's soulful pop sensibility and his virtuoso rock and roll guitar work that amplifies not just Larry's melodies but the urgency of the messages carried within them. 

Larry begins with a soft, steady shoomp-shoomp-shoomp of the acoustic guitar to start out Old Ways, a song he wrote with kids at an American Indian Movement-Heart of the Earth Survival School. The song emphasizes the value of cultural traditions as a source of strength.  Mel straps on a Gibson guitar that I think is an SG but is, in fact, a very early vintage Les Paul that has apparently been around the world and back a few times. He wears it so the strings are just below his waste. The song builds to a lyrical passage "Can't think to contain my rage, like a wolf in a cage" and Larry's voice and Mel's guitar howl accordingly.  

Larry has written great songs for a long time and Melvin told me that even as he was making his way along a divergent musical path he was always paying attention to what Larry was doing and felt an intimate connection to his songs. He knew they would eventually work together.

It wasn't anything sudden. They started laying down tracks for this project a long time ago. They would archive the work and drift away from it for long periods of time. Gradually, as both were honing their separate skills, the project came into focus. Bass player, Sid Gasner, in the interim left playing music behind him. When it became clear that the project would at last take shape he rejoined the circle. According to Larry and Mel, this is some of Sid's best work ever.

In 1987 women laundry workers went on strike against American Linen Supply Company in Hibbing, Minnesota when their male co-workers would not. The strike lasted through four years of  extreme Iron Range climate. Along with his friend, the late Paul Wellstone, who would later become U.S. Senator from Minnesota, Larry went there to sing on the picket line where he wrote Seven Strong Women for the eventually-victorious strikers.

To me, Seven Strong Women exemplifies one of my favorite aspects of Larry's work and its inclusion on this record is a pleasant surprise. It is emotional without being sentimental. It tackles the immense concept of courageous struggle against seemingly insurmountable odds. But the song is not unnecessarily big or anthemic or war-like. In the rehearsal and on the record it comes at you like a quick, blinding punch-in-the-nose attack on injustice, a simple, raucous ruckus to honor the people with the courage to fight.  Larry and his cousin and their collective musical fervor produce a remarkable synergy, as if Woody Guthrie had been backed up by the Ramones.

Likewise on All Across America. If the objective of the recording artist is to capture your attention with the opening song then Larry has succeeded by delivering a surprising jolt to his repeat customers. All Across America practically explodes from your speakers.  Anchored by Melvin III's pounding drumbeat, Sid's bass foundation, and Mel's strident power saw guitar licks Larry's quasi-comical take on the adolescent confusion of love and promiscuity will make you remember what it was like to be twenty years old again. Whether you like it or not. The personal is universal. And vice versa.

In Mississippi Levee, Larry offers a spirited history lesson about forced labor with a cajun rhythm that drives as hard as any nine-pound hammer, the words and music crafted so exactly that you can feel the muscles and heart of the song's protagonist straining as though they were your own. 

My favorite song on the record (right now, at least) is one that goes way back. Living in a Rich Man's World was the title song of Larry's first record made way back in the olden times of vinyl and dollar-a-pack cigarettes. This new version of one of the songs that put Larry on the radar so many years ago serves to show, as the late, great producer and songwriter Jack Clements told any young songwriter who would listen, "A good song gets better with age." 

Most of you who know Larry's work know the song so I won't say much about it. Sadly, it's not only better with age; it's also more pertinent.  You can see and hear for yourself here: www.larrylong.org 

I used to think that Larry, in witnessing people's struggles and reflecting their stories back to them in his songs, was serving others by helping them find the courage they need to go on. As I listen to Dove With Claws I wonder if it isn't more than that--that giving witness to the struggles of the people he is drawn to is the source of his own courage.

Larry's songwriting and performance skill is not a gift. It is a talent he has developed over a lifetime. In Dove With Claws he has painted a gritty, lusty American panorama. He has distilled the great themes of the history of a nation with compact emotional precision. Working with Melvin James has taken his work to a higher level and a place where it belongs. 

Larry Long is one of my favorite songwriters. He is a master of performance and stagecraft. He is a husband, father, friend and elder in the community he has worked to build and continues to nurture. He is a great musician. He has earned a good living with his talents but he's never been a part of the music business. I like to think Larry has had the good fortune of never getting the commercial success and fame he is worthy of.

Still, he has many, many friends and fans all around the world he has traveled so fearlessly and relentlessly. With this new record he will add many more.

Dove With Claws The Melvin James Sessions is a sumptuous feast but it's not comfort food. Dish it up. You'll be glad you did.



















Friday, March 4, 2016

A Well-Worn Trail

This essay first appeared under my byline in the June 2005 issue of Wisconsin Trails Magazine.



In my youth I was drawn westward by the lure of wanderlust. After crossing the Mississippi River I trekked over prairie, badlands, and high plains. Still, my earliest recollection of place are painted with the vivid colors of Wisconsin: steamy green forests and grasses between a Kodachrome blue sky and waters of equal hue.  Fall cornfields the color of a gravel road, and the final thrust of golden sunlight that ignites the maple flames of October. Bare trees on distant wintry bluffs look like the whiskery stubble on an old man's face.

