Of Note: CD Reviews

At first blush, Coco Kallis and Lafe (rhymes with "waif") Dutton look like a pair of genial baby boomer troubadours who play at elementary schools from time to time to teach kids folk music.

But Coco & Lafe are quite a bit more than that.

Barely a year since their feature in the San Diego Troubadour (March 2009), these bi-costal farmers' market balladeers are back with an album of their most requested covers (and two originals) titled, appropriately enough, Uncovered. Those familiar with Coco and Lafe know that part of what makes them so engaging is the way they interpret timeless and familiar tunes. The spare production - guitar, vocals, harmonica - delivers their essence and strips their talent bare before the listener, conveying their remarkable chemistry with every song. 

A straightforward take on John Prine's tune "Unwed Fathers" opens the album. Both take turns singing lead and harmony on this spurned father's lament. A rather upbeat version of Tom Waits' "Long Way Home" follows, sounding almost Springsteen-like. Next is the first of two originals - "Praying for Rain" - a prayer narrative about drought and desolation, evoking the Lord over and over in a country-fied mantra. It's a perfect allegory for the current economic climate when desperation welcomes any relief.

Their "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" pays homage to Willie Nelson's version; the honest and sweet melancholy is drawn out by the depth of Coco's vocals. "Hallelujah" follows; Lafe has a turn at Cohen's original and he delivers. His dusky lead is strong and emotive without being melodramatic, and Coco adds gorgeous harmonies.

Coco takes the lead on the other original song, "Mexico (A Song for Lance)," which is a fine inspirational/cautionary travel ballad. That this song precedes Townes Van Zandt's cowboy ballad, "Poncho and Lefty," is apt. Coco and Lafe's interpretation is more wistful than the original, evoking the loneliness of the open range as seen by these two characters.

Coco gives "Hard Times Come Again No More" a very nice turn, but a standout is "Corrina, Corrina." The famous 12-bar blues standard - here amalgamated from Bob Dylan's folk-blues version and the more straightforward blues of Big Joe Turner - is cut loose as a rollicking porch-stomper.

"Five Hundred Miles" follows, a plaintive dirge that their fellow Boomers may recognize as a Peter & Gordon tune. Coco and Lafe take J.J. Cale's shuffle, "End of the Line," and slow it down to a crawl, harmonica wheezing and squeezing like a train whistle. Uncovered ends all too soon with Steve Earle's "Goodbye," an unfussy yet expressive tune that rounds out a superb album.

Coco and Lafe are returning to San Diego (cocolafe.com for details), which is exciting news for anyone who loves evocative, American songcraft. San Diego is lucky to have Coco and Lafe for part of the year, but perhaps we can entice them to stay longer? After all, our farmers' markets never stop.

A few years and albums ago, in 2006, prolific ex-Rugburn Gregory Page released Love Made Me Drunk, an album of songs that musically transported the listener to a European café for a set of his retro pop tunes. The songs were arranged with a small backing group-accordion, jazzy keyboards, and French titles to give just the right touch of exotic class as Page crooned about relationship problems as a man on the steets of Paris.

On his new disc, Heartstrings, Page is back with a sound that builds on this earlier music, while differing in important ways as well. The London-born San Diego performer has released numerous albums and seems capable of writing and singing everything from folk-rock to classical piano. The focus on Heartstrings is evident on first listen; instead of a trip to France, it is a trip back in time several decades to a dim, relaxed jazz club that could be anywhere.

To accomplish this, Page enlisted some help from co-producer Jeff Berkley, pianist Sky Ladd, and a cadre of San Diego's top session players. Ladd's grand piano is out front, but Gilbert Castellanos' hatted trumpet accents and Randy Hoffman's vibes have their moments. The sound, like some of Page's other recordings, is soaked in nostalgia, and his unforced, crooning vocals feel right at home.

The first three tracks take the relaxed listener back to a musically simpler time, when all the songs had catchy melodies, the microphones were huge chrome behemoths, there weren't any big amps crowding the stage, and all of the singers sounded a little bit like Rudy Vallee.

