Jackson Browne

Jackson Browne gratefully takes requests during sold-out tour closer at Cain Park’s Evans Amphitheater

August 20, 2012

Anything can happen on the last night of a tour.

Lucky for us, when venerable singer-songwriter Jackson Browne wrapped up a 20-date summer trek with a sold-out concert Wednesday evening at Cain Parks Evans Amphitheater in Cleveland Heights, anything went.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer had a set list. But it soon went out the window, as Browne did his best to honor impromptu requests from the audience.
It means an awful lot that you come here and call out for my songs, he said.

In the middle of the show, he sat down behind a baby grand piano and tickled the ivories tentatively. He soon thought better of it, grabbed one of the dozen-plus acoustic guitars onstage and serenaded us with In the Shape of a Heart, his 1986 hit concerning a dysfunctional relationship. A fan had called out for it earlier.

Throughout the two-hour performance, Browne switched between guitar and piano, where he got down to business with Black and White and Standing in the Breach, an understated yet powerful new tune inspired by the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

At 63, Browne still flaunts a crystalline tenor equally suited to big-picture calls to action or poetic introspection, although he experienced a senior moment during The Naked Ride Home, from his 2002 album of the same name. When he forgot the lyrics, those crickets that incessantly chirped in the background suddenly got louder.

Each time I sing it, I remember less of it, Browne said, laughing off the flub.

He had no trouble remembering the words to a well-rounded offering of much older favorites, including signature tunes such as The Pretender and Running on Empty and deeper cuts such as Your Bright Baby Blues, Shaky Town and Sleeps Dark and Silent Gate.

He reached back to his self-titled debut, released 40 years ago, for no fewer than four selections: Rock Me on the Water, Something Fine, Child in These Hills and a spirited shuffle through the Top 10 breakthrough Doctor My Eyes.

His lean and mean backing unit was anchored by drummer Mauricio Lewak and graced by the stellar musicianship of guitarist Val McCallum, who got to shine on a romantic charmer of his own, Tokyo Girl.

Opening act Sara Watkins, a fiddle-playing singer formerly of the bluegrass group Nickel Creek, also proved to be an inspired addition to the bill.
She got a warm introduction from Browne, who sat in during her set on You and Me, Take Up Your Spade and a shimmering cover of Willie Nelsons Im a Memory.

Watkins and her bandmates — her brother Sean on guitar and Tyler Chester on keyboards and bass — returned the favor during Brownes performance. Their lively accompaniment put a fresh spin on the likes of Live Nude Cabaret and Ill Do Anything.

A surging encore of Take It Easy brought fans to their feet and culminated in hoedown mode, with the Watkins siblings trading hot licks. Browne wasnt the only one looking on with a smile.

SET LIST:
Black and White
Standing in the Breach
Call It a Loan
The Naked Ride Home
Your Bright Baby Blues
Rock Me on the Water
Doctor My Eyes
Something Fine
Shaky Town
Child in These Hills
Tokyo Girl
Looking East
In the Shape of a Heart
Sleeps Dark and Silent Gate
The Pretender
Live Nude Cabaret
The Late Show
Ill Do Anything
Running on Empty
ENCORE:
Take It Easy

Jackson Browne featured on the Artist Line up for This Land is Your Land ~ The Woody Guthrie Centennial Celebration Concert

July 31, 2012

The Kennedy Center and The GRAMMY Museum announce Artist Lineup for This Land is Your Land ~ The Woody Guthrie Centennial Celebration Concert.