These images are indelible. A primal force looms therein. Although that force remains inexplicable, it was strong enough to eventually bring me back home--home to Wisconsin.

I found that the idyllic rural neighborhood of my boyhood had given way to a shopping mall and a cloverleaf interchange for the new interstate freeway (that I still call Ike's Folly). To escape the sprawl I went a few miles north and settled on the shore of the Mississippi in the village of Trempealeau. Now I've been here longer than I've been anywhere. At 52, I am just old enough to realize what a short span a half century is.

A daily walk along the river and over the top of Brady's Bluff Trail at Perrot State Park provides the solitude for peeking through the open crack that memory leaves in the door of time. Rosy, my Chocolate Lab, isn't the least bit nostalgic. We cut through a gnarly growth of sumac, hackberry, hickory, and poison ivy at the end of the back yard to make our way to the river road below. The wake of a northbound towboat breaks against the river's shore and I think back to the first time I stood on this spot.

I was among a group of eight or nine towheaded boys clambering from the back of a 1958 Plymouth station wagon. At the foot of Main Street an arrow-shape sign pointed upriver: Entrance to Perrot State Park--1 Mile. Before the car had sputtered out of sight an argument began over the correct pronunciation of Perrot. The debate was settled by vote; the boys of Fauver Hill Boy Scout Troop 48 elected to pronounce the French fur trader's name the same as the talking bird. We weren't the last to make this mistake.

Dating back to 1858, the remains of the Melchoir Brewery still capture the imagination of all who walk this road as we did on that summer day in 1964. Legend has it that Jacob Melchoir tipped the scales at 400 pounds. During the twenty years that Melchoir and his family brewed beer here, it is said that an occasional raftsman, determined to establish his reputation in the brotherhood of blowhards who navigated huge lumber rafts downriver, would invite Melchoir to a duel of fisticuffs. Such challenges were often offered up long after the Melchoirs had turned in for the night. Unamused, the giant would lumber onto the street, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The confrontation never consisted of more than the young rooster being hoisted with one hand by the seat of the pants and another massive paw at the scruff of the neck. Once in the brewer's ineluctable grip, the hooligan was dispatched into the Mississippi River and drowsy Jacob returned to his slumbers.

How I wish I could remember what I saw that day! What the little house on the hillside above the old brewery--a house that would someday be home to my own family--might have looked like then, I've no idea.

But looking south from that place now, the same river and sky are still bisected by the Minnesota bluffs. I love to watch the Amtrak train cross the tiny bridge at the base of the three bluffs where Big Trout Creek joins the Father of Waters on the Minnesota side of the channel. Now I find comfort in standing still while others race by.

Rosy has little patience with my daydreaming. She tugs at the leash. Heading west, I read the names on mailboxes. Only one or two are of families who have been here for generations. Most, like me, stumbled onto this place by the twists of fate that make up their own stories. I wonder if they know about the days when this quiet road was a bustling business district. When a mill was built in 1856, the village enjoyed a period of rapid growth and inflated land values. As many as fifteen steamboats landed here every day. When their cargo was unloaded they took on bushels of wheat bound for bigger markets.

In 1888 a fire broke out in the butcher shop that destroyed most of the district. By then railroads had ended the halcyon days of steamboats. In rebuilding, Trempealeau turned its back to the river and moved up the hill, never living up to the expectations of early land speculators.

Now the excursion steamer Julia Belle Swain makes her way upriver from La Crosse to Winona. I give the riverman's two-handed wave. The pilot rewards me with a long, mournful moan of the steam whistle and a bit of the past echoes once again.

Just before the entrance to Perrot State Park the trail is separated from the raised roadbed of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway tracks by the mingling of the backwaters of the Mississippi and Trempealeau rivers. Walk quietly and you'll glimpse a world you thought existed only in a Mark Twain story: barefoot kids fishing with cane poles, turtles lined up to sun on the limbs of trees fallen across the water.

I leave the river trail at the historical marker designating the site where Nicholas Perrot was believed to have camped during the winter of 1685-86; archaeologists now tell us they have no solid evidence to support the claim. One local gent, clearly upset by the prospect of having his history revised, argues that Perrot was simply a very tidy fellow who "wouldn't go leaving a bunch of archaeological trash lying about." The site was, in fact, occupied by the French at the end of the Fox Wars under the command of Rene Godefroy sieur de Linctot. It appears our Tricentennial Celebration of 1985 may have taken place about 46 years ahead of time.

Across the road from the marker commemorating Perrot's post is one less conspicuous but more accurate, on the spot where the boys of CCC Camp 2606 (Civilian Conservation Corps) set out on their own trail to adulthood. I feel a powerful bond with the spirits of those young men of the New Deal agency. A single generation separated the beginning of their journey from my own, yet their path was fraught with perils I can only imagine. On my desk there is a photograph, a winter scene of six of those fellows outfitted in wool, canvas, denim, flannel, and leather. Pausing from their work, hammers dangling from the loosened grips of their toughened hands, they balance on the timbers that make up the roof trusses of the small shelter they are building at the top of Brady's Bluff. They seem oblivious to the fact that they are standing within spitting distance of a 1,600 year-old Hopewell burial mound. Instead, each young man peers directly into the camera's lens, directly into the future.

