News Archives: 2021
A Jackson Browne playlist starring the guitarists who shape his recordings
July 27, 2021
Jackson Browne is known for his lyrics and melodies, but one aspect of his work that gets too little attention is the quality of musicianship on his albums, particularly that of his accompanying guitarists. Now you don’t go looking to a Jackson Browne record for the showy rock solos you might get from an Eddie Van Halen, or the burning blues licks from a Buddy Guy. Rather, his music most often features the kind of subtle playing that winds in and out of the arrangement, complementing the lyrics, always serving the song rather than itself. Not only that, he tends to give his guitarists a lot of room to make statements of their own on his songs.
One person who has taken notice is Bruce Springsteen. When Springsteen inducted Browne into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, he was quick to mention not just the star himself, but also “his great sideman, David Lindley.” Lindley work on “Late For The Sky,” the album Springsteen called Browne’s “masterpiece,” is the epitome of the kind of playing I’m talking about. A multi-instrumentalist, Lindley accompanied Browne not only in the studio but onstage through most of the ‘70s, on lap steel and fiddle as well as guitar, and Browne told me “it would have been hard to go out and play those songs with just anybody. Nobody plays like him.”
Lindley stopped touring regularly with Browne in the ‘80s, and the singer – who wore a David Lindley/Ry Cooder T-shirt to our interview – said of their parting, “When someone like that leaves your band, you don’t replace him. You move on. You just go find some other stuff to do.”
Browne found plenty of other stuff to do, with plenty of great guitarists. There are more than can be accommodated in this space (Cooder, Jesse Ed Davis, Keb’ Mo, Mike Campbell and Danny Kortchmar among them), but below is a brief playlist featuring David Lindley and a few others among the best who followed.
Late for the Sky (1974) – It’s no coincidence that one of Browne’s best-known songs features one of Lindley’s most memorable performances. When the song is only 20 seconds old, before a single word has been sung, the guitarist has already made a poetic statement, one that continues to wind its way tenderly around the fragile lyric before adding some quiet drama to the outro. It’s not flashy, but that’s the point.
Your Bright Baby Blues (1976) – Lowell George was the heart and soul of the band Little Feat, and he turns in one of his most memorable guitar performances here with some slow-burn slide work. This song also marked the beginning of Browne’s allowing his studio recordings to run at length (it clocks in at over 6 minutes), not to stuff them with more words, but to allow the arrangements to breathe and his guitarists to stretch out.
Where Were You (2008) — On a song he also co-wrote, session ace Mark Goldenberg provides atmospheric lead lines – alternately stabbing and soaring – that perfectly complement the scathing lyrics on this indictment of the government’s handling of Hurricane Katrina. His smart, understated playing can be heard throughout Browne’s 2008 album Time The Conqueror.
Long Way Around (2014) – Though his tone and style differ markedly from David Lindley’s, Val McCallum echoes Lindley in his ability to support and elevate a song not with flamboyance but with delicate playing and a unique tone – on this track it’s distorted, yet refined and even a bit elusive. Allowing the song to run more than six minutes, Browne allows McCallum ample room for some gentle rhythmic picking on the verses as well as more than one ethereal solo moment.
Leaving Winslow (2014) – McCallum’s 6-string joins forces with Greg Leisz’s pedal steel on a country song that subtly undermines the clichés of country guitar playing, with McCallum tossing out the kind of licks usually reserved for the pedal steel, and Leisz interweaving his lines in a complementary role.
Barricades of Heaven (2021) – David Lindley’s slide guitar sound on Browne’s early records is indelible, and a seemingly impossible act to follow, but Leisz brings his own style here, accompanying Browne on a song from his 1996 album, Looking East. Offering an example of how Leisz handles the original Lindley role on the singer’s best known tunes, Browne says, “What Greg always does is, he’ll play the opening bars of the song ‘Running on Empty,’ and then just peel off and do something spectacular of his own.” Both Leisz and Val McCallum are in Browne’s touring band this year as he hits the road in tandem with James Taylor.