Concert celebrating 100 years of famed folk singer will feature

Jackson Browne, Rosanne Cash, Judy Collins, Ry Cooder, Del McCoury Band with Tim O’Brien, Ani DiFranco, Donovan, Dropkick Murphys, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Arlo Guthrie, Jimmy LaFave, John Mellencamp, Tom Morello, Old Crow Medicine Show, Joel Rafael, and Rob Wasserman

October 14, 2012, Concert Hall
Part of the Songs of Conscience Concert Series

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – A lineup of renowned artists including Jackson Browne, Rosanne Cash, Judy Collins, Ry Cooder, Del McCoury Band with Tim O’Brien, Ani DiFranco, Donovan, Dropkick Murphys, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Arlo Guthrie, Jimmy LaFave, John Mellencamp, Tom Morello, Old Crow Medicine Show, Joel Rafael, and Rob Wasserman will salute folk music legend Woody Guthrie at the Kennedy Center, in collaboration with the GRAMMY Museum, presents This Land is Your Land ~ The Woody Guthrie Centennial Celebration Concert on Sunday October 14, 2012 at 7:30 p.m. in the Concert Hall. The evening will celebrate the life and work of folk singer Woody Guthrie, whose songs have inspired change throughout the nation and the world. The performance is part of the Songs of Conscience concert series. Artists are subject to change.

Originally from Okemah, Oklahoma, singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie was responsible for songs that have become the folk standards of the nation, known and performed in many languages throughout the world. Songs such as “Pretty Boy Floyd,” “Pastures of Plenty,” “Hard Travelin’,” “Deportee,” “Roll on Columbia,” “Vigilante Man,” and “This Land Is Your Land,” are among the hundreds of Guthrie pieces that have become prevalent in the canon of American music. Through his unique music, words, and style, Guthrie was able to bring attention and understanding to the critical issues of his day.

The Kennedy Center, in collaboration with the GRAMMY Museum, presents Songs of Conscience, a concert series celebrating the legacy of two artists whose music captured the spirit of their times and continues to echo today. On Sunday, October 14, 2012, the Center presents This Land is Your Land ~ The Woody Guthrie Centennial Celebration Concert; and on June 23, 2013, the Center presents The Legacy of Bob Marley, an event that will honor the international artistic and social influence of singer Bob Marley and his music. Both performances will take place in the Concert Hall.

ABOUT THE GRAMMY MUSEUM
Paying tribute to music’s rich cultural history, this one-of-a-kind, 21st-century museum explores and celebrates the enduring legacies of all forms of music, the creative process, the art and technology of the recording process, and the history of the premier recognition of excellence in recorded music – the GRAMMY Award. The GRAMMY Museum features 30,000 square feet of interactive and multimedia exhibits located within L.A. LIVE, the downtown Los Angeles sports, entertainment, and residential district. Through thought-provoking and dynamic public and educational programs and exhibits, guests can experience music from a never-before-seen insider perspective that only The GRAMMY Museum can deliver. For more information, please call 213.765.6800 or visit www.grammymuseum.org. For exclusive content, join the organization’s social networks as a Twitter follower at www.twitter.com/TheGRAMMYMuseum and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/thegrammymuseum.

ABOUT THE KENNEDY CENTER
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, David M. Rubenstein, chairman, Michael M. Kaiser, president, is America’s living memorial to President Kennedy. It is the nation’s busiest performing arts facility and annually hosts approximately 2,000 performances for audiences totaling nearly two million; Center related touring productions, television, and radio broadcasts welcome 40 million more. Now in its 40th season, the Center presents performances of music, dance, and theater; supports artists in the creation of new work; and serves the nation as a leader in arts education. With its artistic affiliate, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Center’s achievements as a commissioner, producer, and nurturer of developing artists have resulted in more than 200 theatrical productions, dozens of new ballets, operas, and musical works. The Center’s Emmy and Peabody Award-winning The Kennedy Center Honors is broadcast annually on the CBS Network; The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize is seen on PBS. Each year more than 11 million people nationwide take part in innovative and effective education programs initiated by the Center. As part of the Center’s Performing Arts for Everyone outreach program, the Center and the National Symphony Orchestra stage more than 400 free performances of music, dance, and theater by artists from throughout the world each year on the Center’s main stages, and every evening at 6 p.m. on the Millennium Stage.

For more information about the Kennedy Center, please visit www.kennedy-center.org.

