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- Tracy Grammer
- Flower of Avalon
Signature Sounds SIG 1292
 It
sounds so pretentious, unless it's happened to you (and, music-lovers,
I hope that it has,) when one experiences the time(s) you can
say, with sincerity, "this music changed my life."
But what does that mean?
Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer's music changed my life.
Not in an outward way, but in the sense of hearing something
I'd never heard before, thinking of ideas and images that were
new to me, and feeling the excitement of discovering an Americana
"band" so clearly headed for artistic, and even possibly
financial, success. A sports analogy would be to discover a team
that you want to play on, a club you want to join. Music this
good?, these folks are headed for fame and mythology, I thought.
In summer of 2001, the duo was the talk of the important Falcon
Ridge Folk Festival. Prior to that, I had heard about them from
the Folk Alliance meeting, that year in Albuquerque.
I discovered the Portland, Oregon duo the winter before, listening
to their 2000 Tanglewood Tree release until I memorized
every note, every word, every nuance and still, each time
I played the record, I heard new and magical things. Carter was
such a clever writer, and cleverness is so lacking in today's
world! And Grammer could translate that into sound, with her
voice and her violin. They were two halves of the same musical
mind. A musical marriage made right here on earth.
Dave Carter's lyrics are not for the weak-of-mind. Every word
counted with Carter, who got many of his song ideas from dreams.
He met Tracy, trained in classical and musical theater, after
a show he gave when she was new in town. (She has a degree in
American Lit from UC Berkeley.) Eventually, they became, and
proclaimed themselves, Partners in All Things.
I have this idea that, upon hearing Tracy sing and play his music,
Dave Carter must have fallen on his knees and banged his forehead
on the rug, with thanks to the generosity of the Cosmos. He must
have heard the true complement to his talents and style that
seemed almost organic. Her soothing, articulate crooning ("my
voice is perfect for lullabies," she says) smoothed out
his vocal roughness, and her violin playing was crystalline.
Her obvious intelligence and devotion to Carter's songs was implicit
in the delivery on Tanglewood Tree, and on the subsequent
drum hat buddha.
Their CDs were recorded with pristine clarity. Each note,
every inflection, served the songs. Elegant simplicity was their
standard. Their voices were as often in harmony as they were
in conflict in the songs. The songs switched genders, often told
of classic stories, some magical and some wry. Carter's Buddhist
philosophy was also grounded in the reality of the hardness of
life. He often wrote of death, very specifically in his song
"When I Go," describing a "hammer's blow",
with a fierce resemblance to the heart attack he finally suffered,
at the hour of noon.
Their fans, so anticipating seeing the duo (plus bass and
drums) at Falcon Ridge in '02, were, quite literally, devastated
upon hearing of his death, in Tracy's arms, in a hotel room in
Massachusetts, just days before he was to walk out onto the Main
Stage at the Hudson, NY, festival and capture the audience. (See
http://rockzilla.net/bonnyh22.html.) Did he leave any songs "we"
the fans hadn't heard? What would Tracy do now would she
go it alone? There were many tears and many regrets, and, in
the almost-3 years since Dave died, there were roads to cross
and corners to turn.
There were problems with Dave's meager "estate."
There were problems with the licensing of his songs. "I
have to go now," Tracy e-mailed me once. "Someone answered
the ad in the newspaper, and is here to buy Dave's barbells."
Tracy herself experienced every emotion imaginable concerning
the music that they made together.
I opened the topic of life-changing to members of Tracy Grammer's
message board (www.tracygrammer.com). One fan wrote: At the
time I discovered Dave's music, I was just becoming interested
in singing. Dave's music helped open this up for me. I knew,
I JUST KNEW, I could sing these songs. And now I do.
A fan/friend in Portland wrote this: Their music felt,
and still feels, like I am on the inside of joke. We fans managed
to find their music, or their music found us, and it became quickly
apparent that this was song-writing and performance that had
every reference point in music, yet had found its own stylistic
niche. Then they would do another song and you knew it wasn't
a niche. Every song seemed unburdened by previous musical form,
yet lovingly tied to music as far as hundreds of years back.
The language was ancient, then certainly post modern. They kept
me guessing and awaiting for a new show, a new CD, the kind of
anticipation I used to feel for a new Dylan release.
Another fan had this confession: A little while after sunrise
I started for "home" wondering why my friend had so
highly recommended this bland looking CD...I threw the CD into
the player. Not a few minutes later, I was crying. Not that it
was a bad thing, in fact quite the contrary, I hadn't been able
to really cry like that for a few years, sort of numb, you see.
