The Band is radiant – Levon Helm's take on "Dixie Down" is definitive, while Rick Danko’s darkly emotional “It Makes No Difference” arguably outdoes the studio version – but there's much to enjoy elsewhere from Bob Dylan, Muddy Waters, Emmylou Harris and the Staple Singers. Blue Oys...
I could not stop myself, especially with the part where the drums and the guitars are pounding together in pulses. The lyrics have no special meaning and it would of been perfect to have some kind of purpose with such potential to the vocal lines. The singer is giving of his best anger...
The written music I was learning felt dumb to me and the lyrics seemed even dumber. The melodies were terrible. I was getting into my older brother’s The Kingston Trio albums and played them all until they were full of skips, which earned me death threats from my brother. I knew all ...
quite by accident, my hands simply played it as I was doodling on the piano. I thought it sounded so strange and yet rather beautiful, just lowering the top E flat of the right hand chords to a D and you had this great sound. I think that’s when...
“and said, ‘Oh, this’d be a nice color on it.’ We put the chords on with the harmonium as a wash, just a basic held chord, what you would call a pad these days.” The overdubs included two harmonium tracks, Paul’s lead vocals (which he also double-tracked) and John’s ...
Far in the future I can imagine an AI writing the perfect novel, with foreshadowing in all the right places, characterization perfect, no typos… but a computer would likely try to straighten out the illogical bent that makes a novel resonate with humans. Try to fix it, believing because of...
‘let’s play so and so’ and you flick to the page and of course, you’ve got the normal presentation of lyrics and chords, and you then have to work from that to something which makes sense. It’s not like reading the exact bass line. You may be really lucky and it’ll be a...
I think it was going back and forth between Nashville and LA to write. I've been doing that for five years now. The writing process is so different for each city—writing country music in Nashville, you're all sitting in a room with guitars and talking about lyrics and how to set up...
Though still in her 20s, Townes brings a certain, worn-in weight to her lyrics, which spend much of their time exploring faith, personal identity and love — and how, for her, they’re all intertwined. Perhaps the most notable feat ofThe Lemonade Standis how Townes and company manage to...
taught me a few chords. I wasn’t that good but I jammed a lot in my bedroom and recorded everything in so many cassettes that I still own. Whenever I found something that had some meaning to me, I turned some of my poems or ideas into English and to my surprise the lyrics fit ...