Please visit facebook.com/kennedycenter for behind-the-scenes news, special offers, advance notice of events and other related Kennedy Center Facebook pages.

Follow @kencen on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news, offers and more.

You can help Leonard Peltier – Call the White House Today!

July 20, 2012

Please call the White House today, Friday, in favor of freedom for Leonard Peltier,
Native American activist in prison for a crime that he did not commit.

The number for the White House comment line is: 202 456-1111

If the line is busy, try the White House switchboard: 202 456-1414
and ask for the comment line. You may be placed on hold until
the next available staff member can take your call.

Please, make that call.

Crunch Time in Wisconsin

June 18, 2012

This past Friday afternoon I arrived at the address advertised for a “grassroots rally” for Republican governor Scott Walker, who is facing a recall election today against Milwaukee’s Democratic mayor Tom Barrett. I was greeted at the gate by two Waukesha County sheriff’s cars, from within which one of the officers asked me why I was there.

The setting was plant of Quad/Graphics, the second largest printing company in the country, in the village of Sussex, pop. 10,045, and the cops were guarding the governor on a factory “walkthrough”-just about the only home-stretch campaigning Walker was doing. It co-starred South Carolina governor and proud and admitted union-buster Nikki Haley, who called Walker, whose law crushing Wisconsin’s public service unions is the reason state activists managed to raise over a million signatures to recall him, a model for all governors to follow. Walker, in blue-collared work shirt, repeated the lie that has become his closing argument: that the federal’ Bureau of Labor Statistics had “verified” his administration’s “corrected” numbers showing that, contrary to earlier reports of job losses, Wisconsin under Walker “has added over 30,000 jobs.”

Not much of a grassroots rally. And a curious place to make even a fake job-growth sale. Quad/Graphics’s contribution to America’s industrial economy in the last several years has been to buy up printing factories around the country to close them – in order, as the company has explained, to “maximize profitability, improve credit profiles, and adapt to an increasingly dynamic and challenging endmarket environment.” In other words, they kill jobs for a living.

Upon further thought, perhaps that’s not so curious. Relentlessly anti-union, infamous in Wisconsin for its cult-like workplace culture (I remember it from when my class was taken on a field trip there as a boy), Quad/Graphics is just the place if you need a captive audience of factory workers to display on the news enthusiastically cheering their governor. They look exactly like union members are supposed to look. But if they actually had a union to protect them they wouldn’t have had to look enthusiastic – upon fear of losing their jobs.

This was also a perfect audience to cheer the Walker campaign’s other closing big lie: that Barrett was responsible covering up his city’s descent into a Mad Max-style cauldron of criminal anarchy. “We don’t want Wisconsin to become like Milwaukee,” the governor dog-whistled in rural Sussex (African-American population: 0.75 percent) of the nearby city where nearly seventy percent of the state’s black population lives.

Then, a sunny drive west on I-94, a radio interview with friendly Mayor Barrett – and for the second time that weekend, I heard a public radio host explain apologetically that producers had reached out to both candidates, but that the Walker campaign said no or did not respond. Walker’s press operation is run by a woman named Ciara Matthews, who in 2007 wrote and then deleted a blog post reading “I would really love to punch Hillary Clinton in the face,” and whose previous job was keeping media from lunatic Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle (the one who told a group of Mexican-American students “you look a little more Asian to me” and suggested “”Second Amendment remedies” in a conversation about how to “take Harry Reid out”).

A truck stop. A pleasant woman’s voice over an AM radio station: “… the corrected numbers show large job job gains … the reforms made job creators more confident …. Wisconsin is getting back to work …” The ad’s sponsor is the “WMC Foundation,” as in Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business organization, who have scored the neat trick of simultaneously blanketing the state with misleading pro-Walker ads and mainlining into the media an ostensibly objective survey in which its membership overwhelmingly affirms that thanks to Walker’s “reforms” they’ll be hiring more … soon.
Wisconsinites meanwhile pulled out their phones and saw texts reading, “Tom Barrett is a Union Puppet who will give Union Thugs everything they want. Call & ask why 414-271-8050.” That’s Barrett campaign headquarters – whose switchboard was promptly shut down by the deluge of calls.