Go Deeper
Read MoreAlbums Of The Week: Jackson Browne | Downhill From Everywhere
July 27, 2021
Running on empty? Not by a long shot.
On his 15th studio album in nearly 50 years, singer-songwriter Jackson Browne continues to be one of the most dependable and durable tunesmiths of his generation. Downhill From Everywhere delivers exactly what you expect and want from Browne: Another collection of warm, mellow and meticulously crafted California country-rock and Laurel Canyon folk that balances political activism and personal reflection. Granted, he isn’t breaking much new musical ground or taking many creative risks on these 10 tracks. But even if he’s happy to coast along comfortably in his own lane, the 72-year-old troubadour makes it clear he’s still got both hands on the wheel and plenty of gas in the tank. Long may he cruise — even if it may be ever-so-slightly downhill. After all, he’s earned it.
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Songwriting is a mysterious thing,” says Jackson Browne. “Sometimes it feels a bit like consulting the oracle.”
Take a listen to Downhill From Everywhere, Browne’s first new album in six years, and you might begin to suspect that he’s speaking quite literally. Though the songs here were recorded prior to the tumultuous events of the past year, the collection feels remarkably prescient, grappling with truth and justice, respect and dignity, doubt and longing, all while maintaining a defiant sense of optimism that seems tailor-made for these turbulent times. Like much of Browne’s illustrious catalog, Downhill From Everywhere is fueled by a search — for connection, for purpose, for self — but there’s a heightened sense of urgency written between the lines, a recognition of the sand slipping through the hourglass that elevates the stakes at every turn. “Time rolling away, time like a river, time like a train,” he sings. “Time like a fuse burning shorter every day.”
While such ruminations might suggest a meditation on aging and mortality from a rock icon in his early 70s, the truth is that Browne isn’t looking in the mirror; he’s singing about us, about a world fast approaching a social, political, and environmental point of no return. Clean air, fresh water, racial equity, democracy — it’s all on the line, and nothing is assured. “I see the writing on the wall,” says Browne. “I know there’s only so much time left in my life. But I now have an amazing, beautiful grandson, and I feel more acutely than ever the responsibility to leave him a world that’s inhabitable.”
Though the issues Browne tackles on the album are often sweeping and existential, he writes on a far more intimate scale, consistently zeroing in on the human experience at the heart of it all. Whether singing about a Catholic priest navigating the slums of Haiti on his motorbike or a young Mexican woman who’s risked everything in pursuit of a better life across the border, Browne manages to tap into a universal emotional language, one that makes the old feel new and the foreign feel familiar. “There’s a deep current of inclusion running through this record,” Browne explains. “I think that idea of inclusion, of opening yourself up to people who are different than you, that’s the fundamental basis for any kind of understanding in this world.”
Indeed, that kind of profound empathy has been at the core of Browne’s work for more than 50 years now. Hailed as one the greatest songwriters of all time, Browne got his start behind the scenes, penning tunes that would be recorded by the likes of Nico, The Byrds and Tom Rush before launching his own solo career with his classic 1972 self-titled debut. Known for era-defining hits like Running On Empty and The Pretender, as well as deeply personal ballads like These Days and In the Shape Of A Heart, Browne would go on to sell more than 18 million records in the US alone and be inducted into both the Rock and Roll and Songwriters Hall of Fame. Throughout his career, Browne also regularly threaded activism into his life and songs, raising funds and awareness for social, political, and environmental efforts.
And yet at no point on the album do we hear preaching from Browne, no lecturing or moralizing or pitting of neighbour against neighbour. Instead, the calls to action here are implicit, as are the warnings about the consequences of continued apathy. Browne relies on us to draw our own conclusions from the music, to connect the dots in the juxtaposition of imagery and recognize ourselves in the richly detailed renderings of modern life. “As a songwriter, you want to catch people when they’re dreaming,” he explains. “You want to find a way into their psyche when they don’t see you coming.”
