Elvis/Allen play Cuyahoga Fall , Ohio , July 14
HOUSE OF BLUES PRESENTS
ELVIS COSTELLO & THE IMPOSTERS WITH ALLEN TOUSSAINT
Blossom
1145 W. Steels Corners
Cleveland (Cuyahoga Falls), OH 44223
330.920.8040
On sale June 3 '06
« April 2006 | Main | June 2006 »
HOUSE OF BLUES PRESENTS
ELVIS COSTELLO & THE IMPOSTERS WITH ALLEN TOUSSAINT
Blossom
1145 W. Steels Corners
Cleveland (Cuyahoga Falls), OH 44223
330.920.8040
On sale June 3 '06
A interview with Elvis in Il Giornale seems to indicate that Elvis and Allen will be touring Europe this winter.
Sunday 2006-05-28, Il Giornale (Italian)
«Riparto dal Mississippi per cantare New Orleans»
Antonio Lodetti
da Londra
Con quella faccia sghemba, tagliata in due da occhiali neri dalla grossa montatura, il fisico appesantito, l'aria flemmatica e tranquilla, sembra tutto tranne una rockstar. E Elvis Costello non vuole nemmeno esserlo; piuttosto lui è un eterno mutante che, nato col sacro fuoco del rock and roll, si è dedicato a un fantasioso ping pong tra esperimenti cameristici (con Sir Neville Mariner e il mezzosoprano Anne Sofie von Otter), lied intimisti per voce e pianoforte (il cd North),
il nobile pop orchestrale (il recente cd dal vivo My Flame Burns Blue con la Metropole Orkest). Ha navigato in tutte le insenature della musica moderna e ora approda ai lidi limacciosi del Mississippi dedicando il nuovo album The River in Reverse alla grande musica di New Orleans. Al suo fianco il pianista e celebre compositore Allen Toussaint, autore di classici di New Orleans come On Your Way Down e Tears teatr & More Tears (presenti nel bellissimo cd) e di brani per Fats Domino, Dr. John, Lee Dorsey fino ad arrivare alla disco di Lady Marmalade.
Un viaggio fra tradizione e nuovi pezzi di Costello per raccontare - con i fedeli Imposters e i fiati dei Crescent City Horns - la linea di confine che incrocia soul e rhythm and blues. «Tornare alle foci del Mississippi vuol dire scoprire le radici del rock - dice Costello -; tutto è nato a New Orleans con Bunk Johnson e Louis Armstrong, prima che personaggi come Toussaint inventassero un cocktail di suoni e colori che ancora oggi tutti cerchiamo di imitare».
Quindi un Costello che torna alle origini?
«Il rock all'inizio per me è stato un'urgenza espressiva, qualcosa che avevo dentro e che è esploso senza controllo. Poi ho cominciato a provare sensazioni diverse, ad avvicinarmi a diverse culture. Ho amato e studiato la musica classica, orchestrale, il balletto, l'opera, tutto questo mi ha reso un artista completo. Ma mi è rimasta la curiosità di scoprire l'origine del suono che ha creato in me questo big bang».
Poi New Orleans purtroppo è tornata d'attualità per il disastro dell'uragano Katryna.
«Avrei voluto organizzare un concerto benefico per New Orleans, anche perché Allen Toussaint ha dovuto andarsene da casa e andare a vivere a New York. È lì che abbiamo inciso quasi tutto il disco, ma poi alcuni brani li abbiamo registrati anche laggiù per respirare quell'atmosfera magica».
Un pezzo di New Orleans s'è perso per sempre.
«No, non direi, lo spirito è lo stesso, la gente è forte e ama la sua terra e la musica è sospesa su tutto ad indicare che il passato non muore. Il jazz e il rhythm and blues oggi come allora sono sorgente di vita.
E io ho voluto celebrare il lato nero e il lato bianco del rock per dimostrare che sono una cosa sola».
Nel disco lei ha composto splendide ballate come The Sharpest Thorn.
«È una canzone-tributo a quel mondo, l'ho scritta con molta umiltà ma devo ammettere che ha il piglio della vera ballata soul».
Lei continua ad esplorare i generi, a sorprendere il pubblico, cosa cerca nella musica?
«Cerco me stesso e il mondo. Dopo tanti anni ho scoperto che la musica è un tutt'uno, le etichette e gli stili sono un insulto alla buona musica.
E io ho voluto celebrare il lato nero e il lato bianco del rock per dimostrare che sono una cosa sola».
Nel disco lei ha composto splendide ballate come The Sharpest Thorn.
«È una canzone-tributo a quel mondo, l'ho scritta con molta umiltà ma devo ammettere che ha il piglio della vera ballata soul».
Lei continua ad esplorare i generi, a sorprendere il pubblico, cosa cerca nella musica?
«Cerco me stesso e il mondo. Dopo tanti anni ho scoperto che la musica è un tutt'uno, le etichette e gli stili sono un insulto alla buona musica.
La musica è un propulsore che ti fa vivere meglio, una vocazione che muore quando suoni per pagare i conti o per comprare automobili».
Andrete in tournée?
«Io e Allen Toussaint abbiamo inciso il disco in presa diretta, è un lavoro spontaneo e sincero. Noi, la mia band e quattro fiati, non è facile organizzare un tour. Ora gireremo l'America e quest'inverno arriveremo in Europa e in Italia, una terra che amo moltissimo».
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Google translation -
With that face sghemba, cut in two from it glances at them black from the large montatura, the weighted down physicist, the flemmatica air and calm, it seems all except one rockstar. And Elvis Costello does not want is not it; rather it is eternal a mutant one who, been born with the sacred fire of the rock and roll, has dedicated to a fantasioso ping pong between cameristici experiments (with Sir Neville Mariner and the mezzosoprano Anne Sofie von Otter), lied intimisti for voice and pianoforte (cd the North), the noble orchestrale POP (recent cd from the alive My Flame Burns Blue with the Metropole Orkest).
It has navigated in all the insenature of modern music and hour it lands to the limacciosi Lydians of the Mississippi dedicating the new album The River in Reverse to the great music of New Orleans. To its flank the pianista and celebre composer Allen Toussaint, author of classics of New Orleans like On Your Way Down and Tears teatr & More Tears (present in the beautifulst one cd) and of brani for Fats Domino, Dr. John, Lee Dorsey until arriving to the disc of Lady Marmalade.
A travel between tradition and new pieces of Costello in order to tell - with the Imposters faithfuls and the breaths of the Crescent City Horns - the border line that it intercrosses soul and rhythm and blues. “To return to the foci of the Mississippi it wants to say to discover the roots of the rock - Costello says -; all Orleans with Bunk is been born to New Johnson and Louis Armstrong, before that personages like Toussaint invented cocktail of sounds and colors that still today all we try to imitate”.
Therefore Costello that returns to the origins?
“The rock at the beginnig for me it has been a expressive urgency, something that I had within and that it is exploded without control. Then I have begun to try various feelings, to approach to me various cultures. I have loved and studied classic, orchestrale music, the ballet, the work, all this has rendered me an artist complete. But me it is remained the curiosity to discover the origin of the sound that has created in me this big bang”. Then New Orleans unfortunately is returned of the present time for the disaster of the Katryna hurricane.
“I would have intentional to organize a beneficial concert for New Orleans, also because Allen Toussaint has had to go of house and to go to living to New York. He is them that we have recorded nearly all the disc, but then some brani we have records them to you also laggiù in order to breathe that magical atmosphere”. A piece of lost New Orleans s'è in order always. “, They did not say, the spirit is the same one, people are strong and love its earth and music is suspended on all indicating that the past does not die. Jazz and the rhythm and blues today as then they are life source.
And I have intentional to celebrate the black side and the side white man of the rock in order to demonstrate that they are one single what”. In the splendid disc it has compound danced like The Sharpest Thorn. “It is one song-I pay that world, I have written it with much humility but I must admit that it has the piglio of the true one danced soul”. It continues to explore the kinds, to surprise the public, what tries in music? “I try same me and the world. After many years I have uncovered that music is a tutt'uno, the labels and the styles are an insult to the good music.
Music is a propeller that makes living you better, a vocation that it dies when you play in order to pay the accounts or in order to buy automobiles”. You will go in tournée? “I and Allen Toussaint have recorded the disc in taken directed, are a spontaneous and sincere job. We, mine band and four breaths, it is not easy to organize a tour. Hour we will turn the America and this winter we will arrive in Europe and Italy, a earth that I love very many”.
Downbeat magazine reports -
Allen Toussaint's house still stands, but remains uninhabitable. His recording studio is gone, swept away. The diaspora to which he belongs persists. And his city's music endures, even if its musicians have been scattered by last fall's maelstrom. But New Orleans, presently a hint of its former glory, will be fine in the future, says Toussaint, the city's 68-year-old maestro of popular music.
The soft-spoken, refined Crescent City native-who's temporarily residing in New York while waiting for his house to be refurbished-has a positive outlook. "I've heard people worry about the city becoming a Disneyland when it's rebuilt," he says. "That'll never happen. New Orleans has something about it that says, Tm this.' That will prevail. The baptism of Katrina didn't kill that."
Toussaint smiles and nods across the hotel suite at the W in Union Square to Elvis Costello, the pop music omnivore who shares his passion-and optimism-in restoring the New Orleans soul that sired the heart of American music. Costello also served as the catalyst to their collaborative CD project, The River In Reverse, which was the first major recording project tracked in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent floods. It serves as a poignant and joyful testament to the city's cultural legacy.
"Popular music wouldn't be what it is today if New Orleans was only about Louis Armstrong," Costello says. "People think I'm exaggerating when I say something like this, but it's true. The music there is so deep, wide, rich and beautiful."
As for The River In Reverse (Verve Forecast), Costello says, "I don't want people to think of this as a grandstand statement. This album began as a way to celebrate Alien's songbook and his voices-as a piano player, arranger and singer-that have been underestimated."
But he acknowledges that the recording of the album became something bigger. It's a symbol of hope that the spirit of New Orleans will again shine vibrantly in its homeland. As for his role in the recording, Costello says, "I can't adopt the legends of the Mardi Gras and be credible. I had to find my own way to express how all the music that has come from that city has affected me over the years."
Both looking dapper in suits and sipping cups of licorice tea, Toussaint and London-born, New York-based Costello are preparing to perform a showcase of music from The River In Reverse-a mix of obscure Toussaint tunes, collaboratively written new songs and a fresh Costello number written in the aftermath of Katrina-in the intimate Joe's Pub later this evening. It's mid-February, a few months after the plethora of benefit concerts for hurricane relief and fundraising CDs, when the attention to the cause has waned.
It's no surprise then that the Costello hookup with Toussaint has been suspect in some camps and chastised by detractors who question the former's motivation. In its capsule preview to the show at Joe's Pub, Time Out New York wrote that "Costello's late-breaking buddy-buddy ship with ... Toussaint to us smacks of opportunism. Moreover, the pairing just doesn't make sense."
