I got a call from producer David Kershenbaum one weekend afternoon in 1987. He asked me if I could come and do a session at his studio at the beginning of the next week. I had already committed to playing on another album the next week, so I told him that unfortunately I was unavailable. There was a pause on the other side of the line, and David asked me if he could send a cassette over to me with a couple of guitar/vocal demos on it for me to listen to. David is a very smart and talented record producer, so I said yes, that I would love to hear what he was working on. He didn’t give me any more information, he just said that he would send the tape over.
When the tape arrived I sat down at a table in our front room and began to listen. Just two songs. As the first song started I heard a voice that stunned me. Completely honest, heartfelt, hopeful, informed by singers that I loved. I heard a bit of Odetta and a bit of Joan Armatrading in a subtle way; the way that one loves to hear families of reference that aren’t literal, but nevertheless braided into a new voice. A voice that took me somewhere. Grounded in influences, but not in any way imitating or plagiarizing. Completely fresh.
Then there was the writing. The first song on the tape was a song called “Talkin’ Bout’ A Revolution”. It was a call to arms of a sort, dealing with the drastic economic inequality that permeated our country, “Don’t you know, they’re talkin’ bout’ a revolution, it sounds like a whisper…”. Along with the voice presenting the poetry, the songwriting just stunned me. What a way to start a song. Crystal clear but yet enigmatic. Gunning for the heart in a simple way straight out of the gate, but also razor-sharp in it’s message:
“While they’re standing in the welfare lines, Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation. Wasting time in the unemployment lines, sitting around waiting for a promotion”. Then a recapitulation of the chorus that started the song, then a tightening of the fist, “Poor people gonna rise up, and get their share”… then partially repeated, “Poor people gonna rise up and take what’s theirs”.
Hopeful, threatening, perhaps a bit naive, but aspirational in a simple and honest way; sung by a voice that had written the words in her own blood.
Then the third section, “Don’t you know you better run, run, run, run, run, run, run” threatening in a heartfelt way. Almost biblical in that way. Then she literally goes to the Bible:
“Cause finally the tables are starting to turn, Talkin’ bout a revolution…”. Literal and figurative at the same time…. like a great spiritual.
My reaction is still clear in my mind… I was just stunned by the combination of Tracy’s voice, the simplicity of the harmonic language, and the simple and honest sophistication of the lyric. I picked up the phone and called David back. “I can make the session… tell me a bit about her!” He told me that she had gotten signed when she was busking in Boston, and that she had never played with a band, and that this made it a delicate matter to put bass and drums into the equation.
The other song on the tape was also a beauty. Working in the same simple syntax, but also beautifully balanced, and crafted with her own sense of design.
“Sorry” is all that you can’t say, Years gone by and still, words don’t come easily, like sorry, like sorry”
“Forgive me”, is all that you can’t say, Years gone by and still, words don’t come easily, like forgive me, forgive me”
That first verse just killed me. Then the chorus doesn’t disappoint:
“But you can say “Baby, baby, can I hold you tonight? Maybe if I told you the right words, at the right time, you’d be mine”
All of this written in a beautifully simple harmonic language, leaving all the room in the world for the poetry. Everything simply but eloquently put.