With Downhill From Everywhere, Browne doesn’t just catch us while we’re dreaming, he challenges us to dream bigger. The songs are ultimately portraits — of people, of places, of possibilities — that appeal to our fundamental humanity, to the joy and pain and love and sadness and hope and desire that bind us all, not only to each other, but to those who came before and the generations still to come.”
Read MoreOut Now: Stream Jackson Browne’s Inspired and Focused New Album ‘Downhill from Everywhere’
July 27, 2021
https://www.rockcellarmagazine.com/jackson-browne-downhill-from-everywhere-new-album-listen-stream/
Cherished singer/songwriter Jackson Browne returned today, July 23, with Downhill from Everywhere, his first proper solo album since 2014’s Standing in the Breach.
The time between album clearly inspired a burst of creativity for Browne, who has put together the type of record that sticks with the listener well past its run time.
“My Cleveland Heart,” one of the pre-release tracks, bursts with heart and soul and an undeniable hook. Its quirky music video features none other than Phoebe Bridgers in an unexpected cameo:
As Browne told Rolling Stone, he was inspired by Bridgers’ own music video for “I Know the End,” one of the most crucial cuts on her excellent 2020 album Punisher. That video was directed by Alissa Torvinen, whom Browne reached out to when conceptualizing a video for “My Cleveland Heart”:
“It was the most fun I’ve ever had making a video,” he says. “I’m a big fan of Phoebe, so I picked Alissa. And then it was really sort of in the last days of planning that someone said, ‘Phoebe could be one of these nurses.’ From there, it was pretty much improvised.”
As for the Bridgers cameo, Browne offered up this bit of biting wit:
“I thought it was really appropriate to take out my worn-out, useless heart and hand it to Phoebe,” he said. “Who better to hand [it] to than somebody young, strong, and possibly as cynical as me?”
It’s that sort of spark that makes the music on Downhill from Everywhere as engaging as it is.
“Minutes to Downtown” has an urgency to it, a bass groove pairing with pianos and a guitar line that work together to accentuate Browne’s lyrics about the flow of time and being “forever on this freeway, dreaming of my getaway”:
The title track incorporates Browne’s expressive activism into song form, and it’s one of the record’s standouts:
Downhill from God’s golden shore
Downhill from the grocery store
Downhill from the center floor
K Street, and the never-ending war
Downhill from everywhere
Downhill from all you see
The ocean is the last stop for gravity
Downhill from here
Downhill from everywhere
All mankind’s ambition and validityhttps://www.youtube.com/embed/pxbB9EWM-Ks
“Until Justice is Real” asks us to do what we can to enact change and make things better for ourselves, a thinly veiled commentary on the state of things in the world today:
Ain’t on your TV, ain’t on your phone
You want the truth you got to find it on your own
It may not be that easy to see
The truth will cost you in the land of the free
It’s a good question to be asking yourself
What is the good life, what is wealth?
What is the future I’m trying to see?
What does that future need from me?https://www.youtube.com/embed/4wnw7EescQo
Downhill from Everywhere has a little bit of everything for fans of Jackson Browne. Topical, heart-on-sleeve lyricism, engaging guitar work and a vibrant energy are at work on every track, and it adds up to a stellar addition to his versatile catalog of music.
Read MoreJackson Browne works through life, again, on ‘Downhill From Everywhere’
July 27, 2021
The new album by Jackson Browne is heartening for several reasons, not the least of which is that almost 50 years after touchstone works like For Everyman and Late for the Sky helped a generation of young romantics cope with life’s disappointments, Browne is still the master of crafting lyrics that not only sound good, but that get to the heart of sometimes complicated matters. And Browne can turn that trick in a variety of settings, both emotional and musical.
Downhill From Everywhere
Jackson Browne
Inside Recordings, July 23
8/10
It’s also gratifying that on Browne’s new album, Downhill From Everywhere, he sounds as if he’s barely aged from when he was a 20-something songwriting prodigy who rolled out those morose classics, as well as the subsequent major hit album, 1977’s Running on Empty.
