The Whimsical World of Bernard Langlais

-->

Bernard Langlais:

Maine's Quirky Artistic Treasure

Are you heading to Maine any time this summer or fall? If so, keep a keen eye peeled for the art works of Bernard Langlais (1921-1977). They shouldn't be hard to spot. Thanks to efforts spearheaded by the Kohler Foundation and Colby College, hundreds of his works have been dispersed throughout the state, an initiative formally known as the Langlais Art Trail. Dozens of public libraries, civic spaces, parks, and art museums are sprinkled with his work and you'll know it immediately–its whimsy will bring a smile to your face and you'll embrace it without judgment of its artistic merit.

Cezanne phase

On that last point, one of the many intriguing things about Langlais is that he challenges preconceptions about art. Like most creative people, he went through the process of finding his niche. Check out an early Picasso and you'll find a man emulating naturalistic painters, and even his famed "blue" and "rose" periods are a mere patch on what he produced after he saw his first African mask. John Marin wanted to be an architect, then flirted with academic painting–until he went to Paris in 1905 and saw modern art.

Langlais similarly had to free himself from convention. He was born in Old Town, Maine, first trained as a commercial artist, but then went to art school, where he developed affection for Cezanne and Matisse. After World War II, he was back in Maine on a scholarship at the innovative Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, before heading off to New York, France, and Norway, the latter on a Fulbright stint that instilled a love of the paintings of Edvard Munch. His earliest works show him echoing many of his influences, a task he did well though hardly with great distinction. He

Inspired by Munch

enjoyed some success in New York, but grew bored with its art scene. (Contrary to legend, people can and do get bored with New York.)

In 1966, Langlais moved to Cushing, Maine, not far from where Andrew Wyeth summered. There he purchased a farm along the St. George River that needed some work, which rekindled his love of working with wood. He also discovered an unusual artistic inspiration: National Geographic Magazine. Wildlife photos held special fascination for him, and he began assembling fanciful 3-D images of animals in small and large-scale. Some are anatomically approximate, but most bear resemblance to folk art. That is to say, the highly trained "Blackie" Langlais–as he was known by locals–reinvented himself as if he were an untrained folk artist. For all of his schooling, Langlais is best known for a 62-foot carved Indian that stands in Skowhegan.

The ennui of sheepiness

For my money, Langlais' offbeat carvings—often fashioned from rough plywood—contribute far more to the art world than another Cezanne or Munch wannabe ever could. In academic discussions of the aesthetics of art, the word "fun" is too often missing. Langlais' carvings are chimerical, droll, and filled with wonder. In many cases, they capture the essence of the world of beasts far better than any realistic rendition could. (There is, after all, just so much a painter can capture in two dimensions.) Most of all, each work is handcrafted and unique–the perfect antidote for our age of mass-assembly cookie-cutter sameness. Seek Langlais' work next time you're in the Pine Tree State.

The photos in this piece were taken from an exhibition of his work from the Ogunquit Museum of American Art. Alas, that show closed at the end of June, though several of the sculptures continue to adorn the lawn. Those traveling to Cushing should definitely go to his studio, recently opened to the public. While you're there, go to Wyeth's house where it will take you all of about 30 seconds to understand his famed 1948 work Christina's World.

Rob Weir  

The fun stuff. (Right click on any picture for larger size viewing in a new tab:  

July Album of the Month from Siama Matuzungidi

SIAMA MATUZUNGIDI

Rivers—From the Congo to the Mississippi

http://www.siamamusic.com/music

* * * * *

Siama Matuzungidi was a soukous legend in his homeland, the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1970s and early 1980s. The former Zaire is, alas, a troubled land and Matuzungidi and lots of other musicians fled. He landed in Minneapolis in the 1990s, via Uganda, Dubai, and Japan. Our gain; Africa's loss.

For those unfamiliar with soukous, it's a popular form of dance music sometimes called the "African rumba," as it appears to be one of the few musical types that migrated from the Caribbean ­to Africa rather than vice versa. Like Cuban son, which inspired it in the 1930s, soukous makes judicious use of bright brass and it's good party music. That's the musical history side of things, but Rivers is far more than an African lilt grafted to a Latin beat; in fact, this album shows Matuzungidi experimenting with various styles. True to its subtitle, we indeed hear music inspired by the Congo–try "Sisili," or "Malembe"–but also tunes whose roots lay along the Mississippi River that runs through his adopted home. For the most part, though–as we hear in the bluesy " Ndombolo" and "Mpevo–" think the Mississippi considerably south of Minnesota. The latter song is one of several tracks that feature trumpet from Bobby Marks that will make you jump, and bass and piano lines that would be more at home in, say, Memphis than Minneapolis.

