Christian Kane – Covered in Glory

Musician

I’m a huge fan of Christian Kane and his original songs but I also really love his interpretations of other people’s. He puts his heart and soul into anything he chooses to sing. Country music isn’t a big deal in the UK so I often hear Christian’s versions of a song before I encounter the original and discover that I don’t like it as much. Weird, because I’m usually someone who’s a stickler for the original, for instance, Judy Garland – Over the Rainbow; Frank Sinatra – Well, anything Frank did really. I don’t like the watered-down, limp versions common in the charts today – usually by fey songstresses with affected, insipid vocals, popularised by their ubiquity in adverts: Ellie Goulding’s bafflingly turgid Your Song; Lily Allen’s total crucifixion of Somewhere Only We Know; that awful, soulless Wherever You Will Go by Charlene Soraia.* Whereas these seem to drain the life and spirit out of the song, Christian Kane does the opposite. He invests them with more emotion and verve, making the originals sound just a little colourless in comparison. His voice is a gift – unique but with echoes of Elvis, reverberations of Springsteen. It has a depth and resonance that can reinvigorate an old song, making it seem contemporary and new and real. And it appears totally effortless. His original material showcases his talents even better but that's another blog.

* Of course there are exceptions – Adele’s Make You Feel My Love; the Byrds’ Tambourine Man; Timothy B. Schmit’s Caroline No; the Eagles’ Ol’ 55, Poco's Magnolia.

Apologies if any of these aren’t the originals you know. I’ve tried to put down the writer when I thought it relevant. Links are in the words ‘Original’ and ‘Kane’ if you want to hear what I’m talking about. Obviously Christian Kane has covered ‘ songs live that I haven’t included e.g. Sweet Home Alabama, either because I haven’t heard them, couldn’t find a good version of them or he hasn’t played them that often. 

Actor

Fast Car

Original: Tracy Chapman 

Unstoppable rhythm and melody, compelling narrative. I love her deep voice. It has a certain intensity and immediacy.

Kane studio; Kane live: A little hard to listen to owing to the enthusiastic fans singing along and occasionally drowning him out (he loves it). He still sounds tender and true. Plaintive and melancholy but that natural growl lets you know he’s no pushover.

You got a fast car/I want a ticket to anywhere/Maybe we can 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

The One I Love 

Original: David Gray

I’ve got to admit that I’m not a fan of his voice, thought he bleated like a lamb on his big hit This Year’s Love but this is better.

Kane: ‘Somebody else wrote this but it’s one of my favourite songs’. More rough tenderness, he always sounds as if he’s lived what he’s singing. Passion and restraint.

Next wave coming in/Like an ocean roar/Won't you take my hand darling/On that old dance floor/We can twist and shout/Do the turtle dove/And you're the one I love/You're the one I love

Wary and suspicious

I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man

Original: Prince 

The single is bouncy, infectious, unputdownable although I couldn't find it on YouTube.

Kane: This doesn’t completely work countrified (not sure about the fiddle) but it’s very lively and upbeat and it's plain CK identifies with the sentiment.

I asked her if she wanted to dance/And she said that/All she wanted was a good man/And wanted to know/If I thought I was qualified/And I said baby don't waste your time/I know what's on your mind/I may be qualified for a one night stand/But I could never take the place of your man

Mid-party?

Jolene

Original: Ray LaMontagne

Low-key, breathy, mournful but, combined with his very deliberate phrasing, it sounds a little affected.

Kane: ‘It had so much to do with my life – I just fell in love with it’. In Christian’s earnest, heartfelt rendition, there’s a memory of anguish, hard times and misguided youth that makes it affecting.

I found myself face down in the ditch/Booze on my hair/Blood on my lips/A picture of you, holding a picture of me/In the pocket of my blue jeans/Still don't know what love means

Drift Away

Original: Dobie Gray (written by Mentor Williams) Easy-going, laidback, likeable.

Kane: There’s palpable joy in the energy and exuberance in his version.

Thanks for the joy that you've given me/I want you to know I believe in your song/And rhythm and rhyme and harmony/You've helped me along/Makin' me strong/Oh, give me the beat, boys and free my soul/I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away

Part cowboy

Should’ve Been a Cowboy

Original: Toby Keith

I can't really fault this. Jaunty and upbeat, a country no.1 in 1993.

Kane:‘I lost country for a while. This is the one of the songs that brought me back.’  Part-cowboy, part-Cherokee, CK rocks out, breathing new life into this song.