On the surface, the Costello-Toussaint team does seem like an odd partnership. Personality-wise, the two couldn't be more different. Costello, 51, talks fast and beams in boyish enthusiasm as if he were living his wildest dream every day as a musician exploring beyond popmusic constraints. His mother, who worked in future-Beatles manager Brian Epstein's record store in Liverpool, once said that when she was pregnant she listened to all kinds of music-from jazz to pop-so that her son could learn to appreciate music in the womb. The jovial Brit is a classic extrovert.
In contrast, Toussaint is a reserved introvert with a gentlemanly manner who speaks slowly and quietly in a slight Southern drawl. He's steeped in the A-through-Z of New Orleans music, and comes from the Big Easy piano school of Professor Longhair. "I'm a Fess disciple," he says. "He's my patron saint, my Bach."
While Costello and Toussaint come from different planets, they're both on the same page when it comes to music. Each admires the other for his sensitivity to song craft.
As for Costello seeking out a "late-breaking" friendship with Toussaint, the allegation lacks substance. In fact, the two worked together twice before, dating back to 1983 when Costello sought out Toussaint to produce his rendition of Yoko Ono's song "Walking On Thin Ice" for an album of interpretations of her own compositions she was releasing.
"I heard Alien's songs before I knew his name," says Costello, who remembers well the fondness of the Merseybeat bands of his youth for Toussaint's song "Fortune Teller." He was also a fan of r&b singer Lee Dorsey, who was a hit-maker with many of Toussaint's tunes, including "Ride Your Pony" and "Working In The Coal Mine."
"Lee Dorsey's music was when I started to pay attention to who was behind the songs," Costello says. "It was like a good secret. Little by little I got the story that he wrote or arranged this and that and that."
When he was becoming established as a rising-star pop artist, Costello was also seeking out his heroes in vital outposts of American music such as Memphis and New Orleans. "When we'd tour, on our days off I always tried to plot out a way to get to those towns that I wanted to visit," he says. "For Yoko's song, I knew I could only record it on the road. I thought of making the impossible request-getting either Willie Mitchell or Allen Toussaint to produce the track. I called Allen up and he said, 'Let's do it.' We went to New Orleans and spent three days at his SeaSaint Studio. It was difficult interpreting a song as unusual as Yoko's, but we did a good job. Plus, it was magical working with Alien. It was like a dream."
In 1988, a couple of years following his 1986 King Of America, Costello began working on Spike with his co-producer T Bone Burnett. Recording sessions took place in Dublin, London, Hollywood and, because Costello "was hearing some different sounds in my new songs," New Orleans, where he enlisted Toussaint. "I felt completely confident working with Alien again," he says.
In the liner notes to the expanded version of Spike, Costello wrote about recording with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Toussaint at Southlake Studio: "[Alien] pretty much set the scene for 'Deep Dark Truthful Mirror' with his colossal piano part [while] the Dozen played off his performance.... It was like seeing a sketch turn into a painting."
Toussaint didn't know much about Costello before they met. "I just knew there was an Elvis Costello," he says. "But I was stationary in New Orleans. New Orleans was cut off from the rest of the world in many ways. What was common knowledge to other folks, well, you'd have to leave New Orleans to check that out. I didn't know his music."
But once Toussaint got to know Costello, he recognized him as a "scholar" of all stripes of pop. "Once I started to hear his world of music, I didn't know how I could have been sheltered from it that long," he says. "I'm glad I'm wide awake now."
Costello regrets that he lost contact with Toussaint, but was pleased to run into him when they both performed on the same stage at the 2005 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
Their next encounter came in the wake of catastrophe. Costello was on holiday on Vancouver Island with his wife, Diana Krall, when Katrina hit New Orleans and the levees were breached. One of his first concerns was for the well-being of Toussaint. He contacted his friend Joe Henry, who told Costello that he heard Toussaint was fine, that he had vacated New Orleans for New York at the urging of Joshua Feigenbaum, who co-founded NYNO Records in 1996 with Toussaint to record music from the Crescent City.
The next day, Sept. 4, Costello played the Bumbershoot Seattle Arts Festival main stage as a solo act. "I wanted to sing what was in my head and heart," he says, "so I closed the show with Allen's 'Freedom For The Stallion.' I sang it to remind people of what was happening in New Orleans."
As Katrina approached the Crescent City, Toussaint figured he'd weather the storm. "I had been through hurricanes, and I thought I knew the nature of them," he says. "They come and wreak a little havoc, then you take your boards back down and put 'em back behind the garage. I've had 12 inches of water in my house more than once. I knew how to handle that. I wanted to stick it out. But this was quite different."
Toussaint checked into the Astor Crowne Plaza hotel on Bourbon Street, but as the city's plight worsened, he took a bus to Baton Rouge and caught a flight to New York. Feigenbaum called Toussaint the day before the storm hit. "Alien refused to leave, but then came here when he could get out of the city," Feigenbaum says. "He stayed up here, but got depressed every day watching CNN. So I asked him if he wanted work, and he said sure."
Feigenbaum contacted Bill Bragin, who programs Joe's Pub and who had been the founding general manager of NYNO Records. "I asked Bill if maybe Allen could open up some shows on the piano, and he said, 'We can do better than that,'" Feigenbaum says.
Bragin recalls a conversation he had with Dan Melnick, the artistic director of Festival Productions, about what the music community could do to help in the aftermath of Katrina. "Our conclusion was that [since] we produce concerts, we should produce concerts," Bragin says. "The best way to help New Orleans musicians was to let them do what they domake a living and support their city by making music."
Since Joe's Pub's evening shows were booked, Bragin inserted a couple of solo-piano weekend matinees featuring Toussaint. Remarkably, this was the first time he had ever performed solo. They were immediate sellouts. Meanwhile, Wynton Marsalis had asked Costello to perform at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Frederick P. Rose Hall benefit to raise hurricane relief funds. Costello told Marsalis about his Bumbershoot tribute, that Toussaint was in New York and that he wanted to perform the song with him. Costello and Toussaint hooked up and rehearsed.
"We followed McCoy Tyner and Harry Belafonte," Costello says. "McCoy played this mind-bending music, then Harry came on and it's like hearing Moses speak. All I could do was sing the best I could."
The performance was not only moving, but it also planted a seed. With the wheels turning inside his head about putting together a Toussaint songbook album, the next day Costello caught his Joe's Pub matinee. "I didn't know what the album would look like, if I could produce it or maybe sing on it. But I knew that Alien's songs and the tradition he comes from are so central to jazz and popular music."
Around the same time Costello and Toussaint performed together again at the Madison Square Garden "From the Big Apple to the Big Easy" benefit, Verve Music Group A&R exec John McEwen contacted Costello with a similar recording concept. "Alien and I started discussing what this record would look like," Costello says. "We agreed to record selections from his songbook that were not the obvious ones that everyone knew-songs that were close to the heart. And we discussed the possibility that we could write some songs together."
For Toussaint, everything in his musical life was suddenly converging at a whirlwind tempo. "I always make the distinction between the pace of New Orleans and everywhere else in America," he says. "We sort of mosey along in New Orleans. I've been coming to New York for yearsfor business and I have family in the Bronx-so I know the pace here. You have to hold your hand out and catch it. That's what I understood about Elvis' exhilaration. As fast as the pace of New York is, the pace of Elvis is even faster. There's a lot going on with Elvis."
After a tour in Europe, Costello returned to New York in early November, and the pair met up in Feigenbaum's apartment. "It was a comfortable place for them," Feigenbaum says. "I got the piano tuned up and made sure they had plenty of tea. Then I got out of the apartment and let the two professionals work."
Nothing jelled at first. "It seemed like the piano was antimagnetic," Costello says. "We couldn't touch it for a long time. It was like we had never heard music before."
The icebreaker was Toussaint's minor-key version of Professor Longhair's classic "Tipitina," which he had played at Joe's Pub. "A door opened with that onto a whole [musical] history that never gets talked about," Costello says. "I wanted to catch something of the feeling of what Alien was playing, to write lyrics that fit with the melancholy and reflection of this piece. It's a presumptuous thing to add new lyrics to something as indelible as Tipitina,' but I wanted to adopt the signature of Alien's music, like the hymnal cadence in the chorus."
The next day Costello sang the lyrics of the retitled "Ascension Day" to Toussaint. "Allen liked it. We couldn't get on the piano fast enough," Costello laughs. "I was playing the guitar, Allen was playing the piano, and then sometimes we were both on the piano at the same time, our two hands crossing over. You know you're getting to something when you're saying to each other, 'It's this chord,' 'No, it's this chord.' I could never presume to tell Alien how to phrase anything, but sometimes I would come up with a voicing or harmonic idea. We went from having nothing to different kinds of collaborations. When we wrote 'Six-Fingered Man,' we were completing each other's sentences musically."
Toussaint had never experienced a songwriting collaborative session like that before. "Elvis came so well-equipped," he says. "He comes with ideas. Elvis was the general leading us to the hill."
Toussaint songbook tunes, including the funked up "On Your Way Down," the gospel-tinged "Nearer To You" and the soul cooker "Tears, Tears, And More Tears"-all newly relevant in light of Katrina's ravages-are open to interpretation, Costello says, then adds, "But why change something that's already perfect? Alien's arrangements already have all these nuances that were integral to the composition."
Soon after working up a batch of tunes, Costello and Toussaint, who both sing on the project, headed into the studio to have, in Costello's words, "a dialogue between people from different parts of the world."
Pegged to produce the sessions was Henry, who had also produced the Toussaint tracks ("Yes We Can Can" and "Tipitina And Me") for Nonesuch's Our New Orleans 2005 benefit album. He had been in conversation with Toussaint about recording an album of his material for his I Believe To My Soul series when Costello came up with his songbook album idea. "Elvis didn't want to get in the way of something I had planned, but I felt that Alien should have the opportunity to do whatever he should pursue," Henry says. "So, we all decided to do this together."
Henry first became friendly with Costello when he produced Solomon Burke's comeback album, Don't Give Up On Me, in 2002. "When I hit problems bringing the concept together of / Believe To My Soul," Henry says, "I used Elvis as my sounding board and champion."
When his original pianist for the project bowed out, Costello suggested contacting Toussaint, who jumped at the last-minute invite. "I was flabbergasted that he agreed," Henry says. "He pulled the project together. I keep his picture on my wall as a reminder."
Even though he knew Costello and Toussaint, Henry still felt nervous about his role in The River In Reverse. "I'd never produced artists and their bands before," he says. "I always saw myself as a smart casting director-putting a band together and then directing the proceedings to try to make the magical and unique happen during the conversing and collisions. But here I was being asked to bring my point of view to a project where Elvis had his group and Alien had his people. As it turned out, they needed someone to take charge, to take the wheel and drive."
Henry found Costello to be "an open-hearted collaborator who was trusting" of suggestions and Toussaint to be "the producer's producer and the closest person alive that has the open-mindedness and transcendence of Duke Ellington." The first day's session was daunting in preparation, Henry recalls. "But the apprehension evaporated once it became clear how respectful everyone was to each other and how much we were on the same page philosophically with the material. The first day's sessions produced three masters and provided the template for the rest of the recording."
