Remembering, (or Introducing,) The Balancing Act.

By Peter Blackstock

Fitting, probably, to write about this band here; my hidden little blog is no doubt even more obscure than the profile of The Balancing Act has been over the past couple of decades. Which is probably understandable enough for the blog....but not so much for the band.

We all have bands of our youth, sounds that make us remember a certain age, place, time. You hear a song and it instantly transports you back to a little league summer, a junior-high basement hang, a high school football game. I get all that, and I have all that, too.

But this is not that deal. Granted that I discovered The Balancing Act amid such impressionable times, in the tail end of my college years. I first heard their music sometime in '86, I think, and first saw them play in the fall of '87. They didn't last much past that; they'd called it quits by '89. I'm not sure why, exactly, but I guess they all had different lives to go on and lead. And so there was an indie EP, a couple of LPs for IRS, and goodbye. Similar story for a lot of bands in that heyday.

But, damnit, this was NOT that same story. The Balancing Act was something more than all that. Maybe they all had other things to move on and become....but the music they made in their youth was not forgettable. It was not disposable. It didn't not matter.

I guess I'm not the only one who feels this way. This past spring, the band gathered in Los Angeles to play for a small but appreciative crowd, a bunch of folks who remembered and revered what they'd done. It was hard to peg exactly what The Balancing Act were, which is much to their credit. They were a folk band, a jazz band, an indie band, even a sort of new-wave-ish band in their time. A rock 'n' roll band in the finest sense of that term, such that it denotes a converging of excitable energy and adventuresome spirit. They were, ultimately, great musicians, creative souls, and positive-charged human beings.

"We're not lost, we're meant to be here," they sang in one of their most indelible tunes. That's as good a summation of The Balancing Act's raison d'etre as I could offer. Seeking, yes; lost, no. They were meant to be here, digging for songs and sounds that had yet to be found. I reveled in following them on that journey, if only for a brief time. The legacy remained with me....as, apparently, it did with them, if this footage from those recent reunion shows is any indication.

Jackson Browne, "Something Fine"

Many thanks to Jason Verlinde of Fretboard Journal for this wonderfully shot and beautiful-sounding rendition of a great song from the back pages of one of my all-time favorite artists.

Jackson Browne - "Something Fine" on his vintage Gibson Roy Smeck from fretboardjournal on Vimeo.

There are such wonderful subtle touches here. The setting itself, so simple and "home"-like, Browne sitting in a chair by an old desk, the wooden stairs hovering aside and above him. The way the sunlight flashes thru the cracks of the venetian blinds every now and again, casting fleeting beams on the stairway wall or the sheen of his guitar. And, most surely, the world-weary cracking in his nevertheless still warm and resonant voice, an imperfection that somehow just makes these words all the more meaningful thirty years later.

"Bison" -- a song by Skylar Gudasz & the Ugly Girls

A few weeks back, I posted on Facebook a link to a real nice cover of Gillian Welch's "April The 14th Part 1" on YouTube as performed by Skylar Gudasz & the Ugly Girls, a relatively young band from my neck of the woods that I've only recently come across. That clip led me to their own recently released debut recording, a seven-song disc that shows considerable promise, even if one senses their vision might not be fully formed yet.

My attention today is on one song in particular. It's called "Bison" and it's a fairly good representation of the group's artistic identity: tasteful acoustic-based arrangments which lend themselves to dramatic expression; lyrical explorations that wander adventurously rather than seeking a narrow focus; and an indelible vocal presence that's ultimately the music's primary calling-card (not only frontwoman Gudasz's highlighted lead, but also guitarist William Taylor's understated counterpoint).

This was the song that struck me most vividly when I first downloaded the record a little while back. On Tuesday, after seeing the band for the first time at the West End Wine Bar in Chapel Hill, I bought the CD, in part just to support the musicians but also because I felt the need to get a better handle on the lyrics. It was clear that Gudasz's words were an important part of her songs, but I'd been drawn in by the sound, and the lyrics are more elusive. Lines would stand out here and there, yet the stories remained mysterious.

