How do you write a song about accompanying a close friend who is in the process of dying of cancer, yet retain a sense of humour—albeit it a dry, gallows humour—about it?
Well, if you’re Jason Isbell, this is how. It is the opinion of Threehundredsongs that Jason is among the very finest living songwriters. And it’s my site, my rules so you’ll have to deal with it.
When she was drunk, she made cancer jokes
Made up her own doctors’ notes
Surrounded by her family, I saw that she was dying alone
It’s difficult to select a lyric, let along to add many of my own words, since the song is basically perfect in every possible way from start to finish, but:
If I’d fucked her before she got sick
I’d never hear the end of it
She don’t have the spirit for that now
We just drink our drinks and laugh out loud
And bitch about the weekend crowd
And try to ignore the elephant somehow
You’ll just have to listen to it yourself I guess.
There’s one thing that’s real clear to me
No one dies with dignity
We just try to ignore the elephant somehow
Lucinda Williams released her first album, Ramblin’ on My Mind, in 1979. Despite plentiful successful as a songwriter—her songs being recorded by country royalty including Mary Chapin Carpenter, Patty Loveless and Emmylou Harris—it took until 1998’s Car Wheels on a Gravel Road for Lucinda to garner a great deal of attention as a performer in her own right.
With 2001’s Essence, and in particular its title track, Lucinda’s voice—always magnificent—takes a new turn. This, now, is a grown-ass woman who knows exactly what she wants. And what she wants is for adults only. We all know what this song is about: it’s Lucinda being utterly filthy, and here at Threehundredsongs, we fully approve of that sort of thing.
Baby, sweet baby
You’re my drug
Come on and let me taste your stuff
Perhaps later, Lucinda. Can we just cuddle and talk a little while longer?
I am waiting here for more
I am waiting by your door
I am waiting on your back steps
Apparently not: we appear to have a stalking situation on our hands here. There is a myth that men are predatory, while women are the victims. Let’s see…
I am waiting in my car
I am waiting at this bar
I am waiting for your essence
Lucinda’s aching, incessant sensuality come through in every syllable.
Baby, sweet baby
Can’t get enough
Please come find me and help me get fucked up
…
I am waiting for your essence
By Essence, Lucinda leaves the interpretation open to the reader, as in all good art. I’m pretty sure I know what she means. And, like I said, the lady knows exactly what she wants.
The credits read like an Americana family tree: Ryan Adams, Jim Keltner, Reese Wynans, Gary Louris. But does that matter, when the song is all Lucinda, and is sheer pornography? The passion, the heat and the build-up are tangible in this one. Cold showers all round?
Now in her eighth decade, Lucinda’s fifteenth studio album, Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart is to be released in June of this year. You can pre-order buy it via lucindawilliams.com.
There is very little to say about OK Go that hasn’t already been said, other than that their music and songs often get upstaged by their mental videos. It’s worth closing your eyes and opening your ears, though.
It’s like a freight train
That being said, here’s one of their videos. No prizes for guessing which two of the cast absolutely win it for me.
Which is the lyric? Well…
Gravity’s just a habit that you’re really sure you can’t break
But I’ll go with:
I wish I had said the things you thought that I had said
After the evening I’ve had, the soundtrack has to be David Ford’s I Sincerely Apologise for all the Trouble I’ve Caused. The title alone tells it all. It reads like a suicide note, but it isn’t.
Which is the song?
I Don’t Care What You Call Me feels right, but we don’t all have that protective coating.
State of the Nation is the best song on the album: a damning indictment of several entities who should be indicted, as relevant today as it was in 2005. But that’s politics and too depressing and distracting to dwell on right now.
I’ll pick Cheer Up (You Miserable Fuck). Is that the redemption? Depends on who is saying it and who is on the receiving end of those words.
Either way, a thoroughly beautiful, and brutally honest album from a magnificent songwriter.
Soundtrack for the evening (yes, I know it’s morning) is Amandla’s Falling Alone.
Personal because Claude Coleman Jr. was a close friend, absolute gentleman, and legendary drummer.
And also shit at table football. You’d think a professional drummer would have hand-eye co-ordination, but you would be sadly, sadly mistaken.
Claude is the drummer in Ween, and later Eagles of Death Metal, whilst being kind of hot at graphic design, which is how I met him. He’s kind of hot anyway.
Which is the song?
I’ll go with Call Your Own. A simple love song to an unborn infant.
And I’ll leave you with my memory of Claude walking into the office in Kentish Town where we worked, which was the Jewish News, and what was then totallyjewish dot com. Dude strutted in, surveyed the room full of writers and misfits and said quite loudly, in his upstate New York drawl: “Damn! Jewish women got it goin’ on!”
You ain’t wrong Claude. But only he could get away with that.
Soundtrack for the evening is Zoë Wren’s Inspired. Ostensibly a covers album, it’s clearly a very personal work for Zoë.