Welcome to Scott Walker’s Wisconsin – and, if Wisconsin fails to do the right thing today, Scott Walker’s America: dirty tricks and intricately nested corporate-sponsored lies, states competing with one another to out-Dixie Dixie, glittering simulations of democracy on TV commercials paid for by cruel lying billionaires, passed on verbatim by reporters too lazy to care.

Then I reached my destination, Madison’s Labor Temple, and saw another Wisconsin on full display – a lucky thing or I would have just about jumped into Lake Mendota.

I saw police officers there, too – relaxing in the sun getting ready to enjoy a Friday get-out-the-vote concert put on by the independent group We Are Wisconsin and starring Jackson Browne, Mike McColgan of the Dropkick Murpheys, Tim McIlrath of Rise Against, rapper Brother Ali, and mighty Tom Morello, who put it all together and MC’ed. These officers wore T-shirts reading “COPS FOR LABOR.” There were little old ladies, too, sporting “PROUD TO BE A UNION THUG” T-shirts. There were young people, and middle aged people, and people of color, yuppies and blue-collars – just like the congregations of 100,000 and more who descended upon Madison’s state capitol day after frigid day the moment Governor Walker introduced his union-busting bill. That, back in February of 2011, Tom Morello told me backstage before the show, was the first thing he noticed about the Madison Uprising: “not just the usual suspects of young anarchists and old hippies, but, you know, firefighters, policemen, Green Bay Packers, longshoremen.”

“And vets, and farmers,” Jackson Browne chimed in. “It almost sort of presaged Occupy.”

He’s right. In fact, Madison would have been the biggest political story of 2011 if there were any sense in our political press; instead, newspapers were busy giving front-page attention to Tea Party rallies drawing crowds in the hundreds or even less.

Morello, with the blessing of his nine-months-pregnant wife, raced to Madison immediately upon seeing the images just like the ones he’d been watching from Cairo’s Tahrir Square, “and an hour away from where I grew up in Libertyville, Illinois.” Jackson Browne followed the story obsessively. I asked him how it connects with his activist interests, which go back decades. “It actually fits right in with everything else I’ve ever done. It comes under the heading of community. Strengthening our prosperity based on what people really need in their lives …. The civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the environment-all of it shines a light on corporate America’s rise to try to control, to try to make personal fortunes off the backs of regular people.”

And now here it was happening again.

“When I came in on the plane at down, at around 5:30 this morning, I thought, ‘It’s a beautiful, beautiful place.'” Browne went on. “And you say, ‘What does it take to make those beautiful communities? Well, you have to have teachers, you have to have firemen, you have to have cops, you have to have an infrastructure. And what they’re continually doing is letting this thing fall apart-“

Morello: “all in the name of short-term gain.”

Browne: “And a large percent of the $35 million being spent by these billionaires is to try to convince working class people that the billionaires are on their side!”

I spotted the extraordinary rapper who leverages his racial ambiguity  – ethnically caucasian, aurally African American, whose medical condition of albinism gave him striking white skin and piercing blue eyes – to invest his lyrics on the imperative of solidarity an intensity that transcends clich. “Maybe we can bring over Brother Ali here,” I say.

And Jackson Browne lights up even more. “Brother Ali is fantastic,” he says, practically worshipfully.

Ali, who is staggeringly well informed on current events, reflects on Walker as “the prototype that groups like ALEC” – the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Washington-based right-wing group that writes legislation like Scott Walker’s anti-union bill to push through state legislators across the nation in the name of “Wisconsin values” and “Michigan values” and “Nevada values” and the like – “are putting in place. They’re saying, ‘Can we be this brash? Can we be this quick with what our agenda is? So we’re here to say: ‘don’t mess around.'”