"Promise of a Dream," the opener, is one of the seven Page originals and sounds like a Tin Pan Alley standard, or maybe a song from a ‘40s musical - as do many of his songs on the disc. A combination of Page's gift for capturing the sound of the era, the melodious song structure and lyrics, and the instrumental flourishes crystallize this nugget, and it works again on "Don't Cry," and the title tune. This song, an unforgettable highlight, has an airy, upbeat lyric about "a brand new sunny day," sung over one of those scales of notes that lock the listener in. "Tuesday Night at Croce's" is a soft, solo jazz piano piece by Ladd, one of two on the disc that add to the club date feel.

Page the crooner is in top form on "One and Only Love," and "Rewind Me Back to You." These both have that old-time flavor, and "Rewind" makes no bones about reminiscing about the good old days: "Life looked bright in black and white." If the rest of the disc were not so effective, to close with a smooth cover of Edith Piaf's ‘40s classic "La Vie En Rose" might be risky, but Page manages to make it fit the mood of the other songs. Or, he actually made them to fit it, and succeeded.

Heartstrings is a great listen. It shows that many of the things that made good music 70 years ago still work. It also stands up as a considerable statement of Gregory Page's talent and musical direction.

Artists like Jon Swift exemplify the quality of singer/songwriters attracted to San Diego of late. Whereas some "native-made" music can be accused of being too sunny, Swift evokes the rugged California instead - a land of mountains and desert, relentless surf, and rainy weather.

Swift's latest, Pathway, is a songwriter's triumph. Its arrangements are full-sounding, yet delicate: acoustic and electric guitars, mandolins, vocals, pedal steel, harmonica, maraca or tambourine here and there, or a light brush of a snare drum. Swift's voice is smooth and a bit smoky, like a peaty scotch whisky. His poignant lyrics appear honed from a poetic sensibility and a mind rooted in the beautiful mathematics of astrophysics. (A discipline in which Swift has a PhD.) Pathway is chock full of elegiac pastoral descriptions and analogies.         

"Invisible Highway" is a strong opener - folk-country with smart harmonies. "Ode to O'Rourke" follows, a loping, echo-y ballad with a nice pedal steel break. Swift first paints a forbidding city landscape, then an inviting rustic one - water, mountains, boats gliding in, sunshine. "Ballad of Big Sur" is an escape ballad that begs for the natural usurpation of the loud and artificial. "All Is Untied Again" is a jangly, faraway song. The slightly out-of-tune guitars work perfectly as Swift explores the theme of destruction and erosion as renewal.

"We Are the One to Blame" speaks to the complexities of love, where feelings are easier expressed in song. "True Love" could have been a very sappy song, but Swift treats it lightly and rewards the listener with an unusual perspective. The double-time waltz, "You and Me," features a wandering piano that intertwines with Leah Thompson's ethereal vocals for something truly special.

The bucolic imagery picks back up with "No 100 Miles" and "Stand with Your Lover." The former describes hills, wind, geese - recalling images that "...ain't no hundred miles away." The latter brings us (figuratively) to the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean, and includes some tender electric guitar licks. "Listen to the Falling Rain" is full of wistful remembrances as the pedal steel swirls around the melody. "Death Valley Serenade" is a rather buoyant little song in the spirit of Neil Young's "Deep Forbidden Lake."

The album closes with "There May Be No End," an upbeat tune about riding the rails "...north from LA, golden hills behind me." It speaks of the price and thrill of freedom: the hard work, the risk of being forgotten, and the wide-open future. The song crescendos into a wall of sound - a triumphant end to a wonderful album.

Jon Swift's songs seek companions, shelter from the pleasantness. According to his website, his next album will be borne from a barn somewhere in San Diego. If Pathway is any indication, Swift will be writing thoughtful, idyllic tunes for a long time to come.

Mike Quick follows a tradition of storytelling folk singer-songwriters springing out of the Midwest, in the footsteps of John Prine, Tom Paxton, and the late Steve Goodman. He is a Wisconsin native who has performed all over the country and recorded a country-rock disc with a full band before 2004's Down Bullfrog Road, which focused on spare arrangements of folk and blues built around Quick's striking voice. His latest, Rain, continues in the same vein, with plenty of gospel in the mix as well.