Matuzungidi's vocals invite adjectives such as "silky," spirited," and "sunny. Given that most of the songs are in African languages, I've no idea what he's singing most of the time, but most of it felt joyous, so I hope I wasn't grooving to somebody's pain. You'll have trouble standing still to "Jungle Zombie," its solid dance grooves muscled up by bold brass. The brass serves to give heft to a hypnotic melody line from which departures spin. The overall effect of the song is like being bathed in a warm river with a strong current pulling you downstream. It's a good metaphor for an album that often delivers you to unexpected places. Matuzungidi's guitar and Tony Axtell's bass set the melody for most of the tunes, but you'll hear lots of instruments you probably don't associate with Congolese music: concert flute and piano (Brian Ziemniak), a full drum kit (Greg Schutte), and cello (Jacqueline Ultan), for instance. The most surprising of all is the veena playing of Nirmala Rajasekar. Let's add the Ganges to our list of rivers; the veena is a lute-like instrument that is the likely ancestor of the sitar and whose sound it resembles. It is often called a "Carnatic veena" and is used throughout southern India in "classical" music  that is often religious in nature. I think Matuzgungidi's references are more secular on "Maisha Mazuri." It has a little bit of everything in its robust mix: cymbal-crashing percussion, guitar and piano arpeggios, and a veena lead that would do a rock musician proud. Add to this Matuzungidi's vocals, which on this track are as sexy as Barry White but with ten times more energy. If Matuzungidi hasn't surprised you enough, he rounds off the album with "Yolanda," a sophisticated and moody tune that owes a debt to moody jazz.

This is certainly one of the year's finest albums. Check it out. By the way, Matuzungidi's Website promises there is track information in the CD. I got a download, so those who buy the CD can read the liner notes and let me know how far off base I am in some of my assumptions!

Rob Weir

Vietnam Era Novel Dove is a Turkey

-->

DOVE (2016)

M. H. Slater

Daytime Moon Publisher, 530 pp.

*  

Abbie Hoffman famously remarked, "If you can remember the Sixties, you weren't there." His was a jesting reference to the use of mind-altering drugs, but in a more profound way he was correct. Each era has an essence that that takes careful research to recreate. One cannot capture an era's vibe simply by ticking off the boxes of events that occurred during the period. This is a problem in M(elanie) H. Salter's Dove. She's too young to have been there and she's also Australian. The latter is not a deal-breaker, though it does explain minor errors–such as locating Ohio State University in Athens, OH instead of Columbus. Getting the vibe wrong is a more serious problem.

The novel is set in 1970, the year that Andy, a young man from Alabama, gets his draft notice. Andy and his girlfriend Heather decide to flee for Canada. They assume the identities of characters from a book they both love: Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums, with Andy becoming "Japhy" and Heather emerging as "Ray." That's not a bad choice—The Dharma Bums often held the same reverence for college-age folks in 1970 as A Catcher in the Rye for those coming of age a decade earlier. But right away we have a problem: student deferments weren't curtailed until 1971. There was no reason for Japhy to split instead of going to college as planned. Am I being too picky? Does the novel work if we just change the zero to a one? Nope! If we do that, then Salter can't have her on-the-road characters wend their way to Kent State in time for the massacre. (Are we okay with mixing real people and fictional characters at Kent? It makes me queasy, given that one she mentions is a relative by marriage.) Nor can she show how profoundly Ray is affected by the death of Janis, Jimi, and Jim.

The problems get worse. Kerouac is just the tip of the simpatico iceberg for Japhy and Ray; their real bond is rooted in the songs of James Lee Stanley. They know all of his songs and Salter prints lyrics that putatively tie to the book's plot. Except there is no way two kids from Alabama are singing the songs of the Philadelphia-based Stanley in 1970; he didn't record until 1973. Yet Stanley is the spiritual anchor–and a character to boot–largely because Salter loves his music, met him, and thinks he's terrific. (I'll grant that last one.) He shows up in a USO-like concert in Vietnam and that never happened either; Stanley was in college, which is where Japhy should have been. This is to say that the two major motivations for our protagonists are convenient, but ahistorical contrivances.

