Like a lot of folks, music has always been a big deal for me, well maybe not always …

I think the AZ Music Café show host (Weird Uncle Erich as my kids affectionately refer to him … at my instigation, of course) had a lot to do with developing my love for music.  Mind you, this was long before there was an AZ Music Café.  It’s funny the little snatches of memory that we preserve from childhood.  I have a distinct memory of camping with some family friends, it must have been one of the very last trips we went on, (the folks were rapidly losing interest in camping by the time I came around), and E.P. (family name for your host), playing a cassette of The Ventures.  I was probably 5 years old.  I still remember E.P. making funny mouth movements (and some vocal renditions) of that wacky guitar sound.  ”Wowwww, Wow! WooooWwww.”

Flash forward maybe a year, I guess I might have been 6 or 7, and E.P. took me to see “Let it Be”.   For months I wished I could grow a beard like Paul McCartney had.  I think I walked around for almost as long singing the chorus, and driving my folks nuts.

Then E.P. moved on to a new group called Chicago.  He tried to convince me at one point that they were the Beatles, but I wasn’t having it.  By then I could tell the difference.  At the time I didn’t like ‘em, except for Saturday in the Park.  Color My World didn’t do it for me then.  By the time I was a teen-ager, I really did like them.   Although they were old even by then, but I still got to see them perform twice.  I loved 25 or 6 to 4 and I thought Peter Cetera was pretty neat.

But, that was later.  Erich still had more to indoctrinate me with.  Due to the VAST difference in our ages, (he’s a LOT older than I am), we never had a problem getting along, even when I was little.  He was always pretty nice to me.  Consequently, I rapidly became his biggest fan when he started playing the guitar and singing.

It was Erich that introduced me to Gordon Lightfoot.  I heard him sing Alberta Bound, Sundown, Carefree Highway, and If You Could Read My Mind, long before I heard the originals.  But, it was enough to make me a lifelong Lightfoot fan.  Similarly, I remember Erich playing Buffet’s Margaritaville sitting in my parents kitchen.  I remember being disappointed that Jimmy Bufffet didn’t sound as good as E.P.

It was Erich that took me to my first concert.  We saw Gordon Lightfoot at Gammage Auditorium.

Over the years, I’ve picked up my own tastes and preferences for music, but E.P has always managed to introduce me to new things.  Some I didn’t like at first, like Procal Harum.

Because of him I discovered Ricky Skaggs, Michael Johnson, Bonnie Raitt, and Mark Knopfler.  

(I was immensely satisfied to introduce him to Los Straightjackets a few years back.)

I remember what fun we had going to hear him play at the coffee shop down the road and how disappointed I was when it closed (nothing to do with his playing).  I think he thought I was just being nice.  In reality, I just didn’t want to miss one of my favorite performers!  Gotta hear about those rats in the rafters.

He gets grief from my wife and me when ever he does a show without performing a song.  And so, I hope that he can make the AZ Music Café into something of a success, if only so I can keep catching him on the radio.  He’s STILL introducing me to new music – every week from 3-5.

Thanks E.P.

We did the AZ Chicks with Picks show this past weekend and during one of the breaks, one of the guest’s accompanists turned to me and asked me if I was “the” Erich Sielaff who used to work as a buyer or merchandising manager at Smitty’s.   (First of all, the notion that anyone would ask if I was “the” anyone was a bit peculiar to hear… how many can there be?)   But I revealed that indeed, we were one and “the” same.

He smiled and said that his dad used to call on me at Smitty’s as a sales representative.   He also remembered me from the church I attend.   I paused and waited for my mind to fill in the blanks.     (This requires more time to accomplish than it used to.     More tape to rewind I suppose.    There I go with analog metaphors.  I have to reformat to digital.    More disc space to search?    Update file, update file, update file …)

Yes, I remembered his name and yes, I even had a vague mental image of his business card.   (Still doing the file search for his face.  I have an image driven operating system).   But what struck me instantly was that it had been 14 years since I left Smitty’s and I have no idea how much earlier it had been that we began working together.   Looking at his 20-something son, I suspected that contemporaneous with that event, the son was probably around 10 years old.   And now, a decade and a half later, here he was, sitting in a radio station with me waiting to perform.    Go figure.