I'm still not sure I fully understand "Bison" after having read through the lyrics, though I'm further impressed by their poetic nature, and perhaps more significantly, I'm fascinated by one very unusual detail. There is a spot in the song that one would commonly identify as the "chorus" -- Gudasz's voice soars sweetly, memorably, and this same striking passage comes around three times during the course of the song's five minutes. But here's the intriguing part: A chorus is usually a repeated melody accompanied by repeated words, yet Skylar sings a different set of words each time that melodic phrase comes around.

First it's "Lord knows I haven't dreeeamed since then / There ain't nothin' I haven't seen that I haven't seen before / That wasn't prettier the first time, prettier for sure." A couple minutes later, while the first line is repeated ("Lord knows I haven't dreeeamed since then"), it's followed by, "The shaman's wife swears it was your love that did me in / Soon they'll be pulling from the graves, those tree-wronged Indian braves." And then, a completely different address the final time around: "Its ivory slates wiped cleeean / Oak ain't just made for you to carve your heart all over into / I'm deeper than this forest, wider than Tennessee."

I've found myself somewhat torn between whether this is a sign of the artist needing a better hold on songcraft -- that perhaps she'd benefit from following standard structures a little more -- or if she's fully aware of the rules and is breaking them on purpose. It's probably the latter. Certainly she doesn't seem to lack for quality role models; the aforementioned Welch is an obvious one (underscored by her cover of a different Gillian & David number at last Tuesday's show), and I sense a bit of Laura Nyro, though I've really no idea if Gudasz is familiar with Nyro's oeuvre. Possibly Lori Carson, or Tori Amos. Not surprising that she also covered Neko Case on Tuesday.

Mostly, though, I hear Gudasz and her band finding their own space, which is what makes them worth hearing, and seeking out.

-- Peter Blackstock

You can hear "Bison" on the group's Bandcamp page, here:

http://skylargudaszandtheuglygirls.bandcamp.com/track/bison

From the final issue of The Rocket, October 2000

A Facebook friend recently posted some thoughts on the history of the seminal Seattle publication The Rocket, for whom I served as a senior editor for a few years in the 1990s. The Rocket folded in the fall of 2000; as fate would have it, the final issue contained my farewell column to Seattle, on the eve of my relocation to North Carolina. (That final issue was printed but largely undistributed; the plug was pulled before the paper was picked up and dropped off at its usual outlets across Puget Sound.)

Here's what I wrote in that issue, for whatever the historical documentation may be worth. (Not much, probably!)

By Peter Blackstock

I’m sitting in the middle of a big empty room, windows looking out on a grove of Carolina pines that populate the alcove across the street, on the edge of the quiet little neighborhood in Durham that is now my home.

I remember this feeling well. Exactly nine years ago this week, I arrived in Seattle and camped out on the living-room floor of the garage apartment I’d just rented, no furniture yet acquired, accompanied only by a few suitcases of clothes, the stereo, and boxes upon boxes of records, tapes and discs.

There was a long way to go before this place would be home. But, man, it was an exhilarating time, just being here. The wide-open hopes and dreams that hover above those first steps of a new beginning are like no other experience in life’s journeys.

I can only hope my relocation to North Carolina will open up my world the way moving to Seattle from Texas did. I came here without a job or a plan, more or less following a hunch based on a single visit I’d made a few months earlier. I figured my writing experience at the daily paper in Austin would help get me started, but I knew just a small handful of people here.

Among those I’d met shortly before I arrived were a couple cornerstones of The Rocket: editor Charley Cross and office manager Mary Schuh. Charley kindly gave me a chance to write for The Rocket and helped advise me on numerous details regarding my relocation. Mary and her husband Sandy Milne rented me the space behind their house, the coolest little garage apartment ever, for a price even someone used to Austin’s then-slackerly living standards could afford. Without them, plain and simple, I do not think I would have made it here.

