meggo Posted June 17, 2004 Report Share Posted June 17, 2004 sounds pretty interesting though... wouldn't mind giving this one a listen! article from globe & mail: She's just a coal miner's hipster Loretta Lynn's work with Jack White has brought her sound back to its roots, ROBERT EVERETT-GREEN writes -- and to a new audience By ROBERT EVERETT-GREEN Thursday, June 17, 2004 - Page R1 Loretta Lynn is hip for the first time in her long career, and she won't pretend she saw it coming. On the contrary, she was braced for disaster after she saw the bare-bones gear in the funky old house chosen by Jack White of the White Stripes as the site of her latest recording, Van Lear Rose. "I walked in there, and I thought, God be with us, we'll never get anything out of here," said the 69-year-old country singer, during a phone interview from her Nashville home. "But I figured if it didn't work, I could always make another record real quick." No need. Van Lear Rose sold 37,000 copies in its first week -- her best showing ever (total Canadian sales are nearing 20,000). The album was feted in publications that have ignored Lynn for decades, and on TV shows such as Late Night with David Letterman. The fabled Coal Miner's Daughter has become an instant favourite of people who previously knew her mainly through TV viewings of the 1980 movie based on her autobiography. Everything about her dealings with White has surprised her. She couldn't fathom why a man known for bluesy, elemental garage rock would dedicate an album to her (White Blood Cells, the Stripes' breakthrough disc of 2002). She didn't know why he wanted to record her next album, and she sure couldn't get used to his working methods. "I just let him have his way, and he took it," she said, with a ripe Kentucky twang. White put her in the old house (pictured on the album cover), brought in his own players, and wouldn't let her do second takes. He added all kinds of extra tracks, including his own vocals, after she'd gone home for the day. He even recorded her on the sly, taping a long conversational anecdote and ornamenting it later with his own music. Lynn seems to have received these indignities with a kind of bemused shock, as if reacting to charming misbehaviour by a house guest. She may have been slow to understand White's shenanigans, but she could see that he had a clear idea of what he wanted. "He was trying to get the sound I had when I first came to Nashville," she said. "Randy Scruggs did my last album, Still Country. It was polished, it was perfect. I loved it. But I think people are getting tired of that polished sound. Jack's record sounds like we're sitting in the front room, singing. It's the countriest thing I've done since I've been in Nashville. . . . "This boy will make a great producer," she said. "When he was doing the listening part, he put me in mind of Owen [bradley], the way he hears every little thing, even things I wasn't hearing." There's some irony in her reference to her first Nashville producer, and she knows it. Bradley, who made Lynn's most successful discs in the sixties and seventies, was all for using the best technology and the most polished performance, even if he needed a dozen takes to get it. Recording with White was often more like flying without a net, in someone else's circus. His long, distorted guitar introduction to Portland, Oregon, added in after her singing was recorded, has no precursor in Lynn's experience of country music. "My first reaction was that he played enough music for another song," she said. "I had to laugh. I said, 'You know what the disc jockeys are gonna do, Jack? They're gonna know exactly where to start playing this one. They're gonna drop the needle just before the vocal comes in.' " And yet she feels quite at home with the overall direction of the album. It's the first disc since her debut in 1960 to feature nothing but her own songs. There are some moments when White's rock pedigree blares forth, but there are also tunes that feel like they were recorded within shouting distance of Lynn's old Kentucky home. Others revive the rough, ramblin'-woman spirit of Lynn's early days as a country star whose first hit was called I'm a Honky Tonk Girl. The timing for the disc couldn't be better. Country music is indeed seeing a revolt against the sleek productions of cover-girl divas such as Faith Hill. Earthier talents such as Gretchen Wilson and Toby Keith are storming up the charts. Wilson, whose debut album Here for the Party sits at No. 1 on the Canadian country list, revels in her identity as a beer-swigging Redneck Woman (the title of her hit single) who really has lived in trailer parks. As well, the deaths of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash last year alerted the broader music public to the irreplaceable qualities of the elder generation of country stars, the ones who really did grow up on cotton farms and play in