Steve Forbert’s 2015 album, Compromised, has recently been remastered and reissued with a new title, a new mix, a new bonus track, and a few musical embellishments. Now called The Things That I See, the set features strong material and complementary backup from a talented quartet that includes NRBQ co-founder Joey Spampinato (bass) and Spampinato’s wife, singer/songwriter Kami Lyle (piano, trumpet).
Forbert was about 60 when he made this record, and he spends some of it looking back. There’s a nostalgic song about the Beatles titled “You’d See the Things That I See (The Day John Met Paul)” and one called “Welcome the Rolling Stones” in which a fan of that group excitedly anticipates attending its 1969 concert at Altamont Speedway, not knowing that the event would turn out to be a disaster. Other numbers include “Devil (Here She Come Now),” which references “Devil with a Blue Dress On,” the Mitch Ryder hit; the sweet “Rolling Home to Someone You Love”; and Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns,” the album’s sole cover, which Forbert transforms into surprisingly amiable folk rock.
The set also incorporates several tunes that hint at personal struggles, but typical of Forbert, those tracks tend to feature vaguely worded lyrics, and the music remains light and rhythmic even when the verses turn a bit dark. As the singer acknowledged to me in a 2022 interview, even his relatively melancholy numbers tend to be lilting and at least midtempo. “I try to make records that you’ll want to play again and again, [records] that I’m gonna play live and have fun playing,” he said.
Also Noteworthy
Andy Hedges, The Westerner. Like the great Tom Russell, with whom he has collaborated, Texas native Andy Hedges is fascinated by the music and stories of the Old West and the lifestyles of its inhabitants. His discography includes albums called Roll On, Cowboys and Shadow of a Cowboy and, while his latest effort doesn’t use that last word in its title, it does feature songs such as Bill Staines’s “A Cowboy’s Hard Times,” Linda Hasselstrom’s “Death of the Last Cowhand,” and Don Edwards’s “Cow Trail Blues.” Also here, in a duet with 94-year-old Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, is “Driftin’ Cowboy,” Slim Critchlow’s cowpoke adaptation of Woody Guthrie’s “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Ya.”
Hedges, whose baritone is a good match for his evocative material, favors spare, acoustic instrumentation—sometimes just guitar and mandolin or fiddle, though you’ll also hear some bass, cello, dobro, accordion, and banjo. Close your eyes while listening to many of these songs and you can imagine you’re sitting by a campfire in Texas in the mid-1800s.
Dwight + Nicole, Day or Night. Day or Night is the rhythmic, lushly produced latest offering from Dwight + Nicole, a band founded and led by Burlington, Vermont–based Dwight Ritscher and Nicole Nelson. Though a few of the love songs on the group’s latest album sound too MOR for this listener, the bulk of the synth-spiced set offers arresting dream pop that benefits from addictive melodies, Ritscher’s compelling tenor, and Nelson’s glorious four-octave vocals.
Standouts that help make this the band’s best album to date include Ritscher’s “In the Middle” and “Wasting All My Time,” Nelson’s “On Top of the World,” the co-written title cut, a version of Jenny Lewis’s “Melt Your Heart,” and a cover of Yaz’s “Only You” that outshines the original.
Various artists, That’ll Flat…Git It! Vol. 53 – Rockabilly & Rock ‘n’ Roll from the Vaults of Challenge & Jackpot Records. The Bear Family label’s seemingly endless rockabilly and early rock series continues with Volume 53. Like Volume 51, this disc focuses on tracks from Gene Autry’s Los Angeles–based Challenge label and its Jackpot subsidiary. More than half the material dates from 1958, though the set also includes one track from 1957 and a handful from 1959 and the early 1960s.
Featuring excellent sound quality and a 36-page booklet loaded with discographic information, the compendium delivers high-octane rockers whose quality belies their obscurity. Among the selections: “Anna from Louisiana,” by Texas native Jerry Fuller, who later wrote hits for Rick Nelson and Gary Puckett; “Go Champs Go” and “Midnighter” from the Champs, who are better known for the chart-topping “Tequila”; “Lovey Dovey Baby,” from Champs leader Dave Burgess; and “Come On” and “She Tears Me Up,” a pair of rockabilly standouts from Wynn Stewart, whose work helped give birth to country music’s Bakersfield sub-genre.
George Usher, Stevensonville. George Usher, an under-appreciated fixture on New York’s indie pop scene since the 1970s, has played with bands such as Beat Rodeo, the Schramms, and his own House of Usher. His latest project, which he began developing three decades ago, is a song cycle about the troubled, struggling residents of the fictional town of Stevensonville. Produced by the Patti Smith Group’s Tony Shanahan, the music profits from backup by performers such as multi-instrumentalist David Mansfield, a veteran of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue.
Usher, whose apparent influences include the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn, delivers a varied menu of melodic, lyrically intriguing folk rock. Themes recur, and some of the songs reference others. For example, one number is a rant called “Judge John Bailey” while, in “Mitch Kunkel,” Usher sings, “Hey, Judge Bailey, have you talked to your daughter? Did she tell you what I did by the riverside?”
Available only on vinyl in an edition limited to 200 copies, the album comes with an LP-sized booklet that features the lyrics as well as striking, colorful illustrations for each track by New York City artist Laurie Webber.
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Jeff Burger’s website, byjeffburger.com, contains more than four decades’ worth of music reviews and commentary. His books include Dylan on Dylan: Interviews and Encounters, Lennon on Lennon: Conversations with John Lennon, Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen: Interviews and Encounters, and Springsteen on Springsteen: Interviews, Speeches, and Encounters.