You wouldn’t think it possible to draw a line from that life to this one.   But it happens.   And more often than the odds makers should be able to make book on.    I was glad that apparently I had left him with a positive impression.   People freeze-frame you and vice-versa.   Who am I today compared to who I was 14+ years ago?   Well, I am on a different road to be sure.   And that road intersected with someone who is also on a different road.   But the travelers are the same.   Or are they?   Am I a kinder gentler man?  Or am I a harder, less adaptable version?   Wiser or just older?   I wonder whom I have left with a less than happy recollection.   Whom might I have offended?

I am not entirely sure I can answer honestly who I was then compared to who I am now.    And I am not sure I even want to know.   I have enough trouble just managing the day’s events.   Turns out, I ended up having to bump my old cohort’s son because we ran out of time on the program.    I promised I would get him back on at a later date.   (Sooner rather than later)

Today I stopped to think.    I wonder with whom I will intersect down the road that will take something away from today that I won’t even remember.   One of the other guests did a song about someone being a skeleton in their closet.   I commented to her that we all likely either have one or are one or perhaps both.    I sincerely don’t want to be anyone’s skeleton.   But I guess like the proverbial ghost in a wishing well, I am not in charge of that.    We each must set our own captives free.   I can however from this day forward, do my utmost to do a good thing, to say a kind word and to try to leave something of value.

I am glad that in this case at least, I seemed to have been remembered well.    I am thankful for these intersections.   It reminds me again that choices matter.   Things are remembered.    It also stirs me to recognize that the time for morphing is now.    That all of us will eventually run out of time on life’s road and get ”bumped”.    And then, whomever we will have become will be whom we will remain.

I recently picked up an Alison Krauss’ Too Late to Cry. It’s a good album, especially when you consider that she was only 16 years old when she recorded it! I didn’t realize that it was her debut effort when I bought it. (Wikipedia is a good source for stuff like that.)

I’m a fan of Krauss and Union Station, perhaps not quite as enamored as host’s son Nick, but a big fan nonetheless. So, when I saw this CD at Fry’s electronics (I can’t walk by a CD display without looking), I had to get it. I think I have every other CD she has done.

This one was different, her voice has definitely improved with age, but the musicianship was phenomenal even then. This predated Dan Tyminsky and Ron Block, but Jerry Douglas was featured. The instrumental Dusty Miller is, in a word, awesome. Too Late to Cry is an interesting time capsule, capturing who Krauss was then, and foreshadowing who she’d end up to be. This is especially evident in her cover of Rodney Crowell’s Song for Life. I’d heard this one before on a Kathy Mattea CD that came out at about the same time. I like both versions.

It’s worth picking up, if you’re a fan, but probably not, if you’re not.  If you’re not a fan, buy A Hundred Miles or More and you will be.

I figure anyone can review a new CD, (Martin, the blog usurper here again) so I thought I’d revisit an old friend.  Who knows, I might review a few of these old friends.    This time around I thought I’d talk about one of my favorite Jazz CD’s, Color Rit.  I bought this CD when it first came out almost 20 years ago.  It’s aged really well.

I like Jazz of most varieties, but some of the stuff that you hear, while pleasant enough background music, is really kind of, well, boring.  Some of the “Smooth Jazz” that’s touted so much is often indistinguishable from elevator music.  I figure if I can’t tell one group/artist/song from another, the music isn’t really all that potent.

This CD and artist are instantly recognizable for me.  They were from the moment I first heard them.  If you have a craving for crisp sharp, clean guitar that will loosen the wax in your ears, this CD is for you.  It’s safe to say the Ritenour is a virtuouso guitar player.  This CD shows that talent off.  There are number of Brazilian (I think) influences in the music and some funky vocalists, but it’s the guitar work that really shines.  The first piece on the CD, Bahia Funk, sets the tone.  It’s like listening to sunshine.

Its been 5 months since we started this show.    We are about to do our 24th show, or our 28th depending on whether you count the 4 Sampler programs in October.   We have a few sponsors and are hopeful we can attract a few more with the two hour show.   The bank account shows the strain.   But we are hopeful.   My wife helps me by taking photos in the studio, helping me get ready each week and allowing us to give up our Sunday afternoons without complaint.   She also endures the fiscal pummeling without complaint.  She believes too.     

My little brother has ascribed to me the moniker of “Free Spirit” which obliges me to conjure up visions of flowing long grey hair, swirling in the wind, held in place by a worn bandanna, and the glow of my wizened face squinting in the rising sun, as I wander among the tumbleweeds. 

Or not.   

