Leave the Light On is intussen alweer het vierde album van de Texaanse singer-songwriter Terry Klein. De eerste twee werden geproduceerd door Walt Wilkins, de laatste twee door Thom Jutz. Jutz bracht zelf onlangs samen met Martin Simpson het prachtige, traditionele folkabum Nothing But Green Willow (The Songs Of Mary Sands And Jane Gentry) uit. Absoluut een aanrader voor liefhebbers van dit genre. Daarop is op enkele songs de fiddle van Tammy Rodgers te horen.
Hij werkte ook nu mee. Verder krijgt men hulp van Lynn Williams (drums), Tim Marks (bas) en Scotty Sanders (pedal steel guitar). Het album werd vorig jaar op 22 juni live in Nashville in slechts zeven uur opgenomen. Op 4 juli was reeds de master klaar. Het is Terry’s meest kwetsbare en persoonlijke album geworden.
Dat blijkt al meteen bij opener Shimmer and Hums, wat over zijn in december overleden stiefvader gaat. Om zeker te zijn dat die titel al niet gebruikt was, googlede hij de titel op internet en kwam op de website van Rachael Wren terecht. Van haar mocht hij haar werk “Anniversary” gebruiken als albumhoes. Zijn begeleiders kleuren de liedjes zonder uitzondering sober en fraai in.
Net als op de voorgangers blijkt Terry een verhalenverteller pur sang, in navolging van grote voorgangers als Townes Van Zandt en Guy Glark. Leave the Light On is andermaal een prachtplaat. Achtergrondinformatie van Terry zelf is eventueel hieronder te lezen.
Theo Volk
Releasedatum : 10 november 2023 Independent
Website : https://terrykleinmusic.com/
The Songs :
Shimmers and Hums
(full band). I wrote this one after my stepfather passed away last December.
The three months after he passed, my notebook is literally filled with songs
where I’m trying to figure it out, figure out what it means. I set it aside for
a while and then one morning found my way to this. I did a google search on the
words “shimmers and hums” just to make sure I wasn’t going to step on anyone’s
creative toes. That led me to an interview with a painter from Brooklyn, NY
named Rachael Wren. Rachael paints these big, big, beautiful canvases with shapes
and colors arranged in a manner that, she said in the interview, she hopes
creates an atmosphere that “shimmers and hums.” I went back and tweaked the
last couple lines of the song and that was that. Rachael was gracious enough to
allow me to use one of her paintings “Anniversary” on the album cover. My favorite
line in this song is the one about the metal box with blue duct tape on the
lid. And the bridge of this song is one of my favorite things that’s ever shown
up on one of my records. (2023)
Blue Hill Bay
(full band). I sure love Mt Desert Island in Maine. We’ve stayed a few times at
a house that looks out on Blue Hill Bay toward Isle Au Haut. I’ve tried to
write songs about this part of the world, but it’s a lot easier to write about
somewhere you hate. Or at least it is for me. Then one winter morning in Austin
(it does get cold here, believe it or not) I saw a cardinal sitting in a tree
and the first line hit me and then the character presented himself and it came pretty
quick after that. The rhythm on this is weird as hell, which I hope doesn’t
freak people out. The math ends up as 4/4 time but you don’t think it is. My
favorite line in this one is about the cop who tries to make our hero sweat in
the dark (2022)
Wedding Day Eve
(full band). There was a time when I was the designated grown-up in my family.
If someone needed an executor or a trustee or anything like that, it fell on
me. Probably because of my law degree. This reached its zenith when my little
brother asked me to officiate his wedding ceremony in November 2015. I gave a
little homily about what I consider the indispensable ingredients of a happy
marriage. I became a full time songwriter a little while after that and my
designated grown-up status has taken a hit. Last summer my sister-in-law got married.