I should've been a cowboy/I should've learned to rope and ride/Wearing my six-shooter riding my pony on a cattle drive

Luckenbach, Texas

Original: Waylon Jennings (written by Chips Moman and Bobby Emmons), a country no. 1 in 1977.Easy-listening, old-school country.

Kane: Christian reinvents this; it barrels along with enthusiasm and gruff charm and something about his tone really reminds me of Elvis.

The only two things in life/That make it worth livin'/Is guitars to tune good/And firm feelin' women

Part Cherokee

The Dance

Original: Garth Brooks (written by Tony Arata)

Sort of middle of the road, pleasant and inoffensive, Garth has a nice, even tone that’s easy to listen to.

Kane: Only a tiny clip of this. I’d kill to hear more as this is a great appetiser. There’s a depth of experience in the few lines we have here and that twang of a Texan accent on the last word kills me. Also rate Scotty McCreery’s version which, despite his youth, still has gravitas, although not the rueful quality of the Christian snippet.

And now I'm glad I didn't know/The way it all would end the way it all would go/Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain/But I'd have had to miss the dance

Redneck Side of Me

Original: Jamey Johnson (written by Jerrod Niemann)

The instrumentation is wonderful (is that an organ at the beginning?) but the vocal sounds sort of creepy, like a bad uncle, someone you wouldn't want to meet on a dark night and is too much on one level, there’s not enough drama. Great accent though.

Kane: Again, only a tantalising snippet,. In a couple of minutes, he conveys a promise, a threat, gentleness. Listen to the line: ‘I never hunted 'gators in the Everglades’. The softness and timbre of his voice make my throat quiver. 

I never was a roughneck pumpin' crude down the line/An' I ain't logged no timber, sawin’ on them Georgia pines/I can't mix the best batch of etouffee/I never hunted 'gators in the Everglades

(Aside from Wikipedia: Étouffée or etouffee is a dish found in both Cajun and Creole cuisine typically served with shellfish over rice.)

'Country music has always been first and foremost in my heart'

I think my main point is that Christian Kane always sounds more than credible because he chooses songs that mean something to him. And he can sing anything. I’m mystified as to why he hasn’t had a huge hit although I know that talent doesn’t always translate into success and am probably not the best placed person to try to fathom the machinations of the country music business. But he’s personable and appealing and let’s face it, fine-looking. By rights, he should have ‘made it’ with any of his original songs, such as A Different Kind of Knight, America High, Rattlesnake Smile or with Let Me Go (written by Casey Beathard and Tom Shapiro), which he begged to be allowed to sing. Part of me thinks it’s because he has more than one string to his bow being an actor too (maybe Nashville doesn’t like the fact that he isn’t solely a musician, that he wants to have his cake and eat it too); part of me thinks it’s owing to the extreme dedication of his fanbase (to some extent drawn from fans of his acting that have got into the music) – it’s possible that this contributes to the mainstream country/rock industry’s failure to take him seriously; or perhaps he’s just refusing to play by the rules. I’ve been watching Nashville and wondering why he hasn’t got one of the major roles. Perhaps they wanted musical newcomers but he would be a shoo-in for a recurring cameo of a roughneck country rocker, perhaps on the wrong side of the law.

Could it be?

I’ll end with this exchange, which sort of sums Christian Kane’s music up.

My Dad asked me what Christian Kane's music was like. I said 'It's country rock' and he said 'Like the Eagles?' I said 'More country' and my sister added 'And more rock'.

Perhaps he’s just too much of each to be fully accepted by either (having played to rock audiences at the Viper Room). But they say this is The Year of Kane. 

He also features in another blog of mine:

http://sshh-sshh.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/opinion8-songs-about-school.html.

Another blogger’s take on CK live: http://bashfulbadgersblog.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/christian-kane-rocks-out-at-the-jazz-cafe-in-camden/.

Thanks to Wikipedia, Kane Nation, A-Z Lyrics Universe and CMT. 

Christian Kane’s music is available from: www.ChristianKane.com.

 

Dave Davies: Unsung Guitar Hero

An appraisal and appreciation of Dave’s untrammelled and unparalleled live performances with the Kinks, with examples of how his playing expands the horizon of a song until the possibilities seem limitless at which point he’s able to bring it home to a flawless finish, like allowing a wild pony to have its head, run free, all the time keeping a hold of it so that he can rein it back in when it’s time. 