He is right that this endeavor appears to have come out of nowhere.   But actually, I had notions along these lines for years.  I don’t listen to much music on the radio.   I was spoiled years ago by Bill Compton and KDKB (KCAC before that) and the wonderful artists he introduced to Phoenix, like Tom Waits, John Stewart, Gordon Lightfoot, Jerry Riopelle, and so many more.   He passed from the scene prematurely and as radio got worse and more monolithic, I retreated to listening stations in Borders and Barnes and Noble to try and find good music.    When the opportunity presented itself to me to perhaps combine business and pleasure……well, I jumped at it and figured that over time, I would meet enough folks to convert a few of them to clients and actually pay for the effort.   

So after 28 shows, 70+ guests and over 200 songs, what have I learned?    I have learned that it takes more time than I ever imagined.   (Thank you Martin, I don’t know what I would do without the website and your weekly updates and creativity)    I have learned that I say “Uh”, “outstanding” and ”very cool” WAY too much.  What comes out of my brain is much more lucid when I have the opportunity to edit.  (Can I blog the shows?)I don’t trust spontaneous for good reason.  I am not good at it.   I default to trite.  I hate that.   Did I mention that I am learning humility?  

I have learned that there is far more talent in Phoenix than I ever imagined.   That is not being gratuitous.    I have heard and met musicians who have more talent than a good share of the current occupants of the average radio playlist.   And that it takes more than talent and perseverance to be successful in the music business.    I have learned that this business is brutal.   I see it in the eyes of the ones who have been doing this for many years.    I have had to redefine what I thought persistence and dogged determination looks like.  The true professionals are ready and willing and able to appear almost anywhere, anytime and for any (or no) money to keep their music out there and heard.   Whether its by 20 or 2000 people.   They don’t care.   Staying tight and improving their craft and keeping themselves in front of an audience is what they do day in, week out, month in and year out.   Hoping, believing and continuing.    The true professionals smile and do it again, and again, and again.   And they never surrender.    They are gracious.   They make it a point to thank us for the show without exception.   They always smile.  But you can see it in their eyes.   They’ve ridden the up and down roller coaster so many times that their stomachs no longer participate.   But they know that the only way to stay in the game is to play.   It won’t happen if they sit on the sidelines and whine.   Or allow themselves to be defeated by the latest disappointment.   They get up, brush off and put themselves back in the game and hit “play”.  

I am not a fan of entertainers jumping on their soapbox and becoming instant experts on politics or the issues of the day.   Or life.  That’s why we keep this show about the music.   But we might learn a thing or two about keeping on…..about stick-to-it-ivity.   About not giving up at the first sign of adversity.    About running the long race.   Paul used the metaphor of athletes and marathon running in his epistle to the Phillipians.   But I think if he had met some of these folks, he might have written “I have played the long song, and finished the gig.”

Or not.

I can tell you one thing.   I hope we can keep this show going and get to 100 shows and many, many more.   But if we can’t keep this show alive and prove the concept, we will at the very least have had the privelege of meeting some extraordinary people and witnessing their extraordinary talent.   I will have come away from this experience learning my own limitations and maybe just a bit about grace and perseverance.   It will have been well worth it.

Howdy! (Martin here.)

As the guy who’s thrown together the AZ Music Café website, I have conferred upon myself the privilege of being a guest author on the newly launched AZ Music Café Blog.  Hopefully, big brother won’t mind me treading water in his pool.

I recently purchased Yo Yo Ma’s new Christmas album.   Wow is this good stuff!  

There are all kinds of people on this CD.  James Taylor, Allison Krauss, Edgar Meyer, Dave Brubeck, and Chris Botti, to name a few.

The first 15 songs on the CD were phenomenal.  (I didn’t care much for 18-20, but with 15 very strong, very high quality pieces up front, I can deal with 3 I don’t like.  Who knows, maybe they will grow on me.)  The CD has 20 tracks in all.   James Taylor and Diana Krall are both excellent as featured vocalists.  

Number 13, INVITACIÓN AL DANZÓN, is really great.  Since my daughter plays the clarinet, we always keep an ear out for this instrument in any jazz or classical music we buy.  This one does not disappoint.  Wow!

This is a Christmas album that I will probably listen to all year, since it doesn’t necessarily come across as a the same old holiday staples.  (For instance, I had a quick listen to some of Spyro Gyra’s Christmas effort.  It was OK, but not outstanding.)  This CD is outstanding and I would have to say, out of the norm for Christmas music.  I highly recommend it.