There's also an intellectual trivialization present in the book. I'll concede that lots of young people jumped on the hippie wannabe bandwagon, but there is a serious lack of what used to be called "analysis"–a 60s' buzzword–among the book's characters. Ray is aggressive and Japhy is more passive, but as Dylan observed, "You don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing." Is it conceivable that two hippies would accept a ride from three ripped, clean-cut guys and that Ray would argue with them and announce that Japhy was a draft dodger? Only if you are applying a force-fit to an implausible plot. And things stray further when Ray and Japhy link up with white hippie chick Lauren and her African American boyfriend Leaf. We get the obligatory visit to a Canadian commune before Japhy re-crosses the border, is arrested, jailed, and sentenced: to join the US Army and go to Vietnam. So tick off the trauma in 'Nam box as well.

Lots of guys mused over the consequences of draft dodging. Read Tim O'Brien. They thought about it–a lot and deeply. Japhy apparently had little analysis other than desire for self-preservation and thoughts of Ray. He can adjust–and he's fine with that. How shallow! But it's more believable than life on the home front. Shall we toss in a little free love? Pregnancies and uncertain fatherhood?  A love triad? Identity transference during sex? Do you believe for a second that a white girl and her black lover could openly cavort about small-town Alabama in 1970? Let me answer the last one: No flippin' way! 

I don't insist on 100% historical accuracy in creative works, but Dove is a turkey fattened on clichés, a Wikipedia view of history, and melodrama. This Vietnam War-era novel is strictly 4F.  Rob Weir

Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kyle Cox, Brooks Dixon, Ben Sollee, Louise Goffin

If you know the expression "You had me at hello," you know exactly how I felt when I listened to The Things We are Made Of, the newest recording (#14!) by Mary Chapin Carpenter. At 58, Carpenter knows about loss, the importance of memory, and the difference between shallow frippery and things that matter. It's been a long time since I've heard a record that opens with a better song than "Something Tamed Something Wild," a song destined to become a classic. It also offers perspectives that only a mature performer like Carpenter can offer. A young writer shouldn't even try a line such as: "I'm staring down the great big lonesome/As I'm listening for the dwindling of time/What else is there but the echoes of your heart/Something tamed something wild." Nor would we believe them if they sang, "So the things that matter to me now/Are different from the past/I care less about arrival/ Than just being in the path/Of some light carved out of nothing/The way it feels when the universe has smiled." Yes, folks, it's that kind of record­–a masterpiece of adult wisdom burnished by experience. Carpenter sings in a much lower register these days and her tones befit the introspection of her material. Later in the album Carpenter asks, "From departure to arrival what does it mean to travel," and we know she's asking us to ponder things much deeper than being on the road. Check out the cool bass lines to "Between the Wars" and the way in which they frame fragile vocals, quiet guitar, and understated percussion. Add superb arrangements to Carpenter's lyrical and vocal excellence. If it sounds as if I'm gushing over this album, guilty as charged and I seek no mercy.

Kyle Cox offers (mostly) acoustic country with an occasional early 60s-pop vibe woven in. How to tell someone is a country singer: he compares his love for his wife as comparable to a "Trusty Ol' Pair of Boots." (My suburban-bred wife would not be amused!) The Texas-bred, Nashville-based Cox offers a fine EP titled Kyle Cox Trio and Friends, which is exactly as advertised: a five-track sampler of personal songs about the things that he values: love, friends, and family. He celebrates all three in "Richest Man Alive," and one can only applaud his contentment. I really liked the diversity of this short effort. "The One Left Behind" has the aforementioned echoes of early 60s pop, "Just Outta Reach" has catchy hooks, and "The Artist," though not gloomy, has the feel of a classic country weepy, complete with wailing pedal steel.

Brooks Dixon offers a James Taylor-like vibe on Weather the Storm and not just because one of his best songs is a love song to the Tar Heel State titled "Carolina Queen." Like Taylor, Dixon's repertoire falls into the crevice where pop, folk, jazz, and white blues tumble together and express themselves as non-taxing good-time songs. The title track, for instance, has decided Tayloresque cadences, tackles a potentially dicey situation, and turns it into sunny optimism. "Smile" also evokes Taylor in the way in which Dixon applies vocals to cascading notes to give the song a strong tongue-twisting staccato feel. Several songs feature brassy rhythm section interludes that give a bit of bite to Dixon's warm voice. The only downside is that Dixon's repertoire could benefit from a few signature tunes and sharper hooks, though. I enjoyed this record while I was listening, but the tunes faded quickly.