The Sessions
When we started working it was Tracy, drummer Denny Fongheiser and me. I found out that they had been trying different combinations of players, but that nothing felt quite right. It’s an extremely delicate dance for a drummer or bass player to play with an artist who is not used to playing with a rhythm section. A balance of letting the time have the elasticity that it needs to have for the singer to not feel at all hamstrung or restricted, but also keeping the dance feel steady and giving the artist a solid and supported feeling. At the same time one needs to play off of the vocal in a melodic and rhythmic sense, and to serve the song in a motific and thematic sense. Support the lyric in a way that contributes to making the song memorable, but never getting in the way of the poetry. All of these things have to be done simultaneously. This particular combination of musicians with Tracy worked beautifully, as Denny is a beautifully natural drummer with great time, but also with the humility and ability to listen that very few drummers have; not feeling that he needs to impose the consistency of the time on a track in order to feel like he is doing his job well, and a lovely sense of intuitive composition in how he approaches the groove and design of the drum part. In a way, the drums and bass have to have the same elasticity that is required in jazz, while having structure that contributes to the memorable element of the groove. Don Henley once told me that a great record is a series of great moments, and I think of that idea when it comes describing how a rhythm section functions on great song that are also great records. As we worked on the songs, this aspect of juggling all of these elements felt like a beautiful meditation. I find that when are recording a song with a group of musicians, and you come upon the definitive take, it has a glow to it, many times from the first few bars; it feels like everyone is sitting together without effort or self-consciousness. That feeling is one of the best things about playing a great song in a good rhythm section. There’s something ecstatic about it. I find that if one is producing a session, identifying and hearing that “shiny thing” is one of the many jobs that one needs to do in order to do the job well.
As we got to each song, I realized that Tracy’s songwriting was uniformly stunning. That same idiosyncratic but natural sense of structure, along with the same simple harmonic sense permeated each song, one song after another providing a part of the picture that fit perfectly into the feeling of the album as a whole; a feeling that one rarely gets when working on an album of songs, but one of the things that defines what a classic and timeless album is.
As we made our way through the initial group of songs that Tracy had brought into her first album, one of the next songs that we worked on was another diamond of a song called “Fast Car”. Again, the lyric reads and sings like a classic and timeless short story:
“You got a fast car, I want a ticket to anywhere, maybe we make a deal, maybe together we can get somewhere, any place is better, starting from zero, got nothing to lose, maybe we’ll make something, me, myself I got nothing to prove,”
“You got a fast car, I got a plan to get us out of here, I been working at the convenience store, managed to save just a little bit of money, won’t have to drive too far, just ‘cross the border and into the city, you and I can both get jobs, and finally see what it means to be living.”
“See, my old man’s got a problem, He lives with the bottle, that’s the way it is, He says his body’s too old for working, his body’s too young to look like his, My mama went off and left him, She wants more from life than he could give, I said, somebody’s got to take care of him, so I quit school and that’s what I did..”
“You got a fast car, Is it fast enough so we can fly away? We gotta make a decision Leave tonight or live and die this way”
We worked at crafting a hypnotic verse groove for the rhythm section that supported what felt to me like a Raymond Carver or John Steinbeck story, only distilled down into the form of a sung poem. Tracy’s guitar hook was absolutely perfect for supporting the story and cadence of the lyric, evoking a feeling of hopeful mundanity.
the chorus is a hard-edged contrasting element, both lyrically and musically:
So I remember we were driving, driving in your car, Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk, City lights lay out before us, And your arm felt nice wrapped’ round my shoulder, And I, had a feeling that I belonged, I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone…
On the chorus Denny and I switch gears with Tracy and launch into a driving, open groove that has the dramatic contrast that is suggested by the writing and Tracy’s guitar part, and tells the story musically. With a poetic and musical exposition like this, the song and record are undeniable. The rest of the song unfolds, undulating between this hypnotic verse feeling and the contrasting gallop of the chorus.
One thing that I have always loved about this song is that, in a way, both the verse and chorus are choruses. Like all great short story writing, every line is absolutely essential. As we went through working on the rest of the songs, I was just staggered by the consistency of Tracy’s writing; “Across The Lines”, “Behind The Wall”, “Mountains Of Things”, “She’s Got Her Ticket”, “Why”, “For My Lover”, “If Not Now”, and “For You”.
Even then, it was so rare to come across artists who held themselves to this high of a standard songwriting-wise. I find that with the present shape of the music business it is much less often that one finds artists and albums that maintain the level of songwriting that this album does, and it was rare in 1988, when this album came out.
For me this album will always stand out as an opportunity to work with the other people involved to help Tracy make something that will always sit in it’s own world; something that changes the listener and that shows how a pop album can go beyond the medium that it has been built in to become literature that opens the heart.
Great commentary. Takes me back to the first time I heard it. A stunning collection. Thanks for making it happen.