One of the rules on the AZ MUSIC CAFE show, is that politics not be a part of the program.   No soapboxes for pet causes, no agenda driven content in the music.   The show is about music.   Period.    That would hopefully distinguish this from programs where artists feel compelled to pronounce their grandiosity.   As though talent with an instrument gives one wisdom and discernment regarding the affairs of the world.  Please.   Its not that I don’t have an opinion.   I have lots of them.   I just don’t want the show to be a forum on politics.   (“Its the music, stupid” … to paraphrase from an earlier election)

Having said that, it is impossible to ignore the fact that today is Election day.   So I will make a few remarks about the process only.

I decided that I would believe the reports of record turn out and voted early (not often.)  So I trundled off with coffee in hand just after 5:30 am.   I found where I was supposed to go and arrived a few minutes later.

Standing in line in the dark, you have time to think a bit.   A young man in front of me with incredibly bad morning breath, asked me how long I expected the process to take.    After I recovered my senses, I replied as politely as possible that I couldn’t see the end of the line, but given what I could see, 15-20 minutes later we should be voting, and then it was just a matter of a few minutes to actually cast the ballot.   (I hoped that he would not want to continue the conversation, as the air was still, and all I had was my cup of coffee as a shield from further attacks of his halitosis.)   Mercifully, he turned around and we resumed waiting.

When we do our next show on Sunday, there will be a new President-Elect.    I wondered while I was voting today how many people that voted expected that the winner would assume office tomorrow.    What other misconceptions exist out there.    Did they really understand the Electoral College, or did they believe that was where volunteers graduated from in order to work at the polling places.    I wondered how many first time voters like Bad Breath Bob, would become regular voters, or if this was their singular moment of hope.

I wondered what it would be like standing here 4 years from now.    What history would have been made.   What the world would look like.   I reflect now on what the world looked like in 2000.   Before 911 and before Iraq.   Before the housing run up and subsequent crackup and near collapse of the banking system.   When gas was about $1.50 per gallon.    When you could get on an airplane without being violated.

I wondered what it was like to view the world through the lenses of a 20 year old instead of through the eyes of someone whose first election was the Ford-Carter contest in 1976.

How different the world was then and how fast things have changed.   Change.  The mantra of the 2008 election.    We have focused a lot this year on what divides us.   But what unites us is that we all want things to be better.  And some are willing to do just about anything for their version of what “better” looks like to them.

I am reminded of a wise guy who told me once:  Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

I wonder if we will get what we bargained for, or if we’ll get what we deserve.

Gordon Lightfoot has been theme music for much of my adult life.

He came to town on October 24^th and gave us two hours of those themes. Of love lost and found, of traveling on the road, of his observations of life and his experience as a survivor. This was to be his first show in Phoenix since his surgery to repair an abdominal aneurysm that almost killed him in 2002. He remembered that his last concert before he collapsed in Orillia, his hometown, was here in Phoenix. He mentioned it proudly and gratefully I think. This homecoming (not for him, but for us) was marked with trepidation. Again maybe not for him, but for us. The voice would be the problem. Not his chops. What further declines would be unavoidable? What would his concert be like?

My first memory of Gord (I refer to him here as his Canadian friends do, though I freely admit, I have never met him) was listening to the radio late at night while I was in high school, with my headphones on so as not to wake the house.   “If You Could Read My Mind” was the song that he sang and I was struck by the perfect story told in words and melody of a love lost.  This became his trademark. The weaving of his instrumental and lyrical magic would be repeated time and again in the ensuing years. His favorite folk group was The Weavers whom he would mention in interviews and concert appearances. (A reference appears in his song from Gord’s Gold Vol 2, called “If it Should Please You” which was a show opener for him years before he ever recorded it.)

I was a prisoner of top 40 radio in 1969, so didn’t hear Lightfoot again for a while.   In fact, the next time I heard Lightfoot was on my way to work on an autumn afternoon when I was about 16. A local radio legend named Bill Compton was enamored by the release of this new album called Don Quixote and he played cuts regularly on what was then KDKB AM radio (my 71 Cutlass only had the AM Band).   Compton played “Alberta Bound”, ”Ordinary Man”, “Second Cup of Coffee”, “Patriot’s Dream” and the title cut, and I was then hooked and reeled in.   I bought every album I could lay my hands on and discovered to my surprise that he had a sizable catalog of material.   “I didn’t know he wrote that!” became an often repeated exclamation of mine as I discovered that song after song covered by other artists were indeed Lightfoot songs.   “I’m Not Sayin’”, “Lovin’ Me”, “Softly”, “The Last Time I Saw Her”, ”Early Morning Rain”* and ”Ribbon of Darkness”.