That first year was a true challenge, involving a monthlong working sabbatical back in Austin and a couple of office jobs. I was officially broke after someone set fire to my car.

What saved me was the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which had hired me to write a weekly column covering music in local clubs a month after I’d moved here. They hired me as a part-time copy editor in the summer of ’92, and finally I was firmly planted.

I really expected to be in Seattle only two or three years, while I kept close tabs on daily papers around the country in hopes of nabbing a full-time music critic job. In hindsight, I realize I was fortunate such a fate never befell me.

That’s largely because of another fellow I met at The Rocket: managing editor Grant Alden. Though our musical aesthetics and professional backgrounds were quite different, I developed an enormous respect for the work he did. His tenure at The Rocket, 1988-94, coincided with the paper’s glory years, and that’s no accidental synchronicity.

My own involvement with The Rocket actually increased after Grant departed; for a year or two I was a senior editor and wrote dozens of features and reviews as well as attending weekly planning meetings. That began to come to an end in the fall of 1995 when all my attentions suddenly became focused on a little boondoggle Grant and I had decided to launch, called No Depression.

It wasn’t really my intent when we started the magazine that it would take over my life and result in a withdrawal from The Rocket. But the fruits of our labor have made No Depression a full-time pursuit over the span of five years — which has also opened up the opportunity to edit the magazine from elsewhere. And so I’ve decided to follow the same instinct and sense of adventure that brought me to Seattle in 1991 — though it is not an action taken without serious reconsideration and regret.

I think Christy McWilson got to the heart of the matter when, upon learning of my imminent departure, she expressed her disappointment about losing a member of a community she holds dear. Christy, you are right, and there’s really nothing else I can say except that I’m sorry, and that I will miss you and your husband Scott McCaughey as much as you miss me. Indeed, much more, I am certain. When I think of the marvelous music and the wonderful folks I’m leaving behind in Seattle, more than anything else I will think of the two of you.

I’ll also often fondly reflect on my first couple years here hanging out with Pete Droge, the first real friend I had in town. Equally important in these final couple years has been Gary Heffern, the last real friend I had in town. Largely through Gary I grew closer to the Walkabouts’ Chris Eckman, who, over the past year, helped me produce a tribute record to Mickey Newbury that stands as the most personally rewarding accomplishment of my days here.

Not far behind in that category would be the Tuesday-night gig I’ve hosted the past few months at the Sunset Tavern, for which I owe a sincere thanks to Max Genereaux. Max’s Sunset, Dan Cowan’s Tractor Tavern, and Hattie’s Hat have left an indelible trail of memories along Ballard Avenue, the true soul of Seattle.

It would take most of the pages of The Rocket to reminisce about all the people and places that have made my days in Seattle special, but you get the idea. My Seattle isn’t the place of dot-com towers, downtown malls and sprawling suburbs. My Seattle is the nightclub music spilling out onto the sidewalks, the twilight summer barbecues in friends’ backyards, the quiet drive around Green Lake in the wee hours of the morn. It is beautiful.

A few words about Luluc's Dear Hamlyn

By Peter Blackstock

Tuesday, March 15, 2011: Somewhere above the Southern United States, en route to Austin, Texas. Over the next five days, I'll hear dozens of bands from all over the world perform at theaters, nightclubs, restaurants, galleries, beer gardens, parking lots, rooftops, pretty much anywhere a stage can be set up. Some will be artists I know and love; some will be musicians I've never heard before. Some will intrigue me, some will surprise me, some will repel me, some will make me want to hear more.

There's only one thing I know for sure: Nothing I hear can possibly measure up to Dear Hamlyn, the debut album by an Australian duo who call themselves Luluc.

This is not a new record, but it's new to me. Dear Hamlyn came out in 2008, but few beyond Luluc's native country have heard it yet (though a couple of its songs were featured on recent episodes of "Grey's Anatomy," and some Canadian audiences got to hear them on the folk festival circuit last summer). For the past year, Luluc’s Zoe Randell and Steve Hassett have been living in New York; a few days after I first heard their album, I found myself on a plane to NYC to catch one of their gigs. The crowd to hear them play that night at the Lower East Side bar Piano's was in the single digits.

