- 1.Why Songs, Not Stories? The Path to Andy Revkins A Very Fine
Line For three decades, my core occupation has been conveying
stories about the environment and other subjects through
journalism, books and blogging. But there are some subjects,
situations and feelings that just cry out to be sung instead of
typed. That fact has led me back to one of my first loves music. A
Very Fine Line, a collection of 10 of my songs, was recorded and
mixed from February through September, 2013, in the Beacon, New
York, studio of Joe Johnson, with contributions from a batch of
brilliantly musical friends, including the songwriter Dar Williams,
mandolin wizard Mike Marshall and virtuoso fiddler Bruce Molsky.
You can learn about all of the contributing musicians below. (You
can download the album here. Hard copies late in the year.) My
musical journey began with my parents, who both enjoyed singing
informally mainly folk songs and sea songs they learned through
their shared love of sailing and my dads time in the Merchant
Marine. My fathers baritone rendition of the Banana Boat Song come
mister tallyman, tally me bananas echoes in my mind as I type this.
Another influence was geography. I grew up in Rhode Island, a
bastion of folk music and the blues. While in high school, my
brother and I began learning guitar, at first sharing my mothers
nylon-stringed instrument. I instinctively (if unwisely) played the
guitar upside down, creating my own chord fingerings by placing
whatever fingertips felt best on the locations indicated by the
black dots in a chord book. And of course there was radio. I came
of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Jamming with my brother,
Jim, in the early 1970s when you could listen to WPRO and hear, in
the span of an hour, everything from Dylan and the Beatles to the
Four Seasons and Herb Alpert. This album has traces of all those
sounds and styles. At 17, I bought my first guitar. It was in
pieces an old acoustic that was sitting half mummified in crumbling
masking tape in the corner of a music store in Halifax, Nova
Scotia. (I was visiting that city as a high school junior traveling
with a friends family to a youth sailing competition.) The guitar
looked like it had been through a bar fight, but I could see it was
a Gibson, so I swooped.
2. At first, the shop owner said it wasnt for sale. But then,
perhaps realizing he had a lot of work ahead of him to restore it,
he sold it to me for $35. When I got home, my dad, a practical and
thrifty man, didnt hide his anger. How could I pay $35 for a broken
guitar? If I didnt fix it by summers end, he said, he would throw
it away.Me and my Gibson, 1998I buckled down in his wood shop and
fixed it, replacing a shredded side with thin mahogany plywood that
I steamed into shape. I still have that beaten, bruised, but
booming 1949 sunburst Southern Jumbo (yes, and a few others now).I
quickly learned basic mandolin and banjo, as well. I made my first
serious money as a musician (up to $100 a day!) busking in Newport
during the Bicentennial celebrations of 1976 with my friend Mike
Bonaiuto, who had an attention-grabbing hammered dulcimer. Then
journalism took over for the most part. In the early 1990s, going
through a rough patch, I began writing and performing songs about
everything from piles of bills to an epic fight with a bigmouth
bass, and of course love and loss. But I never got around to
recording seriously until now. I was spurred in part by a 2011
stroke a very lucky stroke in my case that for about a month
deprived me of the use of my right hand (playing left handed, thats
the one that does much of the work). Performing in a WPLN
songwriter showcase at Nashville's famed Bluebird Caf in 1997As the
title song of this album goes, Most of your life you spend walking
a very fine line. I didnt want to waste any more time. 3. Life is a
Band I was mainly a solo performer from high school on beyond
college, but shifted increasingly to playing with other musicians,
particularly after moving from Brooklyn to the Hudson Highlands
north of New York City in 1991. Itd be hard to live in this region
and not play with others, given that the others include Pete Seeger
and the galaxy of talented singers and players for whom he has been
a lodestone. You can get a taste of this scene on the first Friday
evening of any month on the Beacon waterfront at the Beacon Sloop
Club. Pete wrote out the musical notation for A Very Fine Line for
me after he first heard that tune at the club years ago. Click this
link to see his scribbled ideas for some Playing with David Bernz
and Pete suggested tweaks to Arlington, my song about the Seeger,
Beacon Strawberry Festival. uncertain future of the national
cemetery. From this same musical circle came David Bernz, a
longtime Seeger accompanist who recently produced two of the folk
singers Grammy-winning albums. David offered valuable ideas on
several of my tunes. More important, he introduced me to Lisa
Mechaley in 1993. We married not long afterward, and this album is
dedicated to her. In the early 2000s, when I was commuting to The
New York Times regularly on the Hudson line, I got to know several
musicians frequenting the Garrison train platform. Peter Rundquist,
a great guitarist and blues singer, was a jingle composer. Jerry
Krenach, whod drummed with the likes of Lou Reed and Chris Whitley,
was a music arranger, producer and supervisor. Art Labriola, a
piano virtuoso, was scoring films. We all craved twangy delta blues
and country tunes and began regularly jamming and then performing
what we Playing with Uncle Wade at Philipstown.info in Cold Spring,
N.Y. ended up calling simple music for complicated times. Our band
was called Uncle Wade, after the stage name of Wade Ward, a
frailing banjo player. (We never played any of his music as a band;
we just liked his name.) The rule of thumb was that wed each mainly
play the instrument we were least good at. For me that was mandolin
and screechy fiddle. Soon we were joined by Al 4. Hemberger, a bass
player, songwriter and owner of a reknowned Bronxville studio, The
Loft. Our favorite gig was playing each June on the Hudson River
Sloop Clearwater during the Clearwater Festival. You can see and
hear us here and here. Click here for a show we did in the cozy
back room of Philipstown.info, a homegrown newspaper. Uncle Wade is
no more, but the mixes of Bills, Bills, Bills and Arlington on the
album are built around a couple of Uncle Wade recording sessions.