I became an aficionado overnight and working in the Camera and Electronics department at Smitty’s gave me the opportunity to be his personal DJ. I regaled all the passing shoppers between the grocery department and the front checkstands. I played albums and put up Lightfoot displays on end caps. (In fairness, he was not the only artist to be suffered upon the unsuspecting clientele.  There were others, but he was definitely the favorite.) When Sundown was released in 1973, I sold 38 copies in one week.

I was introducing my friends to Gordon Lightfoot and buying tickets to his shows at the Celebrity Theater. They ran $7.50 a piece back then and you could still get front row seats at face value. The internet was still a glimmer in Al Gore’s eye. I can’t honestly remember how many times I saw him in concert. But I admit that whenever there were 2 shows (usually 7pm and 11pm) I would attend them both.

I had long worn out my Don Quixote album and replaced it. (There are a few albums that I have worn out in my collection and replaced with a duplicate, contemporaneous with their release, not a decade later: Tom Rush’s Wrong End of the Rainbow, John Stewart’s California Bloodlines and Gordon Lightfoot’s Don Quixote.) Over the years, I eagerly awaited his concert appearances and his new albums. When “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” broke as a hit in 1976, from the Summertime Dream album, I was performing every Friday and Saturday night at the “Jolly Roger” restaurant in Tempe and discovered to my surprise, that I could do that song twice a night and it was the high point of the evening either time. By then, I had fancied myself an up and coming local folk-country-rock phenomenon and was writing and performing … and dreaming.

Well, life goes on and marriage and children and job responsibilities replaced my dedication to performing and writing, but every album that followed, Dream Street Rose, Endless Wire, Shadows, Salute, was still anticipated like a child anticipates Christmas. The concerts continued. He had long hated the revolving stage at the Celebrity Theater and by then was performing at Grady Gammage Auditorium, or the Civic Center and I faithfully continued the pilgrimage to whichever venue he would appear.

Somehow, life got bigger than Lightfoot, and as the albums dwindled, the concert appearances did too.  My attachment became more nostalgic. Over time, his voice began to lose its timbre and its depth. He got a bit reedy, but the songs remained, and his unique sound and phrasing and the sheer volume of material he had created became their own ballast. “Waiting for You” was a nice piece of work and “Painter Passing Through” was my least favorite. The best was clearly behind him. At this latest show, he didn’t perform a single song from “Harmony” his most recent album.

The occasional concert was a frame of reference, a n endurance of mind over matter. I didn’t mind that much, so it didn’t matter that he couldn’t sing “The Last Time I Saw Her” anymore and that “Rainy Day People” no longer had the high note at the end of the last chorus. More than a passing nod has to be given to the fact that Rick Haynes on Bass and Terry Clements on lead guitar, remain his posse along with Mike Heffernan and Barry Keane on Keyboards and Drums. Those arrangements evoke much the same feelings they did 30 years ago.

Gordon Lightfoot, like Frank Sinatra, continues to perform long after his prime as a singer. He has that very rare capacity to maintain the loyalty and the love of his fans as well as their understanding. I don’t know that there is another corollary among entertainers. His fans now freely acknowledge that he doesn’t have what he used to in the vocal department, but like Sinatra, the song is still the thing. As is the singer himself.

He personifies the songs and not just what they mean to us from our filtered memories, but the miracle of their having been written at all. It is hard to imagine life without those songs. What would replace them I wonder. If “Beautiful” were never written, what would I sing to my wife in the morning while she is putting on her makeup. How would my children remember their childhood without me singing “Pony Man” to them. What would I sing to my dad without “Alberta Bound” around? Or to my brother without “Long Way Back Home”.

What would fill the gap the absence of these songs would leave. I can’t answer that and that is probably why Lightfoot gets a pass when he comes to town now at nearly 70 years of age and can’t hit those notes anymore.

I missed Sinatra years ago when he came to Desert Sky Pavilion on his only Phoenix appearance, when he was about the same age. I wasn’t about to miss Gord.   And if he comes back again, I will be there for the next one.  Even if he has to whisper the lyrics.

You get bonus points for theme music.