Two-Meat Tuesday

Vincit Qui Primum Gerit:
The weekly forecast is here (free). The video segment is part of the subscriber services.

New Music:
New CD from Lyle Lovett.

One word, keeping with his (Scorpio) dry wit? To eschew excessive, possibly hyperbolic verbiage?

Excellent. (If you like that stuff)

I do. Very much. I was trying to place the source, jazz? Perhaps popular music from an era that predates the performer? I think that’s part of it. There’s also some B-sides, which invites the whole question of B-sides on CDs, and why there isn’t one.

Couple of songs stand out, never mind, the entire CD is musically tight. There’s, at times, an elegiac tone, but that’s inherent with the artist’s canon. I wonder, too, if there isn’t some dry (Scorpio) wit in there, layered under the sounds, like he’s got a slightly sardonic smile, half-hidden.

My CD came bundled with a Texas Music sampler CD, which included a cut from the CD itself, “Pantry.”

Listening to the song, over and over, I kept thinking about differences. When I’m in Austin, comfort food, it’s easy to find, as comfort food, collard greens and cornbread. However, in San Antonio (70 miles south), can’t really find cornbread and collard greens. Hot sauce and homemade tortillas? Sure. Difference of way less than 100 miles, and yet, the comfort food varies dramatically. Southern versus Southern.

“Pantry” made me think of another South Texas music star, and his song about food he can only get at home.

Lyle Lovett Live: Majestic Theater:
Subtitle: defies taxonomy.

A couple of years ago, I saw Jimmy Buffett in Houston. His usual spring-time tour, and one of the songs added to the two tour-stops in Texas? Lyle Lovett’s “If I had a boat.”

Lyle Lovett and his Large Band (tagline: It’s not big, it’s large.)

Two, maybe two and half hours of music, some warm stage banter, and the music.

Swing, Western Swing, Big Band (albeit without the horn section on this tour), “Negro Spiritual,” County, Western, Bluegrass. Rock’n’Roll? A little of it all.

Mostly, the stage presentation there were two guitar players, plus Lyle Lovett with an acoustic, pedal steel, fiddle, mandolin (played acoustic guitar on some songs), cello, stand-up bass, piano, drums, congas, and four back-up singers. The backing quartet was a delight unto itself, four LA musicians who did nothing but dance and sing. Slightly choreographed, still highly entertaining in their own right.

Lyle did tout his new CD. He also suggested, “Don’t buy it, just download it. If you can’t figure out how? Ask a kid.”

A singular image will stay with me, other than Lyle’s smiling self having a good time on stage, when they performed the “Pantry” song, from the new album? It was just fiddle, stand-up bass, mandolin, and Lyle on guitar. Really tight, with witty banter in between. It was a true bluegrass rendition of a Lyle Lovett classic song.

It was “A really good show.”