Ben Sollee must have raised a bit of money for his latest project, Live at Studio EM² as it's far more polished than anything he has done in the past. That's a mixed blessing, though. Sollee is a cellist/singer with the soul of a pop star—call his style "cello-bop." "Forgotten" is typical of his approach; it's either hip or overdone, depending upon your taste, a song with the feel of Paul Simon shooting syllables through a Gatling gun. "Pretend" has a contemporary metro vibe, with Sollee's vocals the calming center of a full band production in which his cello becomes the lead percussion instrument. My favorite track was "Steeples," a nice balance of growly cello and caffeinated frenzy. 

Louise Goffin has been recording since 1979, but I have to admit I've paid scant attention to the offspring of one of music's most famous couples: Gerry Goffin and Carole King. Maybe that's okay; a new collection titled The Essential Louise Goffin underwhelmed me. It has great production values and the name alone means you get to share the mic with luminaries such as Jakob Dylan ("Take a Giant Step") or the Cyanide Social Club ("Devil's Door"). But once we wipe the stardust from our face, we're left with fairly standard pop and a voice that's mid-range. Her cover of mom's "You Make Me Feel Like a NaturalWoman" sent me back to King's Tapestry and the difference is that of ordinary versus sublime. 

Rob Weir

Dark Matter a Smart, Engaging Multidemensional Novel

-->

DARK MATTER (2016)

Blake Crouch

Crown Publishers, 352 pp.

* * * *

We all make choices in life. Dr. Jason Dessen was a brilliant young physicist working on cutting-edge quantum mechanics. Daniela Vargas was a rising star in Chicago's art world. They met, fell in love, and bore fruit: a son named Charlie, who became their top priority. Move the clock forward fifteen years. Jason is teaching undergrad physics at Lakemont College, a run-of-the-diploma-mill school, and Dani only fiddles with art. Both watch as those with far less intellect and talent pass them by. Jason's former classmate, Ryan Holder, has just won the prestigious Pavia Prize for work on the multiverse that Jason pioneered; Dani has seen friends make splashes where she could have raised waves. Do they have regrets? Of course they do, but only a few. They made their choices and are comfortable with the smaller world they built. They'd do it again the same way–in this universe, at least.

 But what if another Jason in another universe cracked the code for moving from one parallel universe to another? And what if that Jason got sick of his big world and decided to downsize by pulling a switcheroo with the Jason of this universe? If that sounds far-fetched, hold that thought. Author Blake Crouch has not constructed his novel from premises confined to crackpot sci-fi. Among quantum theorists, luminaries such as Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene, Leonard Susskind, and Neil deGrasse Tyson are among those who think that science suggests the strong possibility that parallel universes exist in dimensions beyond the one we perceive. Perhaps the multiverse is highly speculative, but it's not crazy to imagine it. How many parallel universes? Perhaps an infinite number.

Crouch constructs a fascinating crime/romance/drama that's equal parts Star Trek, Run Lola Run, and Lassie Come Home. He works from the premise that parallel universes are synchronous, but subject to the butterfly effect–each altered choice sets off a cascade of variant results. (See the film Run Lola Run for a brilliant look at how a single change leads to radically different outcomes.) Translation: You probably wouldn't want to open doors in which your parallel selves reside. There might be untold numbers of you–some unspeakably sad or awful, but also some so familiar that they might be able to pass as you.

Dark Matter is a journey and chase across dimensions via procedures that are partly controllable, but also highly random and/or subjective. Crouch describes the multiverse as a never-ending corridor with an infinite numbers of doors that could be opened, but only a finite opportunity of picking the correct portal. This is fascinating stuff and the descriptions of alt.Chicago alone make the book worth reading. Truth be told, the novel is often more intelligent than literary, and Crouch is certainly open to charges of sentimentality and contrivance. Nonetheless, I loved this book because it induced, if you will, a quantum leap in how I imagined the characters and, indeed, myself. What would I be like in other dimensions? The mind boggles! I ripped through this book at the speed of sight.  Rob Weir

Ten Strings and a Goat Skin/Paul McKenna Band: New Releases

-->

When pressed to point out my favorite new Celtic band, I aim my finger north toward Canada, specifically toward Prince Edward Island (PEI), the home base of Ten Strings and a Goat Skin (TSGS for short). The music of PEI is a pastiche in the very best sense of that term. It's sort of Scottish, faintly Acadian, kind of Quèbeçois, has hints of Irish, and throws in occasional Breton cadences, but remains distinctly itself. TSGS's newest CD, its second, is titled Après du Poêle, which delightfully translates "Around the Woodstove," a reference to it warm accessibility. The trio–Jesse Périard (guitar) and brothers Caleb (bodhrán, feet, box drum, etc.) and Rowen (fiddle, guitar, lead vocals) Gallant–have a wonderful sense of both place and pace.