And that’s a good place to start, really: Lest any of the above testimony imply that Randell and Hassett’s music is really "big," in fact it's precisely the opposite — this may be the smallest music I've ever heard. By "small" I mean minimal, intimate, and quiet: Luluc's music is vulnerable to being overwhelmed by larger ensembles and louder sounds. Which is to say, no, this is not the Next Big Thing. This is little, with a lower-case l. And I cannot, for the life of me, get it out of my mind, or my heart.

I think this is because Dear Hamlyn was born of specifically private and personal circumstances. Hamlyn was the name of singer Zoe Randell's father, and these recordings were partly her way of dealing with his death. He's there in every breath of "Little Suitcase," traveling wherever his daughter may go: "The indent of your strong hand, I feel each time I grip this bag, that I now carry." These things we inherit from our departed loved ones are constant reminders; true, they're merely material possessions, but sometimes just stumbling across one can bring back waves of emotion, a wistful smile or a flood of tears. "One of a set of four, that went from big to small; they belong together." In the end, Randell wonders: "If I were to travel to some new place, will I find a new home, or just more empty space?" That emptiness bleeds in the beautiful resonation of Randell's voice, which disarms with a gracefulness that is the very antithesis of pretense.

But there IS a new home on Dear Hamlyn, and it's the reason that this album was released under the name of Luluc, rather than as a Zoe Randell solo recording. Many years ago, Randell happened upon fellow Australian Steve Hassett — halfway around the world in Scotland, of all places — and it's a good thing, because musical pairings this empathetic are incredibly rare. Their vocals mesh in a manner that, I would contend, reaches deeper than sibling harmony: lover harmony, perhaps. (There's a huge emotional difference, after all, between, say, the Louvin Brothers and Richard & Linda Thompson.) To echo Randell's words about those suitcases: They belong together.

Those voices are grounded in the character and quality of the musical backdrop. Hassett fully understands how less can be more, how little can be much greater than big. One suspects he could rival most any guitar-shredder he might share a nightclub with, but you won't hear that here: You'll hear only the right notes, the ones that belong, the ones which bring out Randell's voice and songs. Not a single stroke or strum is obtrusive in 40 minutes of music. Such mindful restraint is deceptively difficult to realize, but it's a big reason Dear Hamlyn is magic.

There are minor accents along the way: touches of cello, twinges of pedal steel, a few horns here and there, all placed with care and purpose into the soul of the surroundings. The mood, very pointedly, is never broken — which is not to say there is no variance in the style or tempo, because there is. If nothing here quite rocks, much of it sways, or swells, or sweetly swings; within the spectrum of the enchanting spell they cast, there are many colors here. But nothing will jar you out of the reverie that begins with the bowing of a double bass on "I Found You" and rides all the way to the extended strums at the end of "My Midnight Special." Precious few records I've ever heard have achieved such a wholeness of spirit in sound.

Sunday, March 20, 2011: Somewhere above the Southern United States again, heading home. Behind me, five days and nights filled with musical adventures, old and new friends, barbecue and Mexican food, warm Texas winds, endless throngs of revelers along the city streets, the constancy of conversation, even a Supermoon rising majestically over the Austin horizon.

In those occasional moments of pause amid the mayhem, dashing from show to show or driving back home at the end of a long night, out of the car speakers floated the songs of Dear Hamlyn. "How my heart is beaming, like the sun...and the moon, and the stars beyond." Passing through my childhood neighborhood at 2 in the morning, serenaded by the epiphany of "I Found You," it felt as if I had been waiting for this music all of my life.

"between the worlds of men and make-believe..."