The group at the session consisted of Costello's rock band the Imposters (Steve Nieve, who switched from piano to B-3, bassist Davey Faragher and drummer Pete Thomas) and Toussaint's electric guitarist (Anthony Brown) and horn section (baritone saxophonists Brian Cayolle and Carl Blouin, tenor saxophonist Amadee Castenell, trumpeter Joe Smith and trombonist Sam Williams).
The first week of the The River In Reverse sessions took place in late November at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, then moved to Piety Street Recorders in New Orleans in early December. Nearly the entire album was performed live with minimal overdubs. "You listen to the mix back, and you hear how much life there is in the music," Costello says. "That's where the vitality of interpreting songs comes from. You can hear it in Alien's song 'Who's Gonna Help Brother Get Further?' I can't think of a better question to ask right now, but not in a heavy-handed way."
Costello beams at Toussaint's lyrics and recites the last verse: "What happened to that Liberty Bell I heard so much about?/Did it really ding dong?/It must have dinged wrong/It didn't ding long." He loves those lines: "That's why we sing the verse twice. I like the idea of handing the words back and forth, playing it like a little group having a conversation."
Also on the CD is the urgent and angry title track that Costello penned the afternoon before he appeared at The New Yorker magazine's benefit event at Town Hall in September. The lyrics in the chorus are pointed:
"Wake me up
Wake me up with a slap or a kiss
There must be something better than this
I don't see how it can get much worse
What do we have to do to send the river in reverse?"
"I wrote the song in 10 minutes," Costello says. "I had all these images floating around in my head for a week and they suddenly solidified into that song."
While the album has its Costello-Toussaint-composed moments of gloom, including the funerary march-beat "The Sharpest Thorn" and the disgrace-in-darkness "Broken Promise Land," The River In Reverse also buoys in celebration of the New Orleans sound. The uptempo "International Echo" is spiced by Toussaint's Longhair-like breaks and drenched in images of how the power of music cannot be denied. "That's a song about how music comes from one city, travels around the world and then rebounds back," Costello says. "I wanted to show the joy of that. I'd never written a song about music before."
Toussaint notes that the entire project was Costello's brainchild. "I was the yes man," he says of the project, which will be featured at festivals acorss the country this summer. "I enjoyed the journey, especially how the tunes would grow from one day to the next. We arrived places. It wasn't just wishbones and feathers everywhere. We took every step with integrity and faith, belief in what we were doing."
Before the hurricane and flood, there were nine recording studios in New Orleans. Only two were in business at the time The River In Reverse was recorded. "It was wonderful [going back]," Toussaint says. "Elvis was insistent about recording the project there. He wanted the authenticity because I'm from there. But we also wanted to show that there's life in the city, that this isn't a total dead zone."
Costello experienced the city in a different way. Going to New Orleans wasn't a homecoming, but a shock of reality. "It was emotional," he says. "You arrive at an empty airport and then see blown-down signs everywhere. The first day I was there I walked around the streets and all the franchise businesses were closed. They'd just left town. Local businesses were struggling to keep going because of a lack of patrons. The first day at Piety I asked my driver if it would be too morbid to drive me to where the flood hit the hardest. He drove me to where the breach in the levee had occurred in the Lower Ninth Ward. It was horrifying seeing the destruction at eye level after having seen it through a television lens."
Toussaint adds, "We'll all be coming back. Elvis wanted to bring that musical life into the album. That was the thing to do and he followed through on it. It was the right thing to do, to breathe life into the area."
It's a first step, though Toussaint is a realist. He soberly says, "It's going to take a lot of money to rebuild, but it'll also take a lot of guidance. You can't just take the money [for rebuilding], throw it out there and see where it winds up."
But he remains hopeful about New Orleans' revival. "The city is the cradle of American music," Toussaint says. "Babies are still being born, they'll pick up a trumpet and tap into the tradition, and the music will prevail."
( Submitted by Scielle)
Flowing COLLABORATION
Dan Ouellette. Down Beat. Chicago: Jun 2006.Vol.73, Iss. 6; pg. 32, 4 pgs
ELVIS COSTELLO AND ALLEN TOUSSAINT TRAVEL TO NEW ORLEANS FOR THE CITY'S FIRST MAJOR POST-KATRINA RECORDING
Allen Toussaint's house still stands, but remains uninhabitable. His recording studio is gone, swept away. The diaspora to which he belongs persists. And his city's music endures, even if its musicians have been scattered by last fall's maelstrom. But New Orleans, presently a hint of its former glory, will be fine in the future, says Toussaint, the city's 68-year-old maestro of popular music.
The soft-spoken, refined Crescent City native-who's temporarily residing in New York while waiting for his house to be refurbished-has a positive outlook. "I've heard people worry about the city becoming a Disneyland when it's rebuilt," he says. "That'll never happen. New Orleans has something about it that says, Tm this.' That will prevail. The baptism of Katrina didn't kill that."
Toussaint smiles and nods across the hotel suite at the W in Union Square to Elvis Costello, the pop music omnivore who shares his passion-and optimism-in restoring the New Orleans soul that sired the heart of American music. Costello also served as the catalyst to their collaborative CD project, The River In Reverse, which was the first major recording project tracked in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent floods. It serves as a poignant and joyful testament to the city's cultural legacy.
"Popular music wouldn't be what it is today if New Orleans was only about Louis Armstrong," Costello says. "People think I'm exaggerating when I say something like this, but it's true. The music there is so deep, wide, rich and beautiful."
As for The River In Reverse (Verve Forecast), Costello says, "I don't want people to think of this as a grandstand statement. This album began as a way to celebrate Alien's songbook and his voices-as a piano player, arranger and singer-that have been underestimated."
But he acknowledges that the recording of the album became something bigger. It's a symbol of hope that the spirit of New Orleans will again shine vibrantly in its homeland. As for his role in the recording, Costello says, "I can't adopt the legends of the Mardi Gras and be credible. I had to find my own way to express how all the music that has come from that city has affected me over the years."
Both looking dapper in suits and sipping cups of licorice tea, Toussaint and London-born, New York-based Costello are preparing to perform a showcase of music from The River In Reverse-a mix of obscure Toussaint tunes, collaboratively written new songs and a fresh Costello number written in the aftermath of Katrina-in the intimate Joe's Pub later this evening. It's mid-February, a few months after the plethora of benefit concerts for hurricane relief and fundraising CDs, when the attention to the cause has waned.
It's no surprise then that the Costello hookup with Toussaint has been suspect in some camps and chastised by detractors who question the former's motivation. In its capsule preview to the show at Joe's Pub, Time Out New York wrote that "Costello's late-breaking buddy-buddy ship with ... Toussaint to us smacks of opportunism. Moreover, the pairing just doesn't make sense."
On the surface, the Costello-Toussaint team does seem like an odd partnership. Personality-wise, the two couldn't be more different. Costello, 51, talks fast and beams in boyish enthusiasm as if he were living his wildest dream every day as a musician exploring beyond popmusic constraints. His mother, who worked in future-Beatles manager Brian Epstein's record store in Liverpool, once said that when she was pregnant she listened to all kinds of music-from jazz to pop-so that her son could learn to appreciate music in the womb. The jovial Brit is a classic extrovert.
In contrast, Toussaint is a reserved introvert with a gentlemanly manner who speaks slowly and quietly in a slight Southern drawl. He's steeped in the A-through-Z of New Orleans music, and comes from the Big Easy piano school of Professor Longhair. "I'm a Fess disciple," he says. "He's my patron saint, my Bach."
While Costello and Toussaint come from different planets, they're both on the same page when it comes to music. Each admires the other for his sensitivity to song craft.
As for Costello seeking out a "late-breaking" friendship with Toussaint, the allegation lacks substance. In fact, the two worked together twice before, dating back to 1983 when Costello sought out Toussaint to produce his rendition of Yoko Ono's song "Walking On Thin Ice" for an album of interpretations of her own compositions she was releasing.
"I heard Alien's songs before I knew his name," says Costello, who remembers well the fondness of the Merseybeat bands of his youth for Toussaint's song "Fortune Teller." He was also a fan of r&b singer Lee Dorsey, who was a hit-maker with many of Toussaint's tunes, including "Ride Your Pony" and "Working In The Coal Mine."
"Lee Dorsey's music was when I started to pay attention to who was behind the songs," Costello says. "It was like a good secret. Little by little I got the story that he wrote or arranged this and that and that."
When he was becoming established as a rising-star pop artist, Costello was also seeking out his heroes in vital outposts of American music such as Memphis and New Orleans. "When we'd tour, on our days off I always tried to plot out a way to get to those towns that I wanted to visit," he says. "For Yoko's song, I knew I could only record it on the road. I thought of making the impossible request-getting either Willie Mitchell or Allen Toussaint to produce the track. I called Allen up and he said, 'Let's do it.' We went to New Orleans and spent three days at his SeaSaint Studio. It was difficult interpreting a song as unusual as Yoko's, but we did a good job. Plus, it was magical working with Alien. It was like a dream."
In 1988, a couple of years following his 1986 King Of America, Costello began working on Spike with his co-producer T Bone Burnett. Recording sessions took place in Dublin, London, Hollywood and, because Costello "was hearing some different sounds in my new songs," New Orleans, where he enlisted Toussaint. "I felt completely confident working with Alien again," he says.
In the liner notes to the expanded version of Spike, Costello wrote about recording with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Toussaint at Southlake Studio: "[Alien] pretty much set the scene for 'Deep Dark Truthful Mirror' with his colossal piano part [while] the Dozen played off his performance.... It was like seeing a sketch turn into a painting."
Toussaint didn't know much about Costello before they met. "I just knew there was an Elvis Costello," he says. "But I was stationary in New Orleans. New Orleans was cut off from the rest of the world in many ways. What was common knowledge to other folks, well, you'd have to leave New Orleans to check that out. I didn't know his music."
But once Toussaint got to know Costello, he recognized him as a "scholar" of all stripes of pop. "Once I started to hear his world of music, I didn't know how I could have been sheltered from it that long," he says. "I'm glad I'm wide awake now."
Costello regrets that he lost contact with Toussaint, but was pleased to run into him when they both performed on the same stage at the 2005 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
Their next encounter came in the wake of catastrophe. Costello was on holiday on Vancouver Island with his wife, Diana Krall, when Katrina hit New Orleans and the levees were breached. One of his first concerns was for the well-being of Toussaint. He contacted his friend Joe Henry, who told Costello that he heard Toussaint was fine, that he had vacated New Orleans for New York at the urging of Joshua Feigenbaum, who co-founded NYNO Records in 1996 with Toussaint to record music from the Crescent City.
The next day, Sept. 4, Costello played the Bumbershoot Seattle Arts Festival main stage as a solo act. "I wanted to sing what was in my head and heart," he says, "so I closed the show with Allen's 'Freedom For The Stallion.' I sang it to remind people of what was happening in New Orleans."
As Katrina approached the Crescent City, Toussaint figured he'd weather the storm. "I had been through hurricanes, and I thought I knew the nature of them," he says. "They come and wreak a little havoc, then you take your boards back down and put 'em back behind the garage. I've had 12 inches of water in my house more than once. I knew how to handle that. I wanted to stick it out. But this was quite different."