juke joints. Lynn's humble origins may not be that different from Wilson's, but she has a gracious patina that belongs to her experience and her generation. At its most elemental, Lynn's music isn't far from the old-timey stuff brought back into vogue by T. Bone Burnett and the Coen brothers (in their film O Brother, Where Art Thou? White, who has frequently covered Dolly Parton's Jolene in concert, expressed his taste of the old moonshine during the making of another recent film, Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain. The soundtrack features White singing some vintage tunes with accompaniments by the likes of Norman Blake, the finger-picking guitarist from the old Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. One of those songs, Sittin' on Top of the World, had previously been recorded by Bob Wills, Carl Perkins and the Grateful Dead. Rock's debt to country music and western swing couldn't be more succinctly noted. Lynn's music, however, didn't come into being solely in an atmosphere of coal dust and poverty. She made a point, during our conversation, of remembering how a Canadian named Norm Burley played a crucial role in her early career. "He'd seen me on the Buck Owens show, and he sent for me to come up to Vancouver and record," she said. "He was a pretty wealthy man, he had a lumber yard. He sent me to L.A., he furnished everything, the gas and everything. And by golly, Honky Tonk Girl broke the ice for me. He was the one who really let everyone know that I sang." That first single appeared on Burley's Zero Records, which he invented for the sole purpose of recording Lynn. When she drove to Nashville and was offered a deal with Decca and Bradley, Burley happily released her from her contract. The rough and tumble of her early days, when she and her late husband Doo drove around the United States delivering her singles to every country station they could find, still resurfaces occasionally, often in the lives of her family. Her son Ernest, described in Coal Miner's Daughter as a man who "could find trouble if you tied him in chains," was arrested last month for vehicular homicide, after being involved in a fatal crash while drunk. More recently, she had to cancel her June concerts because of back problems. But dates at the new Niagara Fallsview Casino remain in place for early July, and a tour with White is being mooted for the fall. Loretta Lynn plays the Niagara Fallsview Casino in Niagara Falls, Ont., on July 9 and 10. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Esau Posted June 17, 2004 Report Share Posted June 17, 2004 Man, I thought Dylan & Jack White was an odd combo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bradm Posted June 17, 2004 Report Share Posted June 17, 2004 I think it's substantially less odd than Johnny Cash & Rick Rubin. Aloha, Brad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meggo Posted June 17, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 17, 2004 what great results from that one... i think he did the american recordings didn't he? soooo good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Low Roller Posted June 17, 2004 Report Share Posted June 17, 2004 Man, I thought Dylan & Jack White was an odd combo. That really happened? My interest is peaked! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meggo Posted June 17, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 17, 2004 i think jack joined dylan at a detroit show, not too long ago... not sure about the details though Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bradm Posted June 17, 2004 Report Share Posted June 17, 2004 i think jack joined dylan at a detroit show, not too long ago... not sure about the details though http://www.nme.com/news/107878.htm Aloha, Brad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Esau Posted June 17, 2004 Report Share Posted June 17, 2004 I think it's substantially less odd than Johnny Cash & Rick Rubin.Aloha,Brad Well for us Dylan fanatics it was odd.i think jack joined dylan at a detroit show, not too long ago... not sure about the details though Yep.I have it,good show he joined just for the encore :Ball & Biscuit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Low Roller Posted June 17, 2004 Report Share Posted June 17, 2004 I have it,good show he joined just for the encore :Ball & Biscuit. *drool* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Esau Posted June 17, 2004 Report Share Posted June 17, 2004 I have it,good show he joined just for the encore :Ball & Biscuit. *drool* Here ya go: Dylan/White : Ball & Biscuit.mp3 Takes a minute. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Low Roller Posted June 17, 2004 Report Share Posted June 17, 2004 Here ya go: Dylan/White : Ball & Biscuit.mp3 Takes a minute. You are so the man! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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