What's your pleasure? Do you like a Celtic tune that chases its own tail? Check out the first half of "The Ukranian Expedition" before it breaks into a full-bore rush across the field. How about what the Quèbeçois call "crooked tunes?" The opening of "Shoot theMoon" comes off as wistful, then messes with the beats and becomes deliciously off-center and, yes, a tad spacey. Pace changes are TSGS staple, but they prefer the subtle boiled-frog approach to tempo change. "Igen" begins as a spirited fiddle-led tune that built so slowly like I conjured swifts riding air currents and deftly weaving patterns in the air. Before I was even aware it had happened, the music got faster and the patterns tighter. But instead of jumping into the Celtic version of a full-tilt boogie, TSGS backed off to a lilting bridge, set a new theme and repeated the same slow-build formula. Then there's "Lament for Buckles," the first half of which evokes a languid John Hartford float-down-the-Mississippi tune, but whose second half is a rushing Gulf of St. Lawrence tide.

Do you prefer vocals? How about some spirited French songs with tight harmonies? "Maluron Lurette" would be at home in Québec's Saguenay region. Or how about some turlutte (rhythmic nonsense fillers like di-di-dee) singing in the title track? Prefer things a bit quieter? Try "Maudit Anglais." TSGS is bilingual, though, so there are English language songs as well. Several of these are laments to loss. TSGS cover of "Coal not Dole" unfolds atop droned instrumentation that gives it the feel of an Ewan MacColl song.* And the lads get positively nostalgic on "The Town," a song that links the passing of family farms to the loss of community vitality. This superb album was produced by Leonard Podolok, who also produces Canada's folk rock sensation The Duhks. Appropriately, the two bands join force to close out the record on the quirky "Duhk Duhk Goat." Après du Poêle deserves to be at or near the top of everyone's best Celtic records of the year.

And so does Paths that Wind (Alba) by Scotland's Paul McKenna Band. McKenna has one of the most distinct voices in Celtic music, hence this record features it a bit more of it than the band's past recordings. It also highlights the band's more forceful political voice, including a superb cover of Peggy Seeger's clarion warning against fascism, "Song of Choice," which she penned in the early 1970s but seems terrifyingly relevant today. If lyrics like "Close your eyes, stop your ears/Close your moth and take it slow/Let others take the lead and you bring up the rear/And later you can say you didn't know" don't move you, you need to wake up and pay attention. The reedy-voiced McKenna takes a gentler approach on "He Fades Away," an Australian song about a young man watching his miner father slowly die from black lung disease; and he gives us a wee history lesson on "The Banks of Moy," which tells us a bit about Irish Land League leader Michael Davitt. And then there's "The Dream," McKenna's own reflections on the Freddie Gray murder in Baltimore.

None of this is to say that this is a polemical album. Other songs take up topics such as being road-weary ("Long Days") and, to prove he's not a dreary pessimistic, McKenna composed "One More Time," a veritable optimist's plea to keep plugging away. The band's musical anchor is flautist/tin whistle wizard Seán Gray, who composed and/or arranged several spirited instrumental sets. And because these guys are real pros, they know how to stack the music on a CD to vary moods. When I wrote a feature on this band for SingOut Magazine back in 2013 I ventured that it had gelled and hit its stride. That seems such an understatement now. 

Rob Weir

* Many people assume this song was written by the Watersons, but it's actually the work of Kay Sutcliffe, a Kent coal miner's wife, who wrote it in the 1980s in response to the closing of pits during Maggie Thatcher's reign of error/terror.     

JD Eicher/Ben Bedford/Gabe Dixon

Sounds Like:

This column is devoted to people who reminded me of someone else. Yes, I know: comparisons are odious. So you try to tell readers what a musician sounds like without resorting to analogies. Besides, I'm only doing what agents, publicists, and promoters do. Everything I get these days comes with a "For fans of…." tag. 