Toussaint checked into the Astor Crowne Plaza hotel on Bourbon Street, but as the city's plight worsened, he took a bus to Baton Rouge and caught a flight to New York. Feigenbaum called Toussaint the day before the storm hit. "Alien refused to leave, but then came here when he could get out of the city," Feigenbaum says. "He stayed up here, but got depressed every day watching CNN. So I asked him if he wanted work, and he said sure."
Feigenbaum contacted Bill Bragin, who programs Joe's Pub and who had been the founding general manager of NYNO Records. "I asked Bill if maybe Allen could open up some shows on the piano, and he said, 'We can do better than that,'" Feigenbaum says.
Bragin recalls a conversation he had with Dan Melnick, the artistic director of Festival Productions, about what the music community could do to help in the aftermath of Katrina. "Our conclusion was that [since] we produce concerts, we should produce concerts," Bragin says. "The best way to help New Orleans musicians was to let them do what they domake a living and support their city by making music."
Since Joe's Pub's evening shows were booked, Bragin inserted a couple of solo-piano weekend matinees featuring Toussaint. Remarkably, this was the first time he had ever performed solo. They were immediate sellouts. Meanwhile, Wynton Marsalis had asked Costello to perform at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Frederick P. Rose Hall benefit to raise hurricane relief funds. Costello told Marsalis about his Bumbershoot tribute, that Toussaint was in New York and that he wanted to perform the song with him. Costello and Toussaint hooked up and rehearsed.
"We followed McCoy Tyner and Harry Belafonte," Costello says. "McCoy played this mind-bending music, then Harry came on and it's like hearing Moses speak. All I could do was sing the best I could."
The performance was not only moving, but it also planted a seed. With the wheels turning inside his head about putting together a Toussaint songbook album, the next day Costello caught his Joe's Pub matinee. "I didn't know what the album would look like, if I could produce it or maybe sing on it. But I knew that Alien's songs and the tradition he comes from are so central to jazz and popular music."
Around the same time Costello and Toussaint performed together again at the Madison Square Garden "From the Big Apple to the Big Easy" benefit, Verve Music Group A&R exec John McEwen contacted Costello with a similar recording concept. "Alien and I started discussing what this record would look like," Costello says. "We agreed to record selections from his songbook that were not the obvious ones that everyone knew-songs that were close to the heart. And we discussed the possibility that we could write some songs together."
For Toussaint, everything in his musical life was suddenly converging at a whirlwind tempo. "I always make the distinction between the pace of New Orleans and everywhere else in America," he says. "We sort of mosey along in New Orleans. I've been coming to New York for yearsfor business and I have family in the Bronx-so I know the pace here. You have to hold your hand out and catch it. That's what I understood about Elvis' exhilaration. As fast as the pace of New York is, the pace of Elvis is even faster. There's a lot going on with Elvis."
After a tour in Europe, Costello returned to New York in early November, and the pair met up in Feigenbaum's apartment. "It was a comfortable place for them," Feigenbaum says. "I got the piano tuned up and made sure they had plenty of tea. Then I got out of the apartment and let the two professionals work."
Nothing jelled at first. "It seemed like the piano was antimagnetic," Costello says. "We couldn't touch it for a long time. It was like we had never heard music before."
The icebreaker was Toussaint's minor-key version of Professor Longhair's classic "Tipitina," which he had played at Joe's Pub. "A door opened with that onto a whole [musical] history that never gets talked about," Costello says. "I wanted to catch something of the feeling of what Alien was playing, to write lyrics that fit with the melancholy and reflection of this piece. It's a presumptuous thing to add new lyrics to something as indelible as Tipitina,' but I wanted to adopt the signature of Alien's music, like the hymnal cadence in the chorus."
The next day Costello sang the lyrics of the retitled "Ascension Day" to Toussaint. "Allen liked it. We couldn't get on the piano fast enough," Costello laughs. "I was playing the guitar, Allen was playing the piano, and then sometimes we were both on the piano at the same time, our two hands crossing over. You know you're getting to something when you're saying to each other, 'It's this chord,' 'No, it's this chord.' I could never presume to tell Alien how to phrase anything, but sometimes I would come up with a voicing or harmonic idea. We went from having nothing to different kinds of collaborations. When we wrote 'Six-Fingered Man,' we were completing each other's sentences musically."
Toussaint had never experienced a songwriting collaborative session like that before. "Elvis came so well-equipped," he says. "He comes with ideas. Elvis was the general leading us to the hill."
Toussaint songbook tunes, including the funked up "On Your Way Down," the gospel-tinged "Nearer To You" and the soul cooker "Tears, Tears, And More Tears"-all newly relevant in light of Katrina's ravages-are open to interpretation, Costello says, then adds, "But why change something that's already perfect? Alien's arrangements already have all these nuances that were integral to the composition."
Soon after working up a batch of tunes, Costello and Toussaint, who both sing on the project, headed into the studio to have, in Costello's words, "a dialogue between people from different parts of the world."
Pegged to produce the sessions was Henry, who had also produced the Toussaint tracks ("Yes We Can Can" and "Tipitina And Me") for Nonesuch's Our New Orleans 2005 benefit album. He had been in conversation with Toussaint about recording an album of his material for his I Believe To My Soul series when Costello came up with his songbook album idea. "Elvis didn't want to get in the way of something I had planned, but I felt that Alien should have the opportunity to do whatever he should pursue," Henry says. "So, we all decided to do this together."
Henry first became friendly with Costello when he produced Solomon Burke's comeback album, Don't Give Up On Me, in 2002. "When I hit problems bringing the concept together of / Believe To My Soul," Henry says, "I used Elvis as my sounding board and champion."
When his original pianist for the project bowed out, Costello suggested contacting Toussaint, who jumped at the last-minute invite. "I was flabbergasted that he agreed," Henry says. "He pulled the project together. I keep his picture on my wall as a reminder."
Even though he knew Costello and Toussaint, Henry still felt nervous about his role in The River In Reverse. "I'd never produced artists and their bands before," he says. "I always saw myself as a smart casting director-putting a band together and then directing the proceedings to try to make the magical and unique happen during the conversing and collisions. But here I was being asked to bring my point of view to a project where Elvis had his group and Alien had his people. As it turned out, they needed someone to take charge, to take the wheel and drive."
Henry found Costello to be "an open-hearted collaborator who was trusting" of suggestions and Toussaint to be "the producer's producer and the closest person alive that has the open-mindedness and transcendence of Duke Ellington." The first day's session was daunting in preparation, Henry recalls. "But the apprehension evaporated once it became clear how respectful everyone was to each other and how much we were on the same page philosophically with the material. The first day's sessions produced three masters and provided the template for the rest of the recording."
The group at the session consisted of Costello's rock band the Imposters (Steve Nieve, who switched from piano to B-3, bassist Davey Faragher and drummer Pete Thomas) and Toussaint's electric guitarist (Anthony Brown) and horn section (baritone saxophonists Brian Cayolle and Carl Blouin, tenor saxophonist Amadee Castenell, trumpeter Joe Smith and trombonist Sam Williams).
The first week of the The River In Reverse sessions took place in late November at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, then moved to Piety Street Recorders in New Orleans in early December. Nearly the entire album was performed live with minimal overdubs. "You listen to the mix back, and you hear how much life there is in the music," Costello says. "That's where the vitality of interpreting songs comes from. You can hear it in Alien's song 'Who's Gonna Help Brother Get Further?' I can't think of a better question to ask right now, but not in a heavy-handed way."
Costello beams at Toussaint's lyrics and recites the last verse: "What happened to that Liberty Bell I heard so much about?/Did it really ding dong?/It must have dinged wrong/It didn't ding long." He loves those lines: "That's why we sing the verse twice. I like the idea of handing the words back and forth, playing it like a little group having a conversation."
Also on the CD is the urgent and angry title track that Costello penned the afternoon before he appeared at The New Yorker magazine's benefit event at Town Hall in September. The lyrics in the chorus are pointed:
"Wake me up
Wake me up with a slap or a kiss
There must be something better than this
I don't see how it can get much worse
What do we have to do to send the river in reverse?"
"I wrote the song in 10 minutes," Costello says. "I had all these images floating around in my head for a week and they suddenly solidified into that song."
While the album has its Costello-Toussaint-composed moments of gloom, including the funerary march-beat "The Sharpest Thorn" and the disgrace-in-darkness "Broken Promise Land," The River In Reverse also buoys in celebration of the New Orleans sound. The uptempo "International Echo" is spiced by Toussaint's Longhair-like breaks and drenched in images of how the power of music cannot be denied. "That's a song about how music comes from one city, travels around the world and then rebounds back," Costello says. "I wanted to show the joy of that. I'd never written a song about music before."
Toussaint notes that the entire project was Costello's brainchild. "I was the yes man," he says of the project, which will be featured at festivals acorss the country this summer. "I enjoyed the journey, especially how the tunes would grow from one day to the next. We arrived places. It wasn't just wishbones and feathers everywhere. We took every step with integrity and faith, belief in what we were doing."
Before the hurricane and flood, there were nine recording studios in New Orleans. Only two were in business at the time The River In Reverse was recorded. "It was wonderful [going back]," Toussaint says. "Elvis was insistent about recording the project there. He wanted the authenticity because I'm from there. But we also wanted to show that there's life in the city, that this isn't a total dead zone."
Costello experienced the city in a different way. Going to New Orleans wasn't a homecoming, but a shock of reality. "It was emotional," he says. "You arrive at an empty airport and then see blown-down signs everywhere. The first day I was there I walked around the streets and all the franchise businesses were closed. They'd just left town. Local businesses were struggling to keep going because of a lack of patrons. The first day at Piety I asked my driver if it would be too morbid to drive me to where the flood hit the hardest. He drove me to where the breach in the levee had occurred in the Lower Ninth Ward. It was horrifying seeing the destruction at eye level after having seen it through a television lens."
Toussaint adds, "We'll all be coming back. Elvis wanted to bring that musical life into the album. That was the thing to do and he followed through on it. It was the right thing to do, to breathe life into the area."
It's a first step, though Toussaint is a realist. He soberly says, "It's going to take a lot of money to rebuild, but it'll also take a lot of guidance. You can't just take the money [for rebuilding], throw it out there and see where it winds up."
But he remains hopeful about New Orleans' revival. "The city is the cradle of American music," Toussaint says. "Babies are still being born, they'll pick up a trumpet and tap into the tradition, and the music will prevail."
[Sidebar]
"I always make the distinction between the pace of New Orleans and everywhere else in America. We sort of mosey alon^ in New Orleans. I've been coming to New York for years... so I know the pace here. You have to hold your hand out and catch it. That's what I understood about Elvis' exhilaration. As fast as the pace of New York is, the pace of Elvis is even faster." -ALLEN TOUSSAINT
Mojo -
David Fricke writes -
FOR ME, the most topical and moving moment on this marvellous album is the one I saw recorded at Piety Street in New Orleans last December: Allen Toussaint, a son of the Crescent City and a legend in its music, in the booth, singing the third verse of Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further?, a funky song of giving and fraternity that he wrote and produced for Lee Dorsey in 1970. Standing at the mike in his characteristic jacket-and-tie, Toussaint sang in a creamy tenor as if he had no woes in the world. The words were heavy with nothing but: “What happened to the Liberty Belt/I heard so much about/It didn’t ding dong/ It must have dinged wrong/It didn’t ding long.”