‘Davies' guitar was the dynamo that drove the Kinks. Brash, aggressive and entirely unforgettable, his chord progressions on their early hits have become a rock & roll rite of passage for any aspiring guitarist; "You Really Got Me" has alone launched countless garage bands.’ (Rolling Stone)

I’m not a muso, never learned an instrument, never had a piano in the house or all that jazz. For me, having a piano rather contradicts the Davies' working-class roots.[It reminds me of what a friend once said to me. Her grandparents had servants. I expressed surprise, thinking they must have been rich but she averred that her background was working class and that ‘everyone had servants in those days’. Anyone see anything wrong with her logic here? She certainly didn’t. My grandparents were her grandparents’ servants. Oh dear, starting to sound like one of those Monty Python sketches, 'You were lucky...'.] My parents thought a useful extra-curricular activity would be getting us to drag the washing down to the launderette every Saturday and bring home fish and chips for lunch. Forget about doing something we enjoyed or acquiring a useful skill. Anyway, I’m only trying to explain that I love music while not always understanding how particular effects are achieved, or which guitar is which (although the names are so evocative – Harmony Meteor – who wouldn’t want to take that home?) and I can distinguish a guitar from a bass guitar (even though Dave thinks I can't count beyond three, that’s only when breathing) and recognise a Flying Vee. I respond to the emotion generated by how the instrument is played. But even I can tell that Dave is something of a virtuoso. Shel Talmy, interviewed recently, agrees.

FZ: How would you rate Dave [Davies] as a guitarist?

ST: I think he’s one of the more underrated guitarists there are. He was an extremely good guitarist.

FZ: He doesn’t quite get the credit that he deserves.

ST: Never, I don’t think he ever got the credit. His inventions of the solos and stuff, I mean, Jimmy Page did not play the solo on 'You Really Got Me’ which I’ve said about 5,000 times to people who insist that he did. The reason I used Jimmy on the Kinks stuff is because Ray didn’t really want to play guitar and sing at the same time. In fact, Jimmy was playing rhythm guitar.

(The more people mention this, even to deny it, the more robust the myth becomes somehow. And what did I just do?)

Ray admits that Dave’s contribution was vital, saying:

‘If Dave never plays another note, his performance on “You Really Got Me” will always give him a special place among guitar players. The sound was created in our parents’ living room and ended up being copied by nearly every rock guitar player in the world.’

And Ray asserts that what Dave brought to the band was ‘the angst, the energy and an incredible right hand’.

But it’s as if Ray’s always sidelining Dave’s influence to one particular song, or sound, suggesting by this quiet insistence that that was the only thing he ever did. What about the electric guitar riff on ‘Lola’? Then, when the Kinks went ‘rock’ in the late 1970 to 1980s, a move that attracted a whole raft of new fans, particularly in the US, it was Dave’s playing that led the way and his charisma as a guitarist that helped to make the Kinks such a terrific experience live. And it sounds like it was also his initiative – he says in ‘Mystikal Journey’ that he wanted

‘to get back to a more fundamental basic rock thing’

and this was seconded by their new record label honcho, Clive Davis, who advised Ray that

‘Sometimes to move forward you have to take a step backwards.’

This was after the concept album shows, which looked like great fun to me. Ray has said:

‘Oddly enough on the shows that had themes to them, the band was much tighter as they were playing to cues’

but unfortunately there’s no good footage of these shows on YouTube.

To begin with, discovering them in the 2010s, I thought the 80s songs were too generic, too obvious, but a few listens down the line, I now appreciate all the layers of influences, irony, humour, intensity, the riffs that sound vaguely familiar, as if they’ve always existed, have entered your subconscious via some other means and can recognise that they’re still imbued with Ray’s idiosyncratic inventiveness. Perhaps it was a direction that appealed more to Dave than Ray but it became another means to demonstrate Ray’s versatility as a songwriter. And popularity in the US is really what kept the Kinks going despite NBC’s recent shameful omission of Ray at the Olympics closing ceremony. You only have to watch Ray’s ‘Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’ speech to see how important this support was to them.

But, more than providing the band with rock credibility, Dave’s enthusiasm was infectious, even when he and Ray were having difficulties, the enjoyment he exudes when on stage playing, is almost tangible (witness he and Jim Rodford dancing, running and jumping about as they play in this version of ‘Catch Me Now I’m Falling’, they’re so obviously having the time of their lives), his extraordinary talent and innovation added depths to songs live that were never reached in the studio versions. Unlike (the) Eagles, for instance, whose concerts sound just like the recordings, with the Kinks, nothing is ever that set in stone (except some of Ray’s jokes – bless, ‘If you don't know it, learn it’). Dave hardly ever plays the same solo the same way or even the same solo, if you know what I mean because he can do anything with a guitar. His ability means that he’s spoilt for choice. Why stick to the same old thing? He constantly improvises and invents so that every song played live is a work in progress. Fluid. Unrepeatable. Inimitable. He can make it scream, sing, cry, take us in any direction. Dave plays the guitar like it’s an extension of his body, like it’s completely natural to him. It doesn’t ever look like something he has to work at.