Truth is, Jackson Browne has been there for us all along, checking in every several years with pointed poetry about social and personal injustices. And the new album is no different, with Browne coming in both with specific targets like the struggles of Mexican immigrants into the States and more generalized notions of basic human longing (“Sometimes all anybody needs is the human touch” from “A Human Touch”) and searching in general (“If all I find is freedom, that’s all right,” he says on “Still Looking for Something”). https://www.youtube.com/embed/8_gWWzLph24?feature=oembed
Jackson Browne—he of the “No Nukes” activism and cited by none other than Randy Newman as the “only one who gives a shit” about the wrongs of the world—still puts human concerns at the fore. On the lovely “The Dreamer,” an immigrant family comes over the southern border, only to fall victim to deportation under Trump Administration rules. “Love is Love” comes from the viewpoint of a priest, Father Rick, negotiating the poverty-stricken streets of Haiti on his motorbike, “where people work and live and struggle every day.”
Matters of the heart are a concern, quite literally, on “My Cleveland Heart,” on which Browne describes replacing his beating heart with a mechanical one: “They don’t break, or bleed, or make mistakes like my heart makes.” It’s familiar emotional territory, if in a somewhat poppier package than the “Fountain of Sorrow” or “The Pretender” of yore.
The musical settings are varied here. There’s some fairly straightforward rock and roll with “Until Justice is Real,” on which Browne implores world citizens to steel themselves to do the good work they’re being called to do. There are the Latin flourishes of “The Dreamer” and the acoustic guitar and piano of “Minutes to Downtown” to the more electric Spanish flavor of “A Song for Barcelona,” Browne’s love song to that city, which he says “restored my fire and gave me back my appetite.” The album’s closer, “Barcelona” is Downhill From Everywhere’s best synthesis of the personal and the political, both laid out plainly in a musical setting in which it all goes down smoothly.
Browne wrote or cowrote all 10 tracks on Downhill From Everywhere, and also produced the album, his first since 2014’s Standing in the Breach. Many of the musicians on the new album are longtime collaborators—guitarists Greg Leisz and Val McCullum, bassist Bob Glaub and drummers Mauricio Lewak and Russ Kunkel. While former longtime guitarist and co-conspirator David Lindley is not present here, Leisz’s lap steelwork on several songs certainly brings back that vibe. Also helping shape the songs are a trio of female vocalists, Chavonne Stewart, Alethea Mills and Leslie Mendelson, the latter duetting with Browne on “A Human Touch.”
Now in his early 70s, Browne has expanded his worldview considerably from the early days, both literally and figuratively. And even if he shows no signs of letting up on his geopolitical and humanitarian concerns on Downhill From Everywhere, it’s also satisfying to know he’s still willing and able to lend an ear on affairs of the heart.
Read MoreWhat’s new this week: ‘Old,’ new David Crosby and Jackson Browne
July 27, 2021
Jackson Browne, “Downhill From Everywhere”: In advance of his tour with James Taylor (PPG Paints Arena, Aug. 3), the folk-rock legend issues his first album in six years, led by the title track and “My Cleveland Heart,” a collaboration with Phoebe Bridgers.
Read More10 New Albums to Stream Today
July 27, 2021
Featuring Leon Bridges, DARKSIDE, Anika and more
Read MoreJackson Browne Releases New Album ‘Downhill From Everywhere’ [Listen]
July 27, 2021
Storied singer-songwriter Jackson Browne has released his latest album, Downhill From Everywhere, via Inside Recordings. In support of the new record, Browne will hit the road for a joint summer tour with James Taylor and a September run of “Evening With” shows.
The release of Downhill From Everywhere was preceded by album single “My Cleveland Heart“, which Browne performed last month of Jimmy Kimmel Live.
The songwriting on the album presents a heightened sense of urgency from the aging icon during an age when social, political, and environmental issues are reaching an inflection point. The songs feel like direct rallying cries to various pressing causes, like the shimmering “Love Is Love” and the stomping “Until Justice Is Real”.
