Steve Martin & Edie Brickell "Sarah Jane & The Iron Mountain Baby"

"Really?  A banjo record?!?"

I try not to look too hard at the voting for the Top 25 of 2013 while it is in process, so as not to make a big deal of anything, until the full picture has developed.

But I did take one peek this year.

After the voting period was halfway over, "Love Has Come For You" by Steve Martin & Edie Brickell was in the lead.

I was pretty surprised by this.

Albums that make the top of the list are, by nature, consensus records.  A large portion of the audience, with varying musical tastes, must feel connected to the record.

Records with a broad palette of influences do well.  Genre records rarely top the list.

And other than rap music, country music is the genre most often cited as an irritant by our listeners.

There is no getting around it.  "Love Has Come For You" is a banjo record.

Mind you, it's a really delightful, beautiful, warm and inviting banjo record.  But for a prejudiced ear, it's simply a banjo record.  With the banjo up front enough to be an immediate turn off to those who dislike the sound.

Ultimately, a less surprising album (Tedeschi Trucks Band's "Made Up Mind") surged in the voting and became number one.

But it's pretty impressive that a record that could potentially be viewed as niche-y, found such a wide audience.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Steve Martin & Edie Brickell "When You Get To Asheville"

When I hear the first line of "When You Get To Asheville," I immediately think of "Your House" and the story I wrote about yesterday.

"When you get to Asheville, send me an email."

It's such an interesting opening line, because it does nail the song down to a time and place.  It couldn't have been written 20 years ago.  And probably wouldn't be written 20 years from now, when we don't use email anymore because there is some kind of future-communication.

And, unlike Alanis Morissette, I get the feeling that this reference by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell is fully intentional.

The Old-Time/Bluegrassy/banjo sound is an immediate throwback.  Whether it was recorded 40 years ago or 40 minutes ago, it can sound old.

Starting of a Pop song or a Rap song with a mention of "send me an email" would be perfectly appropriate and uneventful, as that music is crafted to sound "here and now."

But starting off a banjo song with "send me an email" catapults the Old-Time-sounding song, and the story, firmly into the present.

It's a clever move.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Fleetwood Mac "Sad Angel"

Barbara said something really funny on the air the day the new Fleetwood Mac single came in.

She was live on the air and said something to the effect of, "I haven't heard this new Fleetwood Mac single yet, but we're going to play it during What's New For Lunch . . . unless it's horrible."

Barbara had done a calculation that she and I and other DJs have done thousands of times before.  The equation is:

New song + Band's fame + audience anticipation + quality of song = We will/won't play this song.

For instance, a brand new song, by a band we and the audience have never heard of, must compensate by being a really superb tune to get played.

Or, a new song from Steve Martin & Edie Brickell (who are well known, but not quite music superstars) + high quality song gets a definite shot on the air, because audience curiosity is high.

And conversely, a new song by a superstar band, that the audience didn't expect to hear from, can get by with just an okay song, because again, the interest is really high.

I'm not crazy about this new Fleetwood Mac tune, but they haven't put out a new song in 10 years, and it's not horrible and the audience interest is really high.

Maybe it will grow on me and on the listeners and get a lot of airplay.

Or maybe we'll play it a lot at the beginning to let the curious people hear it, and then it will fade.

Who knew there'd be so much math in music?


Hear the song on Youtube.

Son Volt "Hearts & Minds"

Sometime shortly after I have become Program Director at MVY, I was down at the Pub where I hung out.  One of my buddies was saying to a third guy:  "Did you hear that PJ got promoted at MVY?"

The third guy shrugged.  "MVY?  I stopped listening to them since they went country."

Went country?

The previous month, we'd done an On The Road trip to Merlefest, the premiere East Coast Americana music festival hosted by Doc Watson.

We gave it massive coverage on the air, playing cuts from bluegrass, country, roots and Americana artists not typically found in large supply on our station.

Was it wall-to-wall country?  No.  But here in the Northeast, a little country goes a long way.

It's always important to keep a good balance, and air only a moderate supply of songs that push away from the center-boundary of what is mvyradio.

If you look back at the old entry about how we choose songs for mvyradio, you'll see that I expressly mention that we're okay when we have a couple of Country-leaning songs.  Anything over that, and we risk sounding "too country."

So what do you do when there's a plethora of great, mvy-friendly country music out there?

We're suddenly deluged with great albums that can't really be ignored, by Son Volt, Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale, Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, and Steve Earle.  Not to mention the banjo and dobro inflected likes of The Avett Brothers, Mumford & Sons and Jerry Douglas.

I guess the answer is, you go with it. 

We can't not play the Steve Earle.  Or the Emmylou & Rodney.  It would be weird for MVY, long-time Earle and Harris supporters, to suddenly ignore a critically-praised major release of theirs.  And the curiosity factor of the Steve & Edie record alone is reason to play it---it's the kind of oddball release that listeners expect to have a place on our eclectic indie station.

I say this all the time to listeners who complain about hearing too much of one new song or another:  Songs come and songs go.  If you don't like this one, don't worry, it will run its course and fade. 

Three months from now, many of these songs will be gone from our "current" playlist, and the balance of the station will be restored, or will perhaps lean in another direction that we'll have to course-correct for.

In the meantime, we haven't "gone country."  We're just enjoying the twang.