Outside the studio, much of New Orleans was in ruins and deserted. It was just four months after the combined disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the Bush White House’s shocking, inept response. Inside Piety, it was impossible not to be moved by Toussaint’s survivor’s poise — he had lost his home — and the poignant disbelief in his voice: that a major US city could be betrayed and left to drown by the rest of the nation and its elected representatives. Later in the finished track here, Elvis Costello — a lifelong British devotee of New Orleans music — takes his own turn at those Liberty Bell lines, seething with impatience for penance and action, astounded that the country with so much could do so little.
Costello and Toussaint also sing together in rough-but-right harmony with a clash of local slang at the end, soul shorthand for consensus and solidarity: “Pray tell what’s gonna happen to brother? Who’s gonna help him get further? /One another/Is that the truth?/ One another/ Yeah, you right.” It is the obvious answer to a simple question. It is amazing that we even need this album to remind us of something we should know by heart. But New Orleans, no matter how badly it’s been beaten, is still a city in which people believe in dancing on the way home from a funeral. Inspired by tragedy, The River In Reverse — produced with vintage-R&B empathy by Joe Henry and recorded with Costello’s Imposters and Toussaint’s Crescent City Horns in just two weeks (one in LA, one at Piety) — is also rife with life and fight. This is a great record for and about New Orleans and one of the best the two men have ever made.
Costello, 51, and Toussaint, 68, have collaborated before (most notably on Costello’s 1989 album Spike), arid they were soon on-stage together in the immediate wake of Katrina, performing at benefit events in New York. But Toussaint’s readiness to sing, play and co write new material with Costello has transformed the latter’s original idea — an Allen Toussaint songbook album — into a record of forward classicism, a showcase for the contemporary resonance of Toussaint’s greatest hits and his still-blooming gifts as a writer and pianist. When Costello shouts, “Solo!” over the rowdy thump of International Echo, it’s the fan in him, eager to hear the master tear up the 88s (which he does). You can hear the eternal student in the teacher too, in Toussaint’s clever minor-mode inversion of Professor Longhair’s Tipitina (rightly co-credited) in the melancholy of Ascension Day.
Of the older Toussaint numbers, Nearer To You was a US Top 20 ballad for Betty Harris in 1967 and Art Neville cut All These Things for Instant Records in 1962 (note Costello’s game attempt at Aaron Neville’s stratospheric flutter at the end). The others were all first recorded by Lee Dorsey in the ‘60s and ‘70s heyday of New Orleans soul: Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further?, On Your Way Down, Tears, Tears And More Tears, Freedom For The Stallion and Wonder Woman. This is not mere coincidence. Dorsey’s dry growl was one of Toussaint’s favourite voices, especially for message songs. “I can always see Lee moving through the world,” he told New Orleans writer Jeff Hannusch, “and me back there watching and writing about it.”
And it was a hard world. Images of slavery and “men buildin’ fences to keep other men out” darken the gospel sigh of Freedom For The Stallion. There may be no better R&B description of the karma wheel than On Your Way Down: “It’s high time that you found/The same people you misuse on your way up/You might meet up/On your way down.” But where Dorsey sang those lines with a grainy confidence, like a man who knew the wheel would turn his way someday, Costello isn’t so polite. The pace and arrangement are classic Toussaint but the revenge in Costello’s voice is that of This Year’s Model. Tears, Tears And More Tears, a high stepping number about betrayal, shows Toussaint’s knack for writing sad songs that feel good. But the despairing pitch of Costello’s singing in the chorus isn’t far from the rage and anguish that rose with the floodwater — or what I felt when I saw what was left of the Lower Ninth Ward, all but wiped away by the hell that poured in from the Industrial Canal.
In the new songs, Costello and Toussaint meet and blend with an ease missing from the epic-ballad ambitions of Costello’s 1998 record with Burt Bacharach, Painted From Memory. The opening waltz-time measures of The Sharpest Thorn are probably how Costello and Toussaint sounded together in their week of writing last fall — Toussaint’s Sunday-morning piano and Costello’s strong plaintive singing in perfect relaxed sync. And while Toussaint would never write a line like, “There’s a place where infidels and showgirls meet”, in Broken Promise Land, he has gentler ways of making his point, like the tumbling-piano figure in the chorus.
Costello, of course, is not shy about calling a spade a spade or a coward a coward. He wrote the title song last September, a few hours before debuting it at a Katrina benefit at New York’s Town Hall. It is a riveting death march with an exhausted-ballad grace, a blunt indictment of America’s collective responsibility for the death and devastation in New Orleans and the “uncivil war” that divides the country into the ‘haves’ and everybody else. The River In Reverse is our Shipbuilding, and it is as angry and entrancing as the first one.
But a few songs later, Costello shows why he cares so much, in the lusty big-band R&B of International Echo. Written with Toussaint, it’s really Costello’s youth revisited, his memory of the excitement he heard in those old Minit, Ace and Instant 45s and what will be lost forever in a New Orleans without music or the many players now in exile or, worse, gone forever. “It can’t be repeated, it can’t be resisted,” he sings, as Toussaint flies and dives behind him on the piano with pinpoint sass. It is the sound of one of New Orleans’ greatest musicians reftssing to give up — and of two unlikely brothers in arms who, on The River In Reverse, are already turning that water around.
Back when he was a young geek storming pop through punk, who would have thought Elvis Costello's singing would end up more distinguished than his word-slinging? As his high baritone matured, however, its nasal angst gained technical command and emotional gravity, till eventually it could swallow a string quartet, an avant-jazz combo, a symphony orchestra -- jeez, even Bacharach-David. So this meeting with the great Sixties and Seventies New Orleans hitmaker is more than its Katrina angle. It's one collaboration in a series, timed just right. The Allen Toussaint oldies Costello covers avoid the overfamiliar, and his delivery has a way of adding a post-disaster historical context to Toussaint's intended meaning -- not just with socially conscious material like "On Your Way Down" and "Freedom for the Stallion" ("They've made money, God") but with love songs such as "Nearer to You" (where the "you" could be his city) or "Tears, Tears and More Tears" (with its lost, well-remembered "walk in the park"). Although Elvis' title tune and the four co-written new songs are less winning, "Broken Promise Land" bites the hand that doesn't feed it with sarcastic gusto, and "International Echo" captures and holds the joy both men take in the record-making process it portrays. Costello's Imposters negotiate Toussaint's tricky rhythms jauntily enough, and the Crescent City Horns add warming coloration. But it's the master's steady, rollicking piano that elevates the music -- and keeps the ever-elusive Costello honest.
The Times ( London) -
There is something inevitable about this collaboration between the Scouser seemingly set on recording in every musical genre and the venerable New Orleans producer. The result is a polished set with no huge surprises, but Costello’s regular band, the Imposters, team up impressively with Toussaint at the piano and the Crescent City Horns, and Costello is in fine voice. For Grumpy Old Man music, this is unexpectedly relaxed.
``This record is a byproduct of when two great creative geniuses come together. The mixture of Costello attempting to sing gospel and R&B with the arrangements of Toussaint complement one another quite well. The result is that Costello is the Bo Jackson of musical genres. It's refreshing to know that Toussaint is still making the same great music that won him a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.''
Mojo , June 2006
Tales from the riverbank
Recorded just tour months after Hurricane Katrina, this passionate response from an unlikely duo is also some of their best work, says David Fricke
FOR ME, the most topical and moving moment on this marvellous album is the one I saw recorded at Piety Street in New Orleans last December: Allen Toussaint, a son of the Crescent City and a legend in its music, in the booth, singing the third verse of Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further?, a funky song of giving and fraternity that he wrote and produced for Lee Dorsey in 1970. Standing at the mike in his characteristic jacket-and-tie, Toussaint sang in a creamy tenor as if he had no woes in the world. The words were heavy with nothing but: “What happened to the Liberty Belt/I heard so much about/It didn’t ding dong/ It must have dinged wrong/It didn’t ding long.”
Outside the studio, much of New Orleans was in ruins and deserted. It was just four months after the combined disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the Bush White House’s shocking, inept response. Inside Piety, it was impossible not to be moved by Toussaint’s survivor’s poise — he had lost his home — and the poignant disbelief in his voice: that a major US city could be betrayed and left to drown by the rest of the nation and its elected representatives. Later in the finished track here, Elvis Costello — a lifelong British devotee of New Orleans music — takes his own turn at those Liberty Bell lines, seething with impatience for penance and action, astounded that the country with so much could do so little.
Costello and Toussaint also sing together in rough-but-right harmony with a clash of local slang at the end, soul shorthand for consensus and solidarity: “Pray tell what’s gonna happen to brother? Who’s gonna help him get further? /One another/Is that the truth?/ One another/ Yeah, you right.” It is the obvious answer to a simple question. It is amazing that we even need this album to remind us of something we should know by heart. But New Orleans, no matter how badly it’s been beaten, is still a city in which people believe in dancing on the way home from a funeral. Inspired by tragedy, The River In Reverse — produced with vintage-R&B empathy by Joe Henry and recorded with Costello’s Imposters and Toussaint’s Crescent City Horns in just two weeks (one in LA, one at Piety) — is also rife with life and fight. This is a great record for and about New Orleans and one of the best the two men have ever made.
Costello, 51, and Toussaint, 68, have collaborated before (most notably on Costello’s 1989 album Spike), arid they were soon on-stage together in the immediate wake of Katrina, performing at benefit events in New York. But Toussaint’s readiness to sing, play and co write new material with Costello has transformed the latter’s original idea — an Allen Toussaint songbook album — into a record of forward classicism, a showcase for the contemporary resonance of Toussaint’s greatest hits and his still-blooming gifts as a writer and pianist. When Costello shouts, “Solo!” over the rowdy thump of International Echo, it’s the fan in him, eager to hear the master tear up the 88s (which he does). You can hear the eternal student in the teacher too, in Toussaint’s clever minor-mode inversion of Professor Longhair’s Tipitina (rightly co-credited) in the melancholy of Ascension Day.
Of the older Toussaint numbers, Nearer To You was a US Top 20 ballad for Betty Harris in 1967 and Art Neville cut All These Things for Instant Records in 1962 (note Costello’s game attempt at Aaron Neville’s stratospheric flutter at the end). The others were all first recorded by Lee Dorsey in the ‘60s and ‘70s heyday of New Orleans soul: Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further?, On Your Way Down, Tears, Tears And More Tears, Freedom For The Stallion and Wonder Woman. This is not mere coincidence. Dorsey’s dry growl was one of Toussaint’s favourite voices, especially for message songs. “I can always see Lee moving through the world,” he told New Orleans writer Jeff Hannusch, “and me back there watching and writing about it.”