At the top of my list is JD Eicher, a Youngstown, Ohio, native that some people know for his work with The Goodnights. His new release, The Middle Distance (Rock Ridge) is a much more personal work. It took me a New York minute into "This Heart"—that's much shorter than an Ohio minute for the uninitiated–to think "Ellis Paul." Okay, Eicher doesn't perform with Paul's leave-every-drop-of-sweat-on-the-stage energy, but who does? But Eicher does live in the same counter-tenor range as Paul, complete with embellishments that can only be oxymoronically called "muscular whisper tones." Can you imagine Ellis singing this line: "There’s a song that’s still unheard/There’s a hope that still hangs on and never dies/There’s a bunch of able words/Tied up in a bunch of tangled lies/And there’s a broken man/Lost and trying to answer for his sins/And there are some folded hands/Begging for a way to start again" Yeah—me too. Eicher's arrangements are generally more lush and atmospheric than Paul's—a strength and, on occasion, a drawback when his light voice disappears into the aural haze. My personal affinity lies with more stripped down songs such as the tender "Lines in the Sky," and "Not Afraid," in which soupy sound is balanced with quiet places in which he delivers the message of moving through life boldly. Lots of us need to be reminded that relationships aren't easy and that staying in love demands working through the tough times, the sermon he delivers in "What We're Not." Speaking of sermons, whatever your beliefs you need to admire Eicher's "Man of Faith," in which he professes his own with no judgments and no apologies. Two other tracks to consider: "The Little Bit" has the rapid- fire lyrical cadences of a Paul Simon song, complete with a pop-soaked refrain; and the title track is a duet with himself, which he accomplishes through switching to falsetto. It's jarring at first, but it works.

Ben Bedford reminds me of Richard Shindell fused with the late Townes Van Zandt. His voice isn't like either of them, though he shares Shindell's dry tones and Van Zandt's penchant for minimalist arrangements that are more complex than they sound. Like Shindell, Bedford could be viewed as a guitar-bearing poet, philosopher, and sometime theologian. His latest album, The Pilot and the Flying Machine (Waterbug), is about journeys of all sorts: natural, spiritual, metaphorical…. Or at least that's my take. Bedford's poetic vision is deeply interior and enigmatic. I'm pretty sure, for instance, that "Blood on Missouri" lines such as "Feel the shock to the marrow/as your head hits the ground/see the sky through the shields and the smoke/while the wand crushes down" references the killing of Darren Wilson in Ferguson, though references to "the seeds that we've sown for 400 years" also hints of a Native American connection. The title track Part I uses aircraft metaphors, but it's really about a person chasing dreams he was told were impossible. Part II has a very different feel and I'm not certain what it's about. Old age? Feeling hollowed out? Contentment? Yep—things are like that on this album. How many musicians would have the courage to do a jazz/country mix on a song built around being bored on the road, an auto accident on a snowy Iowa night, and feeling like Lucifer from Twain's "Letters from the Earth?" Get the picture? Call this record "music for people with brains they want to use." Maybe you won't know what Bedford intends, but you'll understand that the man is trying to tell you something and your own imagination ignites as you contemplate what it might be. This is one of the smartest records I've heard this side of, well, Richard Shindell.  

Let's see, a man capable of hitting the high notes singing piano-accompanied pop, light rock, and vaguely country songs. Think Gabe Dixon might get a few Seth Glier comparisons? Well, at least those will put to rest the Billy Joel analogies he used to get when he fronted a quartet. In the latter ensemble, Dixon once played with Paul McCartney and often opened arena shows. Since 2010, though, Dixon has dealt a lighter hand as a solo artist. His latest effort, Turn to Gold (Solo Acoustic) (Rolling Ball Records) is a lovely introduction for those unfamiliar with his past oeuvre and the Glier comparison is apt. You hear those glissando slides on both keyboard and piano right out of the gate on "Holding Her Freedom." The only downside to this 12-track collection is that some of the arrangements are quite similar, but when Dixon gets funky on the black keys–as he does on both "Crave" and "That Redemption"–the soulful turns add needed depth. My personal favorite, though, is guitar-based and falls on the tender side of the ledger, "The OneThing I Did Right." It's a confessional from guy who knows he's not the gold medal catch: God knows I've been wrong a million times/You're the one thing I did right/I could do the wrong thing the rest of my life/You're the one thing I did right. That one got to me. Maybe I relate too well.

Rob Weir