Black Bird, my song about a miners death, was inspired by the true
story of the untimely death of Jerry Krenachs great grandfather.I
sing Between the River and the Rails with the Guinan's musical gang
in 2009. (Journal-News photo)Another influence on the texture of
this album was the monthly musical gatherings at Guinans, a
family-run store and vest-pocket pub that graced the Garrison
waterfront for many decades but is now a memory. You can learn
about Guinans in Little Chapel on the River, a fine book by my
friend Gwendolyn Bounds.The sessions there ranged from ragged to
remarkable, but were always profoundly musical and heartfelt. They
were mostly led by Jack McAndrew, an accountant by day but an
earnest and passionate lover of Irish tunes on those Thursday
evenings. His inconsistent tempos were more than compensated for by
his spirit and smile. Like Jim and John Guinan, the father and son
who were the cornerstones of the place, Jack has passed on. My song
Between the River and the Rails is dedicated to these three fine
souls.The Songs and Musicians A Very Fine Line (hear/download), a
song about lifes close calls, features Joe Johnson, whos much more
than a mix master, on electric guitar (the whimsical slide licks
were recorded on George Harrisons birthday). Joe has a great ear
for the right note at the right time, whether tweaking tracks or
playing his own guitar lines. Al Hemberger played bass and Eric
Starr is on drums. Harmonies are by my friends from Motherlode Trio
Stacy Labriola, Patti Pelican and Terry Textor Platz. I play
guitar. This song and three others derive their energy in large
part from the keyboard tracks contributed by Joel Diamond, a
composer and longtime session player who was introduced to me by
Joe Johnson. Theres a fun short film about him by Anne Trauben. 5.
Arlington (hear/download), my ballad about the fabled past and
uncertain future of the national cemetery, features Dar Williams as
guest vocalist, Ben Neill on trumpet and Motherlode Trio on
harmonies. Also playing are Art Labriola on piano and organ, Mark
Murphy on upright bass, Jerry Krenach on drums and Peter Rundquist
on guitar. I play guitar and banjo.Blame it On Biology
(hear/download) became something of a tribute to Herb Alpert after
Ben Neill started experimenting with some fun trumpet lines. Also
playing: Joel Diamond on keyboards, Joe Johnson guitar, Eric Starr
on drums, Mark Murphy on upright bass. Motherlode Trio and Al
Hemberger sing harmonies. I play guitar. Ben, best known for his
pioneering digital mutantrumpet compositions, can play with simple
grace, too. Listen closely to Arlington when I sing bugles blow.