And it was a hard world. Images of slavery and “men buildin’ fences to keep other men out” darken the gospel sigh of Freedom For The Stallion. There may be no better R&B description of the karma wheel than On Your Way Down: “It’s high time that you found/The same people you misuse on your way up/You might meet up/On your way down.” But where Dorsey sang those lines with a grainy confidence, like a man who knew the wheel would turn his way someday, Costello isn’t so polite. The pace and arrangement are classic Toussaint but the revenge in Costello’s voice is that of This Year’s Model. Tears, Tears And More Tears, a high stepping number about betrayal, shows Toussaint’s knack for writing sad songs that feel good. But the despairing pitch of Costello’s singing in the chorus isn’t far from the rage and anguish that rose with the floodwater — or what I felt when I saw what was left of the Lower Ninth Ward, all but wiped away by the hell that poured in from the Industrial Canal.
In the new songs, Costello and Toussaint meet and blend with an ease missing from the epic-ballad ambitions of Costello’s 1998 record with Burt Bacharach, Painted From Memory. The opening waltz-time measures of The Sharpest Thorn are probably how Costello and Toussaint sounded together in their week of writing last fall — Toussaint’s Sunday-morning piano and Costello’s strong plaintive singing in perfect relaxed sync. And while Toussaint would never write a line like, “There’s a place where infidels and showgirls meet”, in Broken Promise Land, he has gentler ways of making his point, like the tumbling-piano figure in the chorus.
Costello, of course, is not shy about calling a spade a spade or a coward a coward. He wrote the title song last September, a few hours before debuting it at a Katrina benefit at New York’s Town Hall. It is a riveting death march with an exhausted-ballad grace, a blunt indictment of America’s collective responsibility for the death and devastation in New Orleans and the “uncivil war” that divides the country into the ‘haves’ and everybody else. The River In Reverse is our Shipbuilding, and it is as angry and entrancing as the first one.
But a few songs later, Costello shows why he cares so much, in the lusty big-band R&B of International Echo. Written with Toussaint, it’s really Costello’s youth revisited, his memory of the excitement he heard in those old Minit, Ace and Instant 45s and what will be lost forever in a New Orleans without music or the many players now in exile or, worse, gone forever. “It can’t be repeated, it can’t be resisted,” he sings, as Toussaint flies and dives behind him on the piano with pinpoint sass. It is the sound of one of New Orleans’ greatest musicians reftssing to give up — and of two unlikely brothers in arms who, on The River In Reverse, are already turning that water around.
Elvis 'n Allen Toussaint are doing promotional shows in Europe this week. Last night they did a 40 minute set in the Cobden Club, London ( Belgian radio will air an interview from it this coming Saturday, May 27th, in the programme "Shuffle" (from 17h till 19h)). Tonight they record an appearance for this coming Friday's Later...with Jools Holland show on BBCTV. Tomorrow , Wednes. 24th , they appear in the Meistersaal , Berlin.
The New Jersey Star-Ledger reports -
( extract)
When wondering beforehand who would strike the most sparks with Elvis Costello -- the latest veteran talent feted in VH1 Classic's tribute series "Decades Rock Live"-- it seemed that Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong would be that guest, or maybe the young rock combo Death Cab for Cutie.
But as soon as Fiona Apple bit into Costello's "Shabby Doll" during the show's taping Friday at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, it was apparent that these two were the kindred spirits.
The 29-year-old Apple, singing alongside Costello and his band, the Imposters, helped transform his dark baroque pop tune "Shabby Doll" into an even darker soul song; as she seethed out the line "he's all pride and no joy," it sounded just like one of her own pithy kiss-offs.
Romantic obsession was a field well-tilled by Costello in his early days, and Apple is no stranger to such emotions in her work. She not only sang his desperate epic "I Want You," she groaned and keened as if his 20-year-old emotions were hers today. Costello was obviously charged by her arm-flailing intensity, playing an outrageously dissonant guitar solo.
Unlike many of his peers who came up in the late '70s, Costello has remained a blue-chip artist. The depth of his talent -- reinforced Friday by barbed performance of his new song "The River in Reverse" -- is the key reason for his staying power, of course. But his questing enthusiasm for collaboration has been vital, too. He didn't merely accept homage from Apple and the others; the 51-year-old delved into their songbooks, too.
Costello gave Apple's ballad "I Know" an after-hours R&B feel, and the pair communed over her bared-nerve torch song "Red Red," with Costello howling like he was at the end of his rope. Afterward, the slight Apple was hopping with excitement, gushing to the crowd, "Can you imagine how cool I feel right now?"
Opening the show, Death Cab for Cutie was its urgent, melodic best on the band's "The New Year," but Ben Gibbard's warbling voice tended to defang such Costello covers as "Kinder Murder." Better was Death Cab's subtle backing of Costello on "When I Was Cruel," his noir-hued recollection of youthful spite.
Along with the usual delays and hype of a TV taping, the audience had to endure the execrable acoustics of the Mark Etess Arena. (Previous "Decades Rock" shows have been devoted to Heart, Cyndi Lauper and Bonnie Raitt; the arena appeared less than two-thirds full for Friday's taping, so word may be out about the venue's shortcomings.) Still, nothing could mute the hero's welcome that hundreds of young girls gave Armstrong.
The Green Day singer ripped through a wonderfully punkish version of Costello's "No Action" in league with the songwriter and his band. It was also fun to hear the Imposters sink their teeth into such Green Day anthems as "Wake Me Up When September Ends." Armstrong joined Costello for an acoustic set, but this felt forced, as they stumbled through a countrified take on Costello's "Lip Service."
The all-hands finale was far better than such features usually are, with Apple's voice ringing out of the chorus for Smokey Robinson's "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" and everyone chanting along to Costello's classic version of Nick Lowe's "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?"
There's no telling who Elvis Costello will be standing next to on stage. Last year, the bespectacled Brit toured with Emmylou Harris. This year, he put out an album with Holland's Metropole Orkest. Next month, he releases The River in Reverse, with New Orleans piano man Allen Toussaint.
The Philadelphia Inquirer comments -
On Friday at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, the 51-year-old songwriter performed with his band, the Imposters, while being celebrated by a troika decades younger than he: indie popsters Death Cab for Cutie, husky-voiced waif Fiona Apple, and Green Day singer Billie Joe Armstrong, who pulled the elementary school contingent into the multigenerational crowd.
Credit VH1's Decades Rock Live series for arranging the occasion. And blame the cabler for the taping delay, which will ensure that when the concert finally airs, the half-full, lousy-sounding Mark G. Etess Arena will be magically transformed into a polished show at The Perfect Concert Hall.
But enough bickering. The show was smartly conceived, the material well-chosen. Death Cab's Ben Gibbard came off like a dweeb by asking to restart a song because "I dropped my pick." That won't make the final cut. A forceful version of Costello's "Kinder Murder" and strummy duet on his own "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" will, deservedly so.
Death Cab represents the mild influence of Costello's verbally rich rock. Apple covers the dark side. Looking like a pint-sized Morticia Adams in a purple dress, she nearly stole the show from the gracious host she so obviously adores.
Costello made her gloriously good "I Know" his own. The two paired off on his "Shabby Doll" and her "Tymps (The Sick in the Head Song)," assisted by Imposters keyboard whiz Steve Nieve. The evening's highlight was Apple's hellacious interpretation of Costello's "I Want You," a song about obsessive, vindictive love. She knocked it out of the park.
Armstrong brought the crowd to its feet, joining with Costello on "No Action," an acoustic "Alison," and bruising "Pump It Up," as well as on the Green Day hits "Wake Me Up When September Ends," and "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)."
As with all the other guests, Armstrong's affection for Costello seemed genuine, and the admiration mutual. All the younguns came back for an encore of enduring songs none of them wrote: Smokey Robinson's "You Really Got a Hold on Me" and Nick Lowe's "(What So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?"
Apple taps core of Costello
Shared fascination with romantic obsession spurs intense performance in Atlantic City
Monday, May 22, 2006
BY BRADLEY BAMBARGER
Star-Ledger Staff
POP/ROCK
When wondering beforehand who would strike the most sparks with Elvis Costello -- the latest veteran talent feted in VH1 Classic's tribute series "Decades Rock Live"-- it seemed that Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong would be that guest, or maybe the young rock combo Death Cab for Cutie.
But as soon as Fiona Apple bit into Costello's "Shabby Doll" during the show's taping Friday at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, it was apparent that these two were the kindred spirits.
The 29-year-old Apple, singing alongside Costello and his band, the Imposters, helped transform his dark baroque pop tune "Shabby Doll" into an even darker soul song; as she seethed out the line "he's all pride and no joy," it sounded just like one of her own pithy kiss-offs.
Romantic obsession was a field well-tilled by Costello in his early days, and Apple is no stranger to such emotions in her work. She not only sang his desperate epic "I Want You," she groaned and keened as if his 20-year-old emotions were hers today. Costello was obviously charged by her arm-flailing intensity, playing an outrageously dissonant guitar solo.
Unlike many of his peers who came up in the late '70s, Costello has remained a blue-chip artist. The depth of his talent -- reinforced Friday by barbed performance of his new song "The River in Reverse" -- is the key reason for his staying power, of course. But his questing enthusiasm for collaboration has been vital, too. He didn't merely accept homage from Apple and the others; the 51-year-old delved into their songbooks, too.
Costello gave Apple's ballad "I Know" an after-hours R&B feel, and the pair communed over her bared-nerve torch song "Red Red," with Costello howling like he was at the end of his rope. Afterward, the slight Apple was hopping with excitement, gushing to the crowd, "Can you imagine how cool I feel right now?"
Opening the show, Death Cab for Cutie was its urgent, melodic best on the band's "The New Year," but Ben Gibbard's warbling voice tended to defang such Costello covers as "Kinder Murder." Better was Death Cab's subtle backing of Costello on "When I Was Cruel," his noir-hued recollection of youthful spite.
Along with the usual delays and hype of a TV taping, the audience had to endure the execrable acoustics of the Mark Etess Arena. (Previous "Decades Rock" shows have been devoted to Heart, Cyndi Lauper and Bonnie Raitt; the arena appeared less than two-thirds full for Friday's taping, so word may be out about the venue's shortcomings.) Still, nothing could mute the hero's welcome that hundreds of young girls gave Armstrong.
The Green Day singer ripped through a wonderfully punkish version of Costello's "No Action" in league with the songwriter and his band. It was also fun to hear the Imposters sink their teeth into such Green Day anthems as "Wake Me Up When September Ends." Armstrong joined Costello for an acoustic set, but this felt forced, as they stumbled through a countrified take on Costello's "Lip Service."
The all-hands finale was far better than such features usually are, with Apple's voice ringing out of the chorus for Smokey Robinson's "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" and everyone chanting along to Costello's classic version of Nick Lowe's "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?"
The date of the Costello show's broadcast hasn't been announced. The next "Decades Rock Live" taping at the Taj Mahal is June 23, revolving around Lynyrd Skynyrd.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mon, May. 22, 2006
Costello celebrated at Trump
By Dan DeLuca
Philadelphia Inquirer Music Critic
There's no telling who Elvis Costello will be standing next to on stage. Last year, the bespectacled Brit toured with Emmylou Harris. This year, he put out an album with Holland's Metropole Orkest. Next month, he releases The River in Reverse, with New Orleans piano man Allen Toussaint.