The music throughout is a subdued canvas of tastefully picked acoustic guitars, piano and organ, light percussion, and excellent background vocals that complement Quick's worn and weathered, but comfortable, singing. The production and mixing by Michael Jerling is first rate. It also helps that Quick changes the musical pace enough to keep things interesting.

The title tune opens the disc with a distinct gospel vibe, a message of transformation with a revival-style chorus. "Penny Arcade" manages to softly transport the listener to a county fair, a calliope-like keyboard in the background as the words tell of carousels, roller coasters, and costumes. For the excellent "Get Right With Your Church," it is more gospel-inspired blues, as Quick fires pulpit lyrics over the top of a rocking beat and nice organ riffing. Hurricane Katrina is the inspiration for "Fats Domino Is Missing," which relates a story about the events "while the storm blew New Orleans away," with some New Orleans touches by the backing band. "Get Me to Nirvana on Time" pushes the beat and stands out, an acoustic rocker that has ear-catching lyrics and a punchy arrangement featuring superb acoustic guitar breaks.

Quick has a kind of easy way with a folk melody and familiar voice that draw comparisons to Gordon Lightfoot - especially on songs like "Honey to My Soul," which sounds like a lost Lightfoot B-side. While his singing lacks the Canadian tenor's depth, Quick seems to share Lightfoot's ability to smoothly move from the soft folk idiom into more country-rock, blues, and gospel forms, both as a writer and singer.

"Vampires" is a solid example, a blues-rocker that tackles a familiar folk topic: civil rights. A lyrical story,, based on the disappearance of three civil rights workers in Mississippi, is told to minor chords and powerful electric slide guitar. The storytelling on this song is outstanding, using a nice metaphor to peg racists as bloodsuckers, quoting "America the Beautiful" and observing "God save us from ourselves at last."

Rain gives folk music fans a chance to hear Mike Quick in a batch of songs that demonstrate his considerable talent as a songwriter. His best songs are tales and sermons, which capture the listener's attention the way any good tale or sermon does.

One of the defining discs of the sixties was Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home, in which the influential folkie managed to turn the musical world around in the space of one record flip and an electric amp jack. That monumental album not only made some of the best contributions to the new folk-rock music, it also contained some of his most intriguing folk songs. After four folk-dominated discs spread out over a eight years, including Ammunition from 2006, Tim Easton takes a similar departure on his new one, Porcupine. While Ammunition had a few hints of Dylan in his mid-'60s folk-rock transition, Easton's new record moves a step further, adding blues-influenced, hard-edged roots rock on many tracks while not abandoning the pop and folk tunes that got him to this point. It's a winning combination.

The 12 songs are all Easton originals, pristinely recorded in Nashville with a crack band, prominently featuring guitarist Kenny Vaughn. The bluesy opener "Burgundy Red" tells the listener right off that Easton can handle wearing rock boots, both as a writer and a singer. A grinding, heavy guitar lick leads the way over pounding drums as he howls about how "you woke up this morning with an old song in your head/ spilled wine glass and a stranger in your bed." The rock and roll continues as the title tune propels itself on an acoustic, three-chord boogie riff that isn't easy to forget, with Jew's harp accents adding to the fun. Both "The Young Girls" and "Stone's Throw Away" are rooted in the country-blues, with slower, haunting melodies that draw the listener in.

The second half of the disc has more of a pop-folk sound, though Easton steers away from framing himself in the stripped-down troubadour format. The best of the softer songs here is "7th Wheel," which is pure radio pop, nothing deep-but a disc highlight anyway. "Get What I Got" follows, a hard-rock misfire that somehow blends Beatles-like background singing with a "dueling" lead guitar break that sounds edited from an early Led Zeppelin disc. The singing and playing aren't bad, but don't match the earlier rockers and this isn't the kind of disc for six-string flash.

Not to worry, the rest of the disc stays sharp in folk and country forms, especially on "Baltimore." Here, Easton and the band sound like a Steve Earle outtake with outlaw lyrics, a country-swing vibe, and a foot-tapping rhythm. The quiet, dignified "Goodbye Amsterdam" is the last of a trio of folk-inspired tunes that wrap the music up.

With Porcupine, Tim Easton plugs in, rocking up his sound and it works. He is an excellent writer and singer-the songs here bounce around in the listener's head. This great listen is sure to expand his audience.