I put the CD on repeat, cuddled up with my dogs, and just let
Dave Carter have his way with my emotions. I pulled so much meaning
out of those songs, I found myself actually caring that I was
on a destructive path. I cared that I could die, and I cared
that I was in such a horrible situation. And that quiet acceptance
I had taken as my steadfast companion? He never knew he could
run so fast.
With the CD release of Flower of Avalon, which could
be sub-titled "The Last Songs of Dave Carter," the
question could be: Can these songs stand up to the previous recordings?
What will Tracy (with three more years of performing experience
under her belt) do with the arrangements? We knew that Jim Henry,
Tracy's immensely-talented and empathic "band," would
be filling in the male voice on the new record, but would he
sound like Dave/or not sound like Dave? Dave would have
loved knowing that Mary Chapin Carpenter, a hero of his &
Tracy's, would be singing harmony on his songs! But how will
it sound? Will it be sentimental, or kind of sad?
No! It sounds wonderful. It is exactly what Dave would
have wanted. Tracy's voice is an instrument of flexibility, nuance
and sensitivity, without a note of sadness or irony. Jim Henry
is mixed back just enough to evoke Dave, but not to replace him.
The arrangements are more complex than the previous albums, but
I think they are just as Dave himself would have evolved them
into. A piano riff here, one of Tracy's achingly perfect violin
breaks there, nothing is superfluous or showy. Mary Chapin Carpenter's
contributions, like Jim Henry's, are tasteful and augumentery.
Their voices are as warm as Tracy's, and respectfully energetic.
One of Tracy's friends offers this: Tracy's quest receives
too little notice, some of it her own choice. I can't even imagine
the self-expectation she may burden herself with. But there is
one thing that anyone who has been there early in their career
knows, until Tracy Grammer came along, Dave Carter's music didn't
have the glue, the "it".
This is so, so true. And because Tracy's reverence to Dave's
songs was so apparent, she represented the listener to Carter's
colorful, wry, sometimes ancient world. Her part in the songs
was that of the one left behind, the one betrayed, the one to
rationalize the craziness or craftiness - and, sometimes, grimness
- of Dave's characters. Listeners did not, literally, want to
be Tracy Grammer, who maintained, along with Dave, a deliberately
mysterious aura. But when singing along to Dave and Tracy in
the privacy of our cars or kitchens, we all sang Tracy's
lines. Not that we could duplicate that honeyed voice ourselves!
When Dave sang, in "Kate and the Ghost of Lost Love,"
("When I Go," 1998) he sang, Sweet Kate, open your
gate, here I stand in the wind. Threadbare, snow in my hair,
how I need you again. Tracy answered, Love is a star that will
not shine till the hour of your return. I count the days in cups
of wine, and the candles I have burned.
We, the listeners, sang with Tracy. And when Dave got to the
plaintive lines, I heard the grey wolf sing her serenade at night,
we all sang back to him, in Tracy's voice, but you never held
me by the light of day. I climbed the redwood tree and caught
the wren in flight, he tells her, and she joins him in a duet
line worthy of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald: but her wings
were soft as morning, and the morning slipped away.
When Dave died on July 19, 2002, in Tracy's arms (following
a run, in Hadley, MA), at the age of 49, nobody expressed what
the fans felt better than Mary Chapin Carpenter. In the liner
notes of Tracy's new Flower of Avalon CD, she writes:
"I don't know how I first heard that Dave Carter had suddenly
passed away; I know that the news literally took my breath away,
a reaction that I am certain I shared with all of their fans.
For Tracy, I simply could not imagine the grief that she was
experiencing, but she showed everyone such courage in the face
of her loss that it's as if she propped us all up. From a distance,
I could not imagine there would be no more songs from Dave Carter.
Closer up, I could not fathom how Tracy would find the strength
to go on without him.
"But, she most courageously and gorgeously has."
Flower of Avalon contains nine of the last unrecorded
Dave Carter songs (and one written by William Jolliff, the rollicking
"Laughlin Boy.") Each song is succinct in its arrangement
and vocals. Tracy practically dances as she sings the last song
Dave wrote, "Phantom Doll." Like Dave's classic "Gentle
Arms of Eden," the last track, "Any Way I Do"
will find its way to hymnals and church services. Jim Henry,
Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lorne Entress, Jon Carroll, Rob Schnell
and Mike Rivard provide compelling, yet precise melodic and vocal
touches.
Some of the reviews I've read are saying "this is a stunning
debut by Tracy Grammer." We all knew she could do it, but
the result (produced by Tracy and John Jennings) leaves even
her dearest fans with wet eyes, and happy ears. The tears are
not for missing Dave; the tears are the kind one sheds when realizing
that one is in the midst of the performance of music transcendent.
www.tracygrammer.com
You can contact Bonny Holder at bonny-at-rockzilla.net
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