Thanks to Ben, it feels like youre standing in the misty hills
there. Breakneck Ridge (hear/download) is my ode to the Hudson
Highlands, featuring master pipe maker (and player) Seth Gallagher
on uilleann pipes, Steve Kent on bansuri flute, Al Hemberger on
bass, Joe Johnson on guitar and synthesizer, Eric Starr on drums
and Al Hemberger and Motherlode on harmonies. I play guitar,
mandolin, banjo and fiddle. There are a couple of magical notes in
the breakdown section that, to me, have all the growl and bend of a
great rock guitar riff. Black Bird (hear/download), inspired by a
true mining tragedy, was initially recorded by Joe Johnson as a
solo live performance by me at a Cold Spring songwriters circle,
with Ken Veltz providing light percussion on cajon. I invited the
great fiddler Bruce Molsky and bassist Mark Murphy to enrich this
recording in the studio. I hope you dont mind having a live
performance with studio tracks added after the fact. I pledge well
do this tune live together soon! 6. Grandpas Cadillac,
(hear/download) a celebration of an amazing car, features Joe
Johnson on electric guitar, Art Labriola on pedal steel guitar and
Joel Diamond on keyboards. Also playing are Al Hemberger on bass,
the versatile Eric Starr on drums and yours truly on guitar. In
this photo, Eric is working out his part on Breakneck Ridge. You
can check out his jazz side here. Bills Bills Bills (hear/download)
features Art Labriola on dobro, with Peter Rundquist on guitar,
Mark Murphy on bass and Jerry Krenach on drums. Al Hemberger and
Peter Rundquist sing harmonies. I play mandolin and guitar. This
was a standard tune from our days in Uncle Wade and was in part
recorded in a kitchen session by Joe Johnson several years before
this full recording was completed. Every time I hear it, I miss
that band. A rare Uncle Wade New York City gig.Liberated Carbon
(hear/download), a three-minute history of humanitys energy
choices, features Joe Johnson on electric guitar and Joel Diamond
on keyboards. Also playing are Al Hemberger on bass and Ted
Hemberger on drums. Al Hemberger and Motherlode provide harmonies.
I play guitar. Terry, Patti and Stacy really brought this song, and
five others, to life.Between the River and the Rails
(hear/download), recalling the splendors of a bygone Irish pub,
features Steve Kent on penny whistle, Bruce Molsky on fiddle, Seth
Gallagher on uilleann pipes and the climate scientist Raymond
Pierrehumbert on accordion. Joe Johnson added guitar and keyboards.
Al Hemberger played bass and Eric Starr drums. The grand chorus is
Motherlode Trio along with Al Hemberger, Russ Cusick and the
singer-songwriter Derek A. Dempsey. I play guitar, mandolin and
banjo. That green neon shamrock still glows in a lot of peoples
memories. 7. Song for Lisa (hear/download) features the amazing
Mike Marshall on mandolin and Mark Murphy on upright bass, with
yours truly on guitar and Eric Starr on drums. I met Mike in 2008,
when we both attended a meeting in Woods Hole, Mass., on the role
of the Internet in fostering global progress. I brought my guitar
of course and he ended up joining me, with hardly a warm-up, on
this instrumental.I explored various options for mastering the
album, considering engineers from Los Angeles to Nashville, but
kept things local in the end after I found Matthew Agoglia, a
talented migr to Beacon from New York City and alum of the
major-league mastering outfit Masterdisk.Gratitude: This album owes
much to Joe Johnson, who worked with me from February through
September on every sonic detail, and also to each of the musicians
above. Many gentle listeners helped me refine these songs and
productions, including Pete Seeger, David Bernz, David Bayer, Dean
Friedman, Steve Gillette, Cindy Mangsen, Vince Bell, Susan Werner
and Leo Sacks and my patient wife, Lisa Mechaley. Any remaining
warts and glitches are my doing. I snapped this picture when Joe
and I wrapped the final tweak on the last song. Thats a wrap for
now. - Andy Revkin, Garrison, New York, October, 2013The Cover Art
I found the cover art while searching images on the Web related to
walking a tightrope (the very fine line, of course). The image,
dating from 1574, is from the Symbolicarum quaestionum, a catalog
of Italian emblems by Achille Bocchi. Thanks to the Special
Collections section of the University of Glasgow Library, you can
explore this remarkable work online here. I had trouble at first
tracking down its origins, but through the magic of Twitter quickly
got help from Tracey Evans and John Fleck. After I received
permission to use the art, I was 8. eager to translate the Latin
title and Greek phrases being held by the acrobat. I went to my
nephew, Ben Revkin, who teaches Latin at East Greenwich High School
(my alma mater). It turned out the art was a better fit for me than
Id imagined. After consulting with friends who are Greek scholars,
he decrypted the placards for me: / translates to hold on versus
give up. In Stoic context, maybe indulge versus abstain. Ben
provided a helpful link at which the translation is bear and
forbear. The title above the illustration Tenere medium semper est
prudentiae translates to To hold the middle is always of prudence.
This is particularly apt given that my style of blogging and
commentary is to seek points of agreement rather than accentuate
differences a rare trait, perhaps, but possibly an unavoidable
result of my being a middle child. Album info: Download:
Revkin.bandcamp.com Community: Facebook.com/veryfinelinemusic Home
page: Veryfinelines.com Contact: [email protected] Twitter:
@revkin #veryfineline My journalism:
http://www.nytimes.com/dotearth