Now Rosy shuffles, panting, into the cool shade of that shelter and plops down beneath the wooden bench that runs along its three walls. Like thousands of travelers before us I am awed by the sight of the sacred mountain that rises from the water to the west, Hay-nee-ah-chah to the Ho-Chunk. The French, who fared well in these environs by assimilating the ways of the woodland people, called it la montagne qui tremp a l'eau, "the mountain steeped in water." There are a few old trappers around who still call it Rattlesnake Mountain, a name early settlers used on account of the abundance of timber rattlers that discouraged intruders. They are all good names.

My eyes sting from salty sweat as I wipe my forehead on the sleeves of my T-shirt. When my breathing comes easier it occurs to me that to walk this steep trail through the woods and traverse this high goat prairie awash in June wildflowers will always connect me to my Boy Scout youth. To stand next to this river is to bear witness to the physical incarnation of time itself, to recognize, if only for a moment, my place in its flowing.

"C'mon, Rosy," I say. "Let's go home. It's all downhill from here."

Friday, February 5, 2016

A Picture of My Grandma






  • Leonard Francis Brooks, (Grandma) Bertha Evelena Brooks, 
    William Homer Brooks, Geneva Agnes Brooks ca.1912

    A Picture of My Grandma     
    words and music © by Eddie Allen Music 2016

    That's a picture of my Grandma
    When she was just a little girl
    Her clothes seem funny to us now
    But did you ever see such curls?
    And that's your great-great Uncle Leonard
    Standin' by her side
    No I never met him
    He was a young man when he died

    The only childhood picture that I have
    I think it's nineteen-twelve
    A photograph cost money then
    They had so little for themselves

    It must have been a big occasion
    All in their Sunday best
    No one's smiling in the picture though
    So we can only guess
    What their lives were like back in those days
    My Grandma used to say
    We didn't know how poor we were
    We just struggled from day to day

    We picked cotton 'til our hands were sore
    Our backs and shoulders bent
    Daddy'd always say just one row more
    When us kids begged to quit

    Seven children of this union born 
    To her parents Jess and Jane
    Nancy Edna died at five weeks old
    When Grandma was just eight
    And then Leonard in that car crash
    When cars and roads were new
    Memories filled my Grandma's eyes with tears
    There were more than just a few

    For death came often in those days
    There was danger and disease
    Doctors scarce but undertakers
    Common as you please

    It was her dream to be a teacher
    A dream not meant to be
    She studied hard and she got good marks
    But grinding poverty
    Forced her back into the cotton fields
    So many mouths to feed
    A stream of hoboes at the door
    They were all in need

    So fifth grade was the end of school
    She was needed back at home
    Hard work was the only tool
    When survival was the goal

    She met and married my Granddad
    In nineteen twenty-four
    Three years she kept house in a tent
    With hard earth for their floor
    He worked in the oil fields
    Kansas Oklahome
    Across the Texas plains on horseback
    They were savin' for a home

    Their work paid off they bought a farm
    In Kingman County where
    The tiny town of Norwich, Kansas
    Lay three miles west of there

    In 'twenty-eight and 'thirty
    Came my Dad and Uncle Mel
    The same time that the Dust Bowl came
    And turned their lives to Hell
    Neighbors thought the world was ending
    Many packed and ran away
    Grandma might have been afraid
    But she was bound to stay

    She shoveled dust out of that house
    Each and every day
    Wet dishrags 'round the babies' mouths
    So they could breathe okay

    Tough times don't last forever
    Tough people make it through
    By the time I came along 
    In nineteen fifty-two
    In the little house my Granddad built
    Here on Denton Street
    Is where I first remember Grandma
    Where I scampered at her feet

    The peace and love within that home
    Are now a part of me
    And when across this world I've roamed
    I've always longed to be

    There beside my Grandma
    When she's cookin' at the stove
    Or sittin' right up close to her
    In that De Soto that she drove
    Or workin' in her garden
    Hoein' in the beans
    Or cuttin' rhubarb for a pie
    Or patchin' up my jeans

    I know that she was only human
    But to me she seemed a saint
    She often spoke of her hard times
    But she spoke without complaint

    And now just one more story
    It's the last one that she told
    Her and Granddad drove to Kansas
    After they'd grown old
    They came across that dusty field
    The cotton was in bloom
    She wanted him to take her picture
    And to hang it in their room

    But when he viewed her through the lens
    He shook with love and rage
    He said I will not take your photograph
    Not with you standin' in this cage

    So that's my Grandma in the picture
    When she was just a little girl
    We gave her name to you
    Back when you became our world
    Now a little boy who is your own
    His life won't be so hard
    He'll never know how rich he is 
    Because my Grandma won't be far

    She'll look down on him and me
    When I hold his hand
    And I'll tell him her history
    As he grows to be a man

    That's my Grandma in the picture
    When she was just a little girl
    Her clothes seem funny to us now
    But did you ever see such curls?