I feel true passion for only a few things in this
world: my family, St. Louis Blues
hockey, John Singer Sargent paintings and the music of Bill Frisell. Along with a nice glass of Bordeaux and some
take-out Chinese, that may just about cover the bases.
His sound is wholly
unique, lyrical and insanely melodic but he often plays disturbingly off-kilter
music. He plays jazz for the
twenty-first century, or is it chamber music or Americana, whatever that means? He has put out covers of jazz standards and
pop tunes, an album of country songs, a John Lennon tribute, a song for song cover of an Elvis
Costello/Burt Bacharach record, world music and silent film soundtracks. He
called his best of album Folk Songs. To say he plays all over the place is a
compliment of the highest order, and his sound is utterly unmistakable.
I have distinct times in my life which I associate with
specific Bill Frisell records. Second Sight by Marc Johnson’s Bass
Desires (featuring Frisell and John Scoffield) served as the soundtrack to my college
radio midnight disc jockey days. Naked City played constantly in our
apartment in Japan. I spent long nights
studying during business school to Have
A Little Faith In Me and Live. I rocked my first daughter to sleep to the
strains of Nashville (while living
in Memphis, not Music City USA) and couldn’t imagine my early days in
Cincinnati without Lagimas Mexicanas
in my car’s cd player. His work always
offers a sense of surprise despite being of a single sonic voice.
I own more than one hundred cd’s on which he plays, so
choosing one can be sort of like crawling down the rabbit hole. Ah, but what a trip. For me, the album that best speaks to his
artistry is Ghost Town, his truly
solo work of mostly quiet music. He
includes reinterpretations of his own songs, old and new as well as covers of
Hank Williams, George Gershwin and the Carter Family.
In interviews, Frisell is soft spoken and on stage he is
tightly wound concentration. On this
date he plays the songs accompanying himself with nothing but over-dubs and loop
effects: a one man string band. Wildwood Flower feels like country pickin’ on
the back porch. The slightly sinister Creep,
assembled from backward guitar loops, fades into the menacing Variations On A Theme
(Tales From The Farside).
It all sounds
of a single piece, a soundtrack to a road trip through an echo laden and
starkly beautiful landscape. Sweeping skies over a rural countryside rolling by, constantly shifting but timelessly beautiful.
The jewel of the set is the medley of Ghost Town/Poem For
Eva. Two of Frisell’s finest melodies,
blended together seamlessly. Frisell once explained his inspiration by saying his niece Eva wrote him a poem, so he wrote one for her. The song begins quietly, building layer upon layer
of bell-like notes until it finally swings into a long descending coda. The track eventually became played over the closing credits for the Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line (yes, Frisell did the music for that, too) and it never fails to bring a smile to my face
and the hint of a tear to my eye. Like
the rest of Ghost Town, it is a work
of soft spoken genius, technically dazzling and it feels entirely American.