It makes each concert an adventure into the unknown as Dave is constantly upping the ante. In the 90s, his guitar work rejuvenates, transforms and beefs up ‘I’m Not Like Everybody Else’ for a new generation. It sounds like a completely new song. Perhaps that’s why Ray sings the lead although he originally wrote it for Dave’s voice.

[Admittedly, I’ve never been to a Kinks concert, having only liked them a year or so; I can only judge from videos on YouTube and people’s recollections. With the Kinks, I didn’t so much come late to the party as turn up not only after it had finished but when the people holding it had got married, had kids, watched these kids grow up, moved into a retirement community and sold the house to fund their care in old age. I arrived in time for the new owners’ housewarming do.]

This mutability might also hint at a lack of discipline, another recurring feature of some Kinks gigs. A friend saw them at a festival in 71 I think and they only played three songs before Ray poured beer over the musicians at the front and then stormed off stage. In the Jon Savage biography, he mentions a gig in the US in 1965 where the Kinks

‘played one song – ‘You Really Got Me’ – for the whole act’.

You take the rough with the smooth. No wonder their managers were sometimes at their wits’ end.

In 1979, Dave invests ‘Superman’ with rock kudos, conducting a guitar masterclass from about three and a half minutes in, fleshing out a fairly ordinary pop song so that it sounds entirely different, he and Jim on backing vocals. (I always thought the female backing vocalists were unnecessary.) There’s nothing better than hearing the counterpoint of the brothers’ vocals. It’s even better when they share the lead, changing for the verse, the chorus or the bridge, as on ‘Arthur’ or ‘Artificial Man’. Dave’s vocals on the latter (very Ian Hunter-ish) surpass Ray’s, the aural equivalent of a colour segment in a black and white movie.

The dual vocal on this version of ‘Jukebox Music’, with Dave singing the lead works in a similar way, his pitch suiting perfectly and contributing that emotional edge. There’s something very special about the combination of their voices when they come together, blended like a good malt whisky, like on the chorus of ‘Hatred’ in this live rendition; Ray’s smile (2.09), Dave’s quick solo (3.25), a certain relish in the delivery of
‘Why don’t you just drop dead and don’t recover?’
(at 3.40) create utter magic.

‘Life Goes On’ 1977. How difficult it must be for Dave to accompany Ray’s vocal, its phrasing always changing, on guitar but he manages it, again with exquisite touch, so we can forgive a little ‘guitar face’.

When Dave is told to run with it, he extemporises with such talent and virtuosity, you wish all this was in the studio version. Thank God for YouTube. Rockpalast shows seem to bring out his inner guitar god, investing ‘Yo-Yo’, for instance, already a delicious diatribe, with an extra dimension, effectively changing the whole character of the song. The original’s relative resignation and restraint are ratcheted up to rage, with both Ray and Dave totally focused and committed. If they can play like this together, why would they ever want to stop? The whole climactic crescendo of sound is simply magnificent.

If looks could kill

But after watching this interview at the time of 'Scattered' (1993), I can see how Dave would never want to put himself in a similar situation again, where he’s literally frightened to speak, even to interject a frivolous comment, that it’s not worth the risk of Ray’s wrath, that look he gives him is so cutting and demoralising (see 1.17 to 1.29 for their awkward interaction). And yet, there’s affection there, in the video of the same song, when Ray sings

‘I feel older, I feel fatter’

and their exchange of smiles around two minutes in looks genuine but is it only for the benefit of the camera?

They would have to be willing/able to put aside their own past personal grievances and behave respectfully towards each other if there were ever to be a Kinks reunion. Although Dave is all about forgiveness, it’s one thing to forgive and another thing to put yourself in a position where you know you will have to exercise the muscle of forgiveness in advance.

Everybody’s waiting for the blog on Satsang 3 but I left everything I wrote in the hotel and have yet to get it back. It’s in transit. The gigs were great and we got to hear some tracks off Dave’s new album, very interesting, very varied – the five tracks we’ve heard so far (either live or as album mixes) are quite different. Dave still rocks, still emotes, still surprises. I don't know whether I’m allowed to divulge track titles yet.