On Friday at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, the 51-year-old songwriter performed with his band, the Imposters, while being celebrated by a troika decades younger than he: indie popsters Death Cab for Cutie, husky-voiced waif Fiona Apple, and Green Day singer Billie Joe Armstrong, who pulled the elementary school contingent into the multigenerational crowd.
Credit VH1's Decades Rock Live series for arranging the occasion. And blame the cabler for the taping delay, which will ensure that when the concert finally airs, the half-full, lousy-sounding Mark G. Etess Arena will be magically transformed into a polished show at The Perfect Concert Hall.
But enough bickering. The show was smartly conceived, the material well-chosen. Death Cab's Ben Gibbard came off like a dweeb by asking to restart a song because "I dropped my pick." That won't make the final cut. A forceful version of Costello's "Kinder Murder" and strummy duet on his own "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" will, deservedly so.
Death Cab represents the mild influence of Costello's verbally rich rock. Apple covers the dark side. Looking like a pint-sized Morticia Adams in a purple dress, she nearly stole the show from the gracious host she so obviously adores.
Costello made her gloriously good "I Know" his own. The two paired off on his "Shabby Doll" and her "Tymps (The Sick in the Head Song)," assisted by Imposters keyboard whiz Steve Nieve. The evening's highlight was Apple's hellacious interpretation of Costello's "I Want You," a song about obsessive, vindictive love. She knocked it out of the park.
Armstrong brought the crowd to its feet, joining with Costello on "No Action," an acoustic "Alison," and bruising "Pump It Up," as well as on the Green Day hits "Wake Me Up When September Ends," and "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)."
As with all the other guests, Armstrong's affection for Costello seemed genuine, and the admiration mutual. All the younguns came back for an encore of enduring songs none of them wrote: Smokey Robinson's "You Really Got a Hold on Me" and Nick Lowe's "(What So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?"
Elvis Costello , The Imposters and Friends
VH1 Classics' "Decades Rock Live!"
Trump Taj Mahal
Atlantic City
New Jersey
U.S.A.
19 May 2006
1. Accidents Will Happen - Elvis Costello (Guitar) w/Death Cab For
Cutie (Shared Vocal)
2. The New Year - Death Cab For Cutie
3. I Will Follow You Into The Dark - Elvis Costello w/Ben Gibbard of
DCFC (Acoustic Guitars/Shared Vocal)
4. (Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes - Elvis Costello w/Ben Gibbard of
DCFC (Acoustic Guitars/Shared Vocal)
5. Crooked Teeth - Death Cab For Cutie
6. Kinder Murder - Death Cab For Cutie
7. When I Was Cruel - Elvis Costello (Guitar) w/Death Cab For Cutie
(Shared Vocal)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8. Uncomplicated - Elvis Costello & the Imposters
9. Man Out Of Time - Elvis Costello & the Imposters
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10. Shabby Doll - Elvis Costello & the Imposters w/Fiona Apple (Shared
Vocal)
11. I Know - Elvis Costello & the Imposters
12. Tymps - Elvis Costello & the Imposters w/Fiona Apple (Lead Vocal)
13. I Want You - Elvis Costello & the Imposters w/Fiona Apple (Lead
Vocal)
14. Red Red Red - Elvis Costello & the Imposters w/Fiona Apple (Shared
Vocal)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
15. River In Reverse - Elvis Costello & the Imposters
16. Clubland - Elvis Costello & the Imposters
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
17. No Action - Elvis Costello & the Imposters w/Billie Joe Armstrong
(Guitar/Shared Vocal)
18. Wake Me Up When September Ends - Elvis Costello & the Imposters
w/Billie Joe Armstrong (Guitar/Shared Vocal)
19. Cheap Reward - Elvis Costello w/Billie Joe Armstrong (Acoustic
Guitars/Shared Vocal)
20. Good Riddance (Time Of Our Life) - Elvis Costello w/Billie Joe
Armstrong (Acoustic Guitars/Shared Vocal)
21. Alison - Elvis Costello w/Billie Joe Armstrong (Acoustic
Guitars/Shared Vocal)
22. No Action - Elvis Costello & the Imposters w/Billie Joe Armstrong
(Guitar/Lead Vocal)
23. Basket Case - Elvis Costello & the Imposters w/Billie Joe Armstrong
(Guitar/Lead Vocal)
24. Radio Radio - Elvis Costello & the Imposters w/Billie Joe Armstrong
(Guitar)
25. Pump It Up - Elvis Costello & the Imposters w/Billie Joe Armstrong
(Guitar)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
26. You Really Got A Hold On Me - All
27. (What's So Funny ˜Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding - All
( Submitted by William McDermott )
TheObserver ( London) features -
Soundtrack of my life: Elvis Costello
Exclusive: the singer, composer and occasional wit trawls through his boxes of rarities to write about his inspirations. Just don't go looking for them on eBay - or anywhere else
The song that taught me not to play with matches
That's No Reason To Cry (From 'Fire Truck Blues') Frank Sinatra
Following the critical acclaim for the Bob Gaudio-produced Watertown, Frank Sinatra entered Western Studios in May 1971 to create what was to be the second of four 'Elements' concept records for Reprise. Unfortunately, the Santa Ana winds of that year fanned wildfires throughout the Los Angeles area and the project was scrapped on grounds of taste. This incredibly moving reading of David Ackles's 'That's No Reason to Cry' is all that remains. It was accidentally released on an Italian compilation of later Sinatra material in 1987.
The song that triggered my obsession with golf
I'm Tee-Ed Off With You Bing Crosby And Alice Cooper
Someone slipped me a cassette of this back in the Eighties and I couldn't believe my ears. Following David Bowie's hit duet with Crosby on the 'Little Drummer Boy', Bing and the shock rocker shared a novelty tune about their mutual passion, golf. It has been rumoured that Alice's gender was kept secret from Crosby in order to lure him away from the golf course but this rehearsal tape consists more of one-liners than any actual singing and it is Alice who is on the receiving end of the crooner's still very sharp tongue.
The song that made me appreciate the genius of interpretative singing
Rainy Night In Soho Rod Stewart
Before he became a singer of standards, Rod was a fine interpretative artist of songs from further in the shadows. This wrenching version of the Shane MacGowan classic is all that is left of the unfinished Songs of London Town, Stewart's intelligent riposte to the vanities of Britpop. It is thought that he became troubled by the public's identification of him with the subject matter of another MacGowan song, 'The Old Main Drag', which was also under consideration, and he abandoned the project.
The song that made me wish that I had been born in Pontiac
Staying Alive The Detroit Saints
I picked up this 45 in a second-hand shop in Flint, Michigan in the early Eighties and fell in love with it. It has never been collected on any punk compilation to my knowledge. In 1979, a disenchanted Iggy Pop returned to his home state after falling out with RCA over their failure to turn Lust For Life's critical success into substantial sales. Assembling a gaggle of garage band musicians, appropriately enough, in the Detroit suburb of Pontiac, he recorded lacerating versions of current disco smashes, including this profound and profane deconstruction of the Bee Gees' massive hit.
The song I would like played at my funeral but only if I don't have to attend
Out Of Left Field (From 'Uncle Penn') Elvis Presley
'When you least expect it, fate stumbles in.' From these opening lines, this is a triumph. Recuperating from his near-death experience in the summer of 1977, Presley turned not to gospel but to Southern soul ballads and, specifically, the songs of Dan Penn. His voice unshackled from the pharmaceutical fog of years of abuse, this was his best performance since 1969. His rendition of 'Raining in Memphis' would be played at his state funeral, when the end finally came, but it is this moment of self-realisation that is most affecting.
Strange and possibly not true
1. After his dalliance with the songs of Sinatra, the teenage Costello transferred his affections to prog rock. He wrote the sleeve notes to Yes's Tales from Topographic Oceans, but had his credit removed after typographical differences.
2. Costello's golf addiction surfaced on 1979's 'Green Jacket', a homage to the US Masters. Producer Nick Lowe, an Aussie Rules fan, forced him to call the song 'Green Shirt'.
3. Costello produced Rum, Sodomy and the Lash by the Pogues, but only after Rod Stewart had turned it down.
4. Almost Blue, Costello's country album, was so called because in the early Eighties he had seriously considered switching his football loyalties to Everton.
( Submitted by kieslowski and Mark Perry)
The New Jersey Star-Ledger reports -
( extract)
When it comes to rock music, the best equivalent of Kevin Bacon, in the "Six Degrees Of ..." department, might be Elvis Costello.
Over the course of his restless, often brilliant career, Costello, 51, has written songs with Burt Bacharach and Paul McCartney, produced albums for the Pogues and Squeeze, and performed with Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and the Beastie Boys. In recent years, he has presented collaborative shows with Emmylou Harris and Los Lobos' David Hidalgo. He was backed by the Dutch orchestra Metropole Orkest on his most recent album, "My Flame Burns Blue"; his upcoming album, "The River In Reverse," teams him with one of the giants of New Orleans R&B, Allen Toussaint.
Yet for his Friday night ( May 19th) concert at the Trump Taj Mahal, which is being taped for broadcast on VH1 Classics' "Decades Rock Live!" series, he will welcome, as guests, three younger artists he has never worked with: Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, Fiona Apple and the band Death Cab For Cutie.
Costello, who will be backed by his regular backing group, the Imposters, for most of the show, says he might have chosen "friends who are contemporaries of mine or even a year or two up on me, but that seemed a little too obvious. I've done a lot of collaborative work in the last 10 or 12 years; to repeat any of those wouldn't be taking advantage of, perhaps, an unusual opportunity. So in the end we decided not to go with people I'd worked with before."
He says he doesn't know any of the guests well and has met only one of them, Armstrong, before. He has talked to them, though, by phone, in preparation for the show, and says he has been encouraged by the songs they want to perform.
"Some of the choices they went for were really surprising, and I think that's good because they're coming at my stuff from different angles," he says, declining to name the songs, as nothing has been finalized. "It seems like they have their heads on straight about what we're trying to do.
"I think we just have to make the most interesting show that we can musically and have some fun. We'll take seriously learning the songs and trying to play them the best we can. But it must be enjoyable to do because we're just doing it for one occasion. If it isn't enjoyable, why are we doing it?"
New friends for Elvis
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
BY JAY LUSTIG
Star-Ledger Staff
POP/ROCK
When it comes to rock music, the best equivalent of Kevin Bacon, in the "Six Degrees Of ..." department, might be Elvis Costello.
Over the course of his restless, often brilliant career, Costello, 51, has written songs with Burt Bacharach and Paul McCartney, produced albums for the Pogues and Squeeze, and performed with Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and the Beastie Boys. In recent years, he has presented collaborative shows with Emmylou Harris and Los Lobos' David Hidalgo. He was backed by the Dutch orchestra Metropole Orkest on his most recent album, "My Flame Burns Blue"; his upcoming album, "The River In Reverse," teams him with one of the giants of New Orleans R&B, Allen Toussaint.
Yet for his Friday night concert at the Trump Taj Mahal, which is being taped for broadcast on VH1 Classics' "Decades Rock Live!" series, he will welcome, as guests, three younger artists he has never worked with: Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, Fiona Apple and the band Death Cab For Cutie.