She didn't ask me to officiate, but she did ask me to play a show for the
guests the night before the wedding. So I took the homily that I'd written for my
little brother's wedding and turned it into a song. It was a lot easier than I
feared it would be. I didn't know this when I wrote it, but I sang for the
guests in an actual meadow so the chorus hit a little bit extra hard. The meadow
reference itself comes from a Tom Waits interview in the New York Times some
years ago.
“THERE’S AN EXPRESSION in classical music,” Tom Waits told me, one Saturday night in January, when he called to talk about where music happens. “It goes, ‘We went out to the meadow.’ You ever heard that one?”
I told Waits I hadn’t.
“It’s for those evenings,” he continued, “that can only be
described in that way: There were no walls, there were no music stands, there
weren’t even any instruments. There was no ceiling, there was no floor, we all
went out to the meadow. It describes a feeling. Usually someone will say it,
but they’re probably reluctant to say it — you might be afraid that only you
went out to the meadow last night. But it’s one of those things where you go as
a group. It’s not like: ‘Last night was a really great show for me and it
sucked for you.’ No. We all went out to the meadow. There’s something magical
about it. And you can never plan on it.”
Here's a link to the article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/t-magazine/beck-tom-waits-kendrick-lamar.html?searchRe
sultPosition=1 . My favorite line here is the one about every speck of dust. (2022)
This Too Shall Pass
(full band). This song rocks and I love it. There’s the old parable about how a
king or queen in some ancient place gathered all of the wisest people in the
kingdom and asked them to come up with a phrase that works in all scenarios.
The winner was the one who came back with “This Too Shall Pass.” And there’s a
taoist story about a farmer whose horse runs away and then his son breaks his
leg trying to tame one of the other horses and the neighbors are sympathetic
and say “what a horrible thing” but the farmer just says “Maybe.” And then the
next day the military comes to try to conscript the son but they don’t because
he has a broken leg. I didn’t start out seeking to write a song based on those old
stories. I was just sitting with my guitar one morning and the words “Skunk
Face McGee walked into the bar” popped into my head, I think because I was
reading Jim Harrison novellas. And then I just kept writing Lines to see where
it went. My favorite line in this is the one about the blind squirrel. (2022)
Well Enough Alone
(trio). This is the first song on the album that introduces you to the acoustic
trio, me and Thomm and Tammy. It’s a companion piece to my song “Cheryl” on the
last record. Basically it tells the same story, and it’s a gruesome one, from a
different point of view. I got that idea from Marilynne Robinson, who’s now
written four beautiful books about the same characters and events in a
fictional Iowa town, each from a different perspective. My favorite line here
is the second one because it comes out of nowhere and if you’re not paying attention
at that point you’re just never going to pay attention. (2022)
A Dollar, Two Quarter,
and a Dime (full band). This song and the next one are me at age 15. I wrote
this one in 2019 but it didn’t fit on the last record or maybe it did but I
have this strict rule that records have ten songs. I think when I wrote it I’d
written my song “Does the Fish Feel the Knife” a few weeks earlier and I knew
that was a good one and so I was trying to do something that had a similar
feel. This track sounds cool, kind of like early Allman Brothers. It makes you feel
like a cool person when you listen to it. Ardmore Way is a street in Central LA
where a person could buy some marijuana in the late 80s, early 90s, if a person
wanted to do such a thing. Two lines here are tied for my favorite here, the
one about the pickle jar and the one about the latchkey blues. (2019)
Oh Melissa (full
band). I wrote this in December of 2021, after I’d recorded the last record but
before I’d released it. When I write anything, it could be a line or a verse or
a whole song, I put it in a voice memo in my phone. If I think the song has
promise, I’ll actually write the title rather than just allowing that automated
iphone thing where they title the voice memo based on the geographic location
where you made it. This is one of the ones where I actually wrote the title. And
then I forgot about it. For a year. A full year. Sometimes I’ll scroll through
the voice memos to see if there’s anything that grabs me and I found my way to this
one and listened to it and was kind of bowled over. This is also me at 15. Some
of my very favorite songs are the one where you know something bad is about to
happen but the song doesn’t quite get there. Think “Empty as a Drum” by
Turnpike or “King of California” by Dave Alvin. I guess it’s a bit like the Cormac
McCarthy novels where nobody you care about dies on the page, you just find out
that they're dead and that somehow makes it even more devastating. I think
that’s what I was reaching for on this one. My favorite line here is the one
about how voices hang in the air like so much river mist. (2021)
That Used To Be My
Train (trio). For most of my thirties and into my early forties I rode the commuter
rail from West Roxbury to South Station in Boston. It was about a 25 minute
ride. There's a section where the track runs next Arnolds Arboretum, more
specifically a grassy hillside with trails and big, old trees here and there.