It’s kind of personal for me too. Not least because I got to meet Zoë on one of my very first shifts working at Colchester Arts Centre. Which is where I kinda fell in love with her, and loaded up on her impressive merch, in some sort of findom Stockholm Syndrome trance, presumably. But more accurately, she is a beautiful artist and thoroughly lovely person.
Which is the song? Well, Who Knows Where the Time Goes is a little too personal. We played the Fairport Convention original at my sister’s funeral and so I can’t ever listen to that song again. And nobody can ever come close to Sandy Denny anyway.
Can you cover a Joni Mitchell song and get away with it? Apparently so. Zoë’s interpretation of Both Sides Now nails it.
But I’ll go with Joanne. Apparently by Lady Gaga originally. Not an artist I’ve invested a lot of time in learning about, but the song is an emotional killer, and Zoë will show you why.
Soundtrack for the evening… The Get Up Kids’ debut Four Minute Mile was made on a tiny budget. Teenage drummer Ryan Pope even had to be signed out of school by his mum to make it to the recording session.
Is this album the foundation of emo? Rites of Spring might argue. After a night blasting this, my neighbours may argue too. But we’re not arguing here, we’re loving.
Which is the song? Better Half is the emotional killer, and sign of what was to come for TGUK. The song about Amy (Don’t Hate Me, and damn, I still love you Amy) bruises me. No Love is the redemption.
Which is the lyric?
I can’t put my hands all over you, but think of what the two of us could do
It isn’t easy to find a lot of information about The Ashtray Hearts, at least here in the UK. I suspect that much of what little attention they have garnered here over the years is thanks to legendary broadcaster Bob Harris, who played them extensively on both his Weekend and Country shows for many years from 2002 onwards, and featured Still Shaking on Volume IV of his rather wonderful Bob Harris Presents… CD series in 2003.
What’s that writing on your hand
A reminder that will take you away
Back to your life, one that I once knew
I’d give anything to be there with you
Hailing from The Ashtray Hearts’ 2002 LP Old Numbers, Still Shaking is far from cheerful music. I don’t think they ever recorded any cheerful music, to be fair. The song draws heavily on the band’s favourite themes of loss, loneliness and rueful nostalgia, interspersed with brief moments of guarded optimism…
Sitting in your backyard
Wasting another night
Let me take your hand
One last time until we get it right
…and half-committal, lump-in-throat confessions:
I’ve done nothing more
Than let the two of us down
It’s all set against a characteristic Ashtray Hearts arrangement, both sparse and lush at the same time, somehow. The song is driven by a rolling banjo figure—which manages to make even that instrument sound musical—and the warm, distant trumpet lament which the band have used so evocatively throughout their works.
The Ashtray Hearts couldn’t really be described as prolific, having released four whole albums in a little over two decades. In a pleasing turn of events, they are still recording though, with 2023’s Golden Century arriving just 10 years after the previous release, The Strangest Light. I note that they’re still on Free Election Records, the tiny Minneapolis label on which they started all those years ago, which is rather heartwarming.
I’d love to tell you more about the band, but there really isn’t that much information about them available. Perhaps that air of mystique is kind of appropriate to their music all the same.
John Martyn’s Grace and Danger is widely considered to be one of the classic break up albums of all time, regularly being mentioned in the same breath as Blood on the Tracks and Rumours, and it isn’t difficult to see why.
Sweet Little Mystery heads up the trio of emotional killers here, being followed in short order by Hurt in Your Heart and Baby Please Come Home. It’s a lot to take in, even on a good day, so you should probably approach with caution if your own emotional life is a little rocky right now.
The context for the album is, of course, John’s tumultuous, protracted separation and subsequent divorce from his missus—and long-time musical collaborator—Beverley Martyn. As such, writing and recording took place in fraught circumstances at a time that would see John unravel both physically and emotionally. To be fair, if you yourself would have let Beverley Martyn slip through your fingers as a result of your own numbskullery, you’d be a bit miffed too.
It’s not the letters that you just don’t write
It’s not the arms of some new friend
It’s not the crying in the depth of the night
That keeps me hanging on, just waiting for the end
It’s that sweet little mystery that’s in your heart
It’s just that sweet little mystery that makes me cry
It didn’t help that John got his mate Phil Collins involved too, himself going through a bitter divorce of his own at the time. Recording sessions must have been a right laugh.
If we’re looking to be critical, it’s hard to overlook the synth-heavy 1980s production, perhaps not entirely unrelated to Phil’s involvement. Either way, Grace and Danger is said to have remained John’s favourite of his own albums up until his passing in 2009. Not for nothing did he doggedly fight Island Records at every step simply to get it released, the powers that be feeling that it was all a bit too hard to listen to.
For all the heartbreak and catharsis here, there is an attempt at redemption. In Save Some (for Me), John throws up the emotional defences, maintaining that he wasn’t really all that committed to her after all:
I saved some
You didn’t get it all
‘Cause I saved some for me
Did you, John? Did you really? I’m not entirely convinced that you did. You don’t seem the type.
Nevertheless, a classic album, and for me Sweet Little Mystery is the track that captures its essence. Travel on you relentless beautiful jester and magician, Mr. John Martyn.