Costello, who will be backed by his regular backing group, the Imposters, for most of the show, says he might have chosen "friends who are contemporaries of mine or even a year or two up on me, but that seemed a little too obvious. I've done a lot of collaborative work in the last 10 or 12 years; to repeat any of those wouldn't be taking advantage of, perhaps, an unusual opportunity. So in the end we decided not to go with people I'd worked with before."
He says he doesn't know any of the guests well and has met only one of them, Armstrong, before. He has talked to them, though, by phone, in preparation for the show, and says he has been encouraged by the songs they want to perform.
"Some of the choices they went for were really surprising, and I think that's good because they're coming at my stuff from different angles," he says, declining to name the songs, as nothing has been finalized. "It seems like they have their heads on straight about what we're trying to do.
"I think we just have to make the most interesting show that we can musically and have some fun. We'll take seriously learning the songs and trying to play them the best we can. But it must be enjoyable to do because we're just doing it for one occasion. If it isn't enjoyable, why are we doing it?"
The show comes in the middle of an extremely busy period of Costello's career. Having released "My Flame Burns Blue" in February, he just wrapped up -- last weekend -- a tour on which he was joined by different orchestras in different cities. The "River In Reverse" album came together hurriedly, after Costello and Toussaint performed together at three post-Katrina benefits in New York (where Costello lives and where Toussaint relocated after the hurricane made his hometown unlivable).
They have presented some other benefits since those initial ones, in September, and performed April 30 at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. After the album's release, on June 6, they will embark on their first actual tour. They're booked at New York's Beacon Theatre July 10 and 11.
Toussaint, 68, is best known as a producer and songwriter. His name has appeared on hits by everyone from Ernie K-Doe (1961's "Mother-In-Law") to Lee Dorsey ("Working in the Coal Mine"), Dr. John ("Right Place Wrong Time"), the Pointer Sisters ("Yes We Can Can") and LaBelle ("Lady Marmalade"). He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998 in the nonperformer category, though he has released many records under his own name.
In the'80s, he did some production and keyboard work for Costello.
"I really valued the collaborations we had," says Costello, "but I hadn't, to my shame, kept up the acquaintance that much. But I was asked to play at a benefit concert by Wynton Marsalis (in September), and I could think of nothing better than to perform with Allen."
Their friendship rekindled, they began talking about making an album together. The finished product features new versions of seven old Toussaint songs (including a taut, intense "On Your Way Down"), plus five new Costello/Toussaint co-compositions and the new, Costello-written title track. Backing throughout is by the Imposters, joined by the Toussaint-arranged Crescent City Horns.
Several songs can be interpreted as direct comments on New Orleans.
On the title track, Costello sings, "There must be something better than this/I don't see how it can get much worse/What do we have to do, to send the river in reverse?"
On "Broken Promise Land," a co-composition, he seethes, "I swore I'd never walk away, until saw this day/It didn't turn out the way we planned/Now I'm living in Broken Promise Land."
"It's not for me to put myself in the place of people from the city," he says. "I was just standing outside it and trying to imagine what that's like, and trying to imagine how you would feel, if nobody was coming to your aid.
"Also, I simply wanted to make a record that celebrated the best things about Allen's writing. It originally started out to be an Allen Toussaint songbook record because I thought that was a record that should exist. And it was a great way for him to go back to work while he was waiting to go home."
They recorded some of the album in Los Angeles and some in New Orleans.
"When we started to plan the record and to write, we didn't know if we could even enter the city," says Costello. "By the time the (songwriting was) completed, it became apparent that we could indeed go to New Orleans.
"Quite apart from anything else, you're given a budget of money from the record company to go and do the work, and I thought it was correct to spend some of that money in the city to show that it could be done. People should go there and do as much work as they can."
The Word reports -
( extract)
What gets Costello keyed up is music with its roots showing, be it the blues heritage that suffuses jazz and soul, the ballad heritage that informs folk and country, or the classical tradition of string quartet, ballet and opera. This last, incidentally, gives him more in common with Roger Waters than he might care to admit: rock musicians turned opera composers being a rather exclusive club. But then Costello’s already composed a ballet, II Sogno, the score for which makes up half of My Flame Burns Blue, so he’s all set for the scoffers.
“I was aware it was going to be a bit of a stretch for people to accept that I was writing this ballet piece. I’ve got no ego about being seen as a symphonist. Pompous classical critics tend to say, ‘This isn’t symphonic’, and I go, ‘But where does it say it’s a symphony?’ It’s got some charm, it’s got some humour to it, it’s got some good melodies, and I try to use the orchestra in an interesting way.” I’m starting to realise that Costello doesn’t have much time for questions in more senses than one. When I ask him about having taught himself musical notation for the ballet, he’s almost defensively dismissive.
“It’s a technique I developed over seven years. But you can become a doctor or a priest in that time, so it’s not that much of an achievement. Learning anything when you’re older is sometimes thought to be harder but I didn’t learn to drive ‘till was 35. I’d written 200 songs before I decided I needed notated music — it wasn’t exactly holding me back!”
Like many too long in the public eye, Costello is prone to trying to deconstruct questions for critical agendas.
“There’s this bland assumption that these things are only ever done to make yourself look clever. I don’t need to write a classical piece to be taken too seriously — look at all the pompous theorising that’s gone on about my work since 1977!”
He’s just as spiky about My Flame Burns Blue, as if parrying those who either seek to pin a label on him, or to pin him to the spot.
“I didn’t just think, great I’m going to work with an orchestra, better dash off a few arrangements. I’d created this repertoire that only existed for the concert stage. And goodness, if I can’t have some fun with Watching The Detectives, after almost 20 years, then I don’t know what. Taking the film noir thing that was always there and making it literal. It’s only for this one evening, it doesn’t erase the original take, which is one of my favourite records I've made.
ALLEN TOUSSAINT (pronounced Too-Sant around here) puts the “gentle” in “southern gentleman”. Even more immaculately turned out than Costello, the author of Lee Dorsey’s Working In A Coal Mine, Aaron Neville’s Hercules, The Pointer Sisters’ Yes We Can, and Glen Campbell’s Southern Nights may be New Orleans royalty but is incredibly unassuming. Indeed, if anyone is awed, it’s the veteran’s backroom boy who’s awed by performer Costello’s consummate ability to talk. Indeed rather than being affronted when he’s talked over, Toussaint shakes his head in admiration.
This contrasting couple’s collaboration has its roots in catastrophe. Caught up in Hurricane Katrina, Toussaint took refuge in a hotel, only to find his house gutted and his studio utterly destroyed. He sought refuge in New York. He had previously worked with Costello on a cover of Yoko Ono’s Walking On Thin Ice in 1983, then again on Deep Dark Truthful Mirror on the Spike album. After Katrina, Costello began playing Toussaint’s Freedom For The Stallion in tribute to its victims. Both he and Toussaint played at a huge benefit for Katrina victims in New York’s Rose Hall last September. Watching Toussaint at Joe’s Pub the next afternoon, Costello decided the time was right for a “song-book record” — an album of Toussaint’s songs, performed by the pair of them. If the contrast between Costello’s acerbic scepticism and Toussaint’s sunny positivity struck outsiders, it didn’t strike Toussaint.
“I thought it was a wonderful idea,” Toussaint drawls with that distinctive New Orleans French tinge. Even when the idea broadened to include new songs written collaboratively. “I never thought of him as negative — I thought of it as positively saying something. And I like what happens to meanings as you soak them in and as you digest them — at first something has a certain taste, and when you take the second bite, it has a little more profound taste and you get to know it better... I enjoy the digestion. This has truly been a milestone in my life.”
In fact, Costello has become subtly, but noticeably sunnier ever since he stopped drinking ten years ago. In fact, on a new number wrote about Katrina, he essays a kind of spiky conscious soul — The River In Reverse.
“It seemed kind of foolish, like a denial, to say that nothing about this moved me to say anything at all,” Costello says, pre-emptively fending off predicted criticism. “The presumption of American foreign policy telling other people how to live is horrifying when something like Katrina reveals how some people in this city are being asked to live as a matter of course. The people who were least equipped to survive it were abandoned by government. Why? Because they don’t vote.”
So it was a political move to complete the recording in New Orleans itself, using Toussaint’s regular horn players.
“It was very moving to be somewhere you’re used to so much bustle, so much life,” says Costello. “The franchise businesses have all shut up shop; no tourists of all; hotels full of people who’ve been relocated. A lot of Hummers and people in sand-coloured uniforms carrying automatic weapons. And there’s still a curfew!”
Lest anyone decide this is the musical equivalent of Oscar-hungry actors doing “disabled”, Costello says, “If this sounds like some terribly grave thing we were doing, it was anything but. We set up in the room together, no separation, the horns all over the drums, but it doesn’t matter, because they’re going to play it right. It was truly joyful. And we finished the album in 11 days.”
It’s not often you get to see someone like Elvis Costello in a stripped-back, intimate setting, so tonight’s show at Joe’s Pub is an absolute treat. The venue may look like the inside of the Tardis, but the performance is a highly human, tautly emotional affair.
There’s even more purple present tonight, Costello wearing a purple suit and both performers boasting purple ties. And while, seated at the piano, rolling out licks piquant as gumbo, Toussaint says not a word; Costello is loquacious, indeed purple between songs. And if anyone were in any doubt about the coherence of the collaboration, Costello sings a quite astonishing Freedom For The Stallion, while new song The Sharpest Thorn reveals their contrasts to be complementary: Toussaint’s insouciance balancing Costello’s spikiness.
That spikiness is unstinted the next day, however. When I ask about the quantity of collaboration in the second half of his career, Costello immediately parries: “All records are to a degree collaborative. My early records were a collaboration with Nick Lowe.” But then, as the sparkling water flows, he expands. “And then as you get older, you’re trying things from consciously different worlds that require more accommodation, like with Burt Bacharach — very precise values about music, written down music; with the Brodksy quartet, if I’d gone in there and said, “It goes, la-la-la...”, they’d just look at me like I’m an idiot. You’ve just got to know the language of communication.”
Can he maintain this diversity of work?
“All I’ve been trying to do is not work for somebody else,” he says. “If I get up at 6.30 in the morning — that’s my choice. I don’t see any reason to lay in bed. There’s a lot of things to do that are exciting and fun — it’s not just all about sensual things. It’s not about challenges and how you’re perceived. It’s not about ambitions, it’s not even about money. Having hits and bullshit like that doesn’t make you any happier. Pop stardom was fucking hideous. I’m enjoying it a lot more now, not worrying about whether things are successful.” An enviable position. and indeed, a truly enviable life.
The Word , May '06
IF YOUR NAME’S ELVIS AND THIS IS TUESDAY..
...that could mean a collaboration with Allen Toussaint, a few standards with Tony Bennett or a night at the Grand Ole Opry. But it could as easily have been country or ballet, film music or jazz. TOBY MANNING meets the intrepid explorer in New York
" SHALL I TELL YOU my week?” demands Elvis Costello, black-suited, purple-tied and anything but tongue-tied in a Manhattan hotel suite at a sprightly 10 am.
“It sta