“I see the writing on the wall,” Browne explains in a statement. “I know there’s only so much time left in my life. But I now have an amazing, beautiful grandson, and I feel more acutely than ever the responsibility to leave him a world that’s inhabitable.”
While the issues Browne tackles on the album are often sweeping and existential, he writes on a far more intimate scale, consistently zeroing in on the human experience at the heart of it all. “There’s a deep current of inclusion running through this record,” Browne explains. “I think that idea of inclusion, of opening yourself up to people who are different than you, that’s the fundamental basis for any kind of understanding in this world.
Downhill From Everywhere was recorded with a core band that included guitarists Greg Leisz (Eric Clapton, Bill Frisell, Bob Weir) and Val McCallum (Lucinda Williams, Sheryl Crow), bassist Bob Glaub (Linda Ronstadt, CSNY, John Fogerty), keyboardist Jeff Young (Sting, Shawn Colvin), drummer Mauricio Lewak (Sugarland, Melissa Etheridge), and longtime vocalists Chavonne Stewart and Alethea Mills, the record is a collaborative work driven by group chemistry and an openness to new sounds and ideas.
Stream Downhill From Everywhere by Jackson Browne on the platform of your choice here of listen via Spotify below.
Jackson Browne – Downhill From Everywhere – Full Album
https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/2QYXmpLyttMQahrUOxLwss
Browne will be busy on the road for the rest of the year in support of the new album. On July 29th, he’ll kick off an extensive tour with James Taylor that will keep him busy through the month of August. In September, Browne will shift gears for a run of “Evening With” performances before linking back up with Taylor for another leg of shows in October.
See below for a full list of upcoming Jackson Browne 2021 tour dates. For ticketing details and more information, head here.
Read MoreJackson Browne – Downhill From Everywhere
July 27, 2021
The Scoop: Acclaimed singer-songwriter Jackson Browne returns with his first new album in six years, Downhill From Everywhere, which arrives today on his label Inside Recordings. The 72-year-old Browne, who also produced the album, brought together a core band made up of guitarists Greg Leisz (Eric Clapton, Bill Frisell) and Val McCallum (Lucinda Williams, Sheryl Crow), bassist Bob Glaub (Linda Ronstadt, CSNY, John Fogerty), keyboardist Jeff Young (Sting, Shawn Colvin) and drummer Mauricio Lewak (Sugarland, Melissa Etheridge) who recorded the follow-up to 2014’s Standing in the Breach. Others contributing to Downhill From Everywhere include Leslie Mendelson who provided vocals on “A Human Touch,” which she co-wrote with Browne and Steve McEwan, while “The Dreamer” is a bilingual collaboration with Eugene Rodriguez of Los Cenzontles. Browne took on social and environmential justice issues within the lyrics that appear accross the 10-track LP.
“Songwriting is a mysterious thing,” said Browne. “Sometimes it feels a bit like consulting the oracle … I see the writing on the wall. I know there’s only so much time left in my life. But I now have an amazing, beautiful grandson, and I feel more acutely than ever the responsibility to leave him a world that’s inhabitable … There’s a deep current of inclusion running through this record. I think that idea of inclusion, of opening yourself up to people who are different than you, that’s the fundamental basis for any kind of understanding in this world … I think racial and economic and environmental justice are at the root of all the other issues we’re facing right now. Dignity and justice are the bedrock of everything that matters to us in this life … As a songwriter, you want to catch people when they’re dreaming. You want to find a way into their psyche when they don’t see you coming.”
Read MoreJackson Browne
July 27, 2021
Master singer-songwriter Jackson Browne is releasing a new album on Friday, “Downhill From Everywhere,” his first in six years. The opening song, “Still Looking For Something,” is a sun-kissed ode to restless freedom, while the first single, “My Cleveland Heart,” is a playful imagining of getting a new artificial heart: “They’re made to take a bashin’/ And never lose their passion.” The title track is one of the best political songs he’s ever written, period. Unrushed, melancholic, worldly and sublime, this is a timeless rock album designed to be played this summer racing across a shimmering blacktop with the top down. DETAILS
Read More