This was originally posted on the now-nonexistent No Depression editorial website (not to be confused with the present community site) on December 21, 2007. Re-posting it today as a result of a friend's mention of Fogelberg:

News of Dan Fogelberg's death earlier this week hit me a little harder than I expected, given that it's been a long time since I really held the guy up on any sort of personal pedestal. But the thing is, he definitely DID rank very high in my book at one point, and without question played a fairly significant role in the evolution of my musical taste and my appreciation for singer-songwriters.

For me, the graduation process went like this: Barry Manilow led to Dan Fogelberg led to Jackson Browne led to Bob Dylan. (Really nowhere higher to go once you get to Dylan.) That progression occurred when I was between the ages of 10 and 20.

"Mandy" hit when I was just about to turn 10, and immediately made me an unabashed fan of Mr. Manilow -- which I still am, despite the ridicule that inevitably accompanies such an admission (or the chuckles that invariably follow the acoustic-guitar arrangement of "Mandy" I've been known to deliver from the stage on occasion).

My older brother Si was a pretty good early guide to music that was a little bit beyond the Top-40 AM-radio staples of the mid-'70s, and one of the first artists he led me to was Fogelberg. He and his wife included "Longer" in their wedding ceremony in 1980; I'd heard that song and "Heart Hotels" on the local FM pop/rock station by then, but soon afterward I took the time to delve into Fogerty's earlier records, via dog-eared LPs at the used-vinyl store.

Souvenirs (his second, from 1974) was probably the best, with a minor hit in "Part Of The Plan" and a lot of country-rock accents/influences on songs such as "Illinois" and "Morning Sky". Captured Angel (1975) and Nether Lands (1977) had their moments, though the fact that the sixteen Fogelberg downloads I just purchased a moment ago included just one song from the former and two from the later suggests those were overall somewhat lesser of the bunch, at least in my memory.

Phoenix (1980) was more or less his pop breakthrough, with both "Longer" and "Heart Hotels" making the singles charts. A more ambitious artistic statement was 1981's The Innocent Age, which pretty much marked the peak of Fogelberg's career creatively. Its yuletide-chestnut-to-be ("Same Old Lang Syne"), while probably his best-known song, wasn't really representative of the full depth and breadth of the double-album. I was rather amused and heartened to discover a few years later that one of my late-'80s postpunk-obsessed musician roommates also had a real soft spot for The Innocent Age.

I went out and bought Fogelberg's subsequent album, 1984's Windows And Walls, upon its release, but I sensed a pretty clear dropoff in quality. Or maybe it was just my own perspective: I was headlong into Jackson Browne by then, and Dylan was waiting just around the corner. For whatever reason, none of Fogelberg's subsequent releases ever connected with me, though the bluegrassy High Country Snows from 1985 seems probably worth revisiting at some point.

The record I DO still go back to on a regular basis, though -- seems like I pull the old vinyl copy off the shelves and put Side A on the turntable every couple of years or so -- is Fogelberg's very first album, 1972's Home Free. The songwriting's pretty green, really, but endearingly so, and quite good considering that Fogelberg was just 21 when the record came out. (He was 56 when he died this past Sunday of prostate cancer.) Musically there's real beauty in the arrangements, from the swinging country twang of "More Than Ever" to sweet swelling strings of "Hickory Grove" to the soft, simple piano touches of the opening track "To The Morning" -- one of the best first-songs-of-a-career that any artist ever had, from where I sit.

As it happens, today is my brother Si's 51st birthday, so I suppose this blog-entry can be considered an acknowledgment of thanks to him for helping to lead me down the musical path I wound up following all those years ago. And, also, an acknowledgment of thanks to Fogelberg, for making music that was such a significant step along that road.

New To Me: Luluc

Australian duo, now living in NYC. And the best new act I've come across in, oh, the last 5 years or so, probably.

The film-crew here really does justice to the spirit of their music:

Just one record out so far (Dear Hamlyn, self-released), plus a beautiful cover of "None But The Rain" on More Townes Van Zandt By The Great Unknown, a recent tribute album (which is where I first heard them).

I've yet to see them play. There are a few other videos on YouTube if you like what you hear here.