The train would rumble down the track in the morning and I'd look out the
window at people walking on that hillside. With their dogs. Maybe by themselves
in quiet contemplation. And I'd imagine a life in which rather than being on
the inside looking out at all of that beauty, I'd be on the outside looking in.
I had no idea how to get there and so I'd just go back to whatever I was reading.
Which was usually something good. But still. After I found my way to
songwriting and had people I trust tell me that I was good at it, I starting
cutting back on my time in the office. By the beginning of 2016, I was writing
in the mornings and heading into the office in the afternoon. I did a lot of my
writing walking on the trails of Arnold Arboretum. And now and then I'd see the
train roll past and feel about as fortunate as a person can feel. This was in
that magical period where I'd decided to take a leap and before the music
business beat me up a little.I wrote an early version of the song in May 2016
and even played it at shows through the years. People liked it and would ask me
to play it but I knew it needed a couple of tweaks. Those fixes took about six
years to present themselves. Then my friend (and one of Texas's best
songwriters), Mark Abrahams, said to someone "If you want to know Terry
Klein, listen to his song 'That Used to Be My Train.'" And I decided to
put the song on the new record. Tammy’s fiddle part here is about as good as
any part could ever be. My favorite line is the one about the carpet beetles.
(2016)
Sky Blue LeBaron
(trio). I wrote this one shortly before going into the studio on the last record.
We have a neighbor across the street who has an immaculate blue Chrysler
LeBaron. One day I was saying to myself “Sky Blue LeBaron convertible coupe”
over and over and it had this wonderful unique cadence to it and so I created
this character, this classic Austin guy, who would drive that car. I’ve never
even met this neighbor! Not to this day! This one has a weird rhythm too but I
promise you it’s in 4/4 at the end of the day. My favorite line here is the one
where Jenny’s slinging drinks. (2021)
Starting at Zero (full band). This was the last song that made the record. My tradition, my own personal one, is that the last song that makes a record is the final track on the record. That’s true of Wasted on the Living on Great Northern, Steady Rain on Tex, What You Lose Along the Way on GLTC, and now here. It’s not that these are the last songs I wrote before making the record. They’re just the last songs I wrote that made the record, if that makes sense. I wrote this with my friend Aaron Smith. It was kicking around in April 2023 after I’d finished Shimmers & Hums and I couldn’t get it right. Aaron came over one afternoon and made a couple of suggestions and it was like the whole thing clicked into place. This song means a lot to me for a lot of reasons. I wrote it for my brother and my mom, and dedicated the record to them, because of some stuff they’re going through. But it also means a lot to me because it’s the song I always wanted to write. The first songs I wrote were honky tonk songs. Trying to copy Hank Williams, and Ray Price, and Lefty Frizzell. I wrote so many bad songs in this vein. What I wanted to do was take that art form and tell a story of heartbreak that I had the credibility to tell. It’s rare that Ithink something I’ve written is an unequivocal success. I think that about this one. My favorite line in this song, and maybe just maybe my favorite line I’ve ever written, is the one how I’m lost in the thicket of a love gone to seed. (2023, w/ Aaron Smith)