Hear Son Volt on Youtube.


Hear Buddy & Jim on Youtube.


Hear Emmylou & Rodney on Youtube.


Hear Steve & Edie talk about their record on Youtube.


Hear Steve Earle on Youtube.

Boston "More Than A Feeling"

Also sharing a birthday with me (March 10th), is the guy who wrote the lyric, "I lost myself in a familiar song/Closed my eyes and I slipped away," which describes some moment of every day of my life.

Happy (now Late) Birthday, Tom Scholz of Boston.

Hear the song on Youtube.


I also share a birthday with Edie Brickell!

Hear the song on Youtube.


And also, Chuck Norris. Oh yeah, Chuck sings!

Hear Norris' killer vocals, on Youtube.

Edie Brickell "Pill"

Jesse Barnett of Right Arm Resource is our guest blogger this week. He spends his days on the phone with radio stations across the country, advocating for records he believes in. While PJ is on vacation, Jesse talks to you about 5 new songs he thinks radio, and you, will love.

And we’re back.

Day two of PJ’s vacation, and the valiant effort to make our case for some worthy music continues. Thanks for being in this with me for the long haul. You’re a giver. Don’t ever let anyone tell you differently.

Think back to the late 80’s. Pop radio is dominated by such timeless classics as Bobby Brown’s “My Perogative” and Poison’s “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn.”

Oh shush, you know you turned ‘em up. Just accept it and move on.

But then, in between the heavy beats and the raise-your-Zippo anthems, there came a simple song of personal acceptance, where philosophy was the talk on a cereal box and religion was the smile on a dog. Edie Brickell & New Bohemians’ “What I Am.”

And you were the one to correct all of your minions… “Nooo… not THE New Bohemians, just New Bohemians.” Like Smokey Bear, not Smokey The Bear. It’s true. Look it up.

“What I Am” went top 10 and the album Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars went double platinum. Although the success of the song was never matched by the band again, Edie Brickell’s comforting and conversational vocal style was now ingrained in our heads forever.

For much of the next 20-some-odd years, Ms. Edie Brickell spent much of her time as Mrs. Paul Simon, focused on raising kids and having a great family life. She released solo work, another project with New Bohemians, and a project known as Heavy Circles with her stepson Harper Simon.

Fast forward to 2011. The kids are grown and Edie’s on a tear. Songs that have been in the works since her last solo album in 2003 are now seeing the light of the day on her new self-titled album that came out right after the new year. Not content to put out just one project, two weeks later saw the release of The Gaddabouts, a collaboration with Steve Gadd, Pino Palladino and Andy Fairweather Low.

The press has been kind to both projects, and Edie is starting to get some face time again. She appeared on Jimmy Fallon and opened for Iron & Wine at Radio City Music Hall in January, and is slated to play at Jazzfest this year.

The first single from her solo album is called “Pill,” a sardonic take on our need to find a quick fix to cure our daily woes. Edie’s warm vocals, timely lyrics and pointed chorus (“They got a pill for that”) make for another classic. The new animated video does a nice job of illustrating the point as well. Enjoy.



Read a little more about Jesse in this previous post, and visit his site at Right Arm Resource.

Edie Brickell “Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"

Oh, it’s happened to you before. You hear a song. You know it. You can hum it. But you don’t know what it is.

One of the great joys of being a DJ, is being the search engine for listeners who are looking for “That Song!” Maybe I love it so much because it connects me to my heritage---my Grandfather was a Private Investigator, believe it or not.

People who call the station looking for “That Song” are often so apologetic. “Sorry to bother you . . .“ but I look forward to these calls. So if you are stuck on finding a tune, give me a call or shoot me an email.

I’ve got a bunch of questions for you, so, like searching for a missing person, the sooner you get to me, the more likely it is we’ll find “That Song.”

If you heard it on mvyradio, what time was it? Often, I can go back and simply look at a log of what has played. But the log is not comprehensive, so . . .

Can you give me any lyrics? The more words the better. I can often recognize it by ear, but I can do a word search to. Can’t remember a lyric?

Male or Female singer? Fast or slow? Folk or Blues or Reggae? The more details, the better.

I spent a couple of hours last week, helping a listener find a particular song. He wasn’t exactly sure what day he heard it, but he knew it had to have played between 10 and 2. He knew it was a female, with a depressed-sounding intonation. And he remembered the lyric “It’s Hard.”

At first I thought it might be Nanci Griffiths’ “It’s A Hard Life,” but I couldn’t find any evidence that it actually played during any of the times the listener had been tuned in.

So I landed upon Edie Brickell’s version of the Bob Dylan song “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”

This kind of thing happens with Dylan tunes quite a bit.

There are certainly folks who aren’t crazy about Dylan’s voice, and are likely to tune him out as soon as he comes on. And his catalogue is voluminous. So there are lots of Dylan tunes that maybe you’ve heard once or twice or three times, so they are just familiar enough that when Edie Brickell or Susan Tedeschi or Cassandra Wilson or Jeff Tweedy covers it, you can hum along, but your not sure how you even know the tune.

I’m not sure I got this one right, but it was my best guess. So check out this one, from the “Born On The 4th Of July” movie soundtrack, and see if it sounds familiar.

Hear Edie Brickell “Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"

See Dylan sing it, if you don't mind the voice, here