Excitable Tom Morello, the words rushing out: “I think they’ve been very surprised. I mean, the hubris: that there’s nothing that can stand in the way of their money.”

Browne, practically on top of him: “They’ve got a culture of impunity. They believe in impunity! The Bush administration was the same thing: ‘Oh, that’s illegal? Well, let’s see you stop us then.'”

A little one crawls into the rapper’s lap; “What’s your friend, Ali?”
“That’s my daughter, Soul. S-O-U-L.”
“That I can see! Are you having fun?”

Soul nods, but I’m having fun too: “I wasn’t asking you. I was asking these guys. You having fun?”

Browne: “Yeah! This is fun! It’s very exciting! It’s really like paddling into a big wave to hang out with Tom Morello and see him organizing various disparate musical influences”-at which, as if on cue, Tim McIlrath sits down to join the conversation: the twenty-something punk rocker, this weathered baby-boomer sage, this rapper, the sui generis Morello, all staggered by this solidarity they get to be part of, as historic as anything they’d ever seen. Mike McColgan is across the room, in another animated conversation, so I caught up with him later by phone. He took a mid-career hiatus to work as a fireman in Boston, and revels in the story of how Tom Barrett’s running mate, Mahlon Mitchell, the head of the firefighters union, reacted when the governor took him into a back room to explain that Act Ten would exempt his union and also the policeman’s union: he said “Hell no.” And then the cops said the same. “I’ve never seen police officers being part of the labor movement in a city or state that out front. This just kind of typifies how amazing this whole grassroots movement is. Everybody’s in. It’s all encompassing. It’s an amazing movement.”

Back in the green room, Tom Morello explains what the 1% does when faced with something like that. “What they’re trying to do is silence us. This is what this is all about …. But they’ve been surprised at every turnout. They didn’t know there was going to be 100,000 people in the streets. They didn’t know there was going to be a million signatures for the recall. They didn’t know that despite the fact that they’re outspending the Democrats twelve to one they can’t get above fifty percent.! You know, with all the lies, and the smoke and the mirrors, they can’t get above 50 percent. Becuse theres’ something in the people here – same as the people in Cairo, same as the people in Greece, same as the students in Chile and Quebec – that’s just saying, ‘We’ve had enough!”

“Now, can we harness that for a social justice movement here in Madison, in Wisconsin, in the country, in the world, that’s going to improve people’s lives and hold those criminals accountable? I don’t know. But in an hour and a half onstage, we’re going to paint a little picture of what that world would look like.”

And then the congregation took the stage, where they did. “Who is that guy?” an old lady asks me when Tim McIlrath starts singing union songs. I say he’s from a punk rock band called Rise Against. “Punk rock? My gosh! It’s good!” Uncannily, another old woman asks me the same thing when Brother Ali takes the stage: “I’m not a rap fan but I like it!” (So does Jackson Browne, who turned intently to Ali after our interview to ask him exctly how freestyling worked.)

The next morning I drive to a microscopic town next to Racine, where a giant open field was a stop on the bus tour in which Americans for Prosperity, the fake grassroots group that fronts for the Koch Brothers, was shipping supporters from, among other places, Illinois, to these here rallies around the state. Not, they claim, to support the Walker campaign – that would violate election law – which they had nothing to do with, but just in the interest of “educating folks in the importance of the reforms.”

It wasn’t hard to come up with a crowd count: I just counted them. The three hundred or so (though National Review counts differently than me) white people – and one black, who stood precisely in the center of the front row and wore an AFP staff T-shirt – heard an AFP staffer hosannah “economic freedom, limited government, and lower taxes.” And that “even Barack Obama’s Bureau of Labor Statistics” said “we’ve created jobs in Wisconsin.” Then he introduced as an “honorary Wisconsinite,” the head of Americans for Prosperity – Wisconsin, Tim Phillips – a Southerner who made a joke about frigid weather. Apparently reverse carpet-bagging is a signal feature of this “grassroots” movement.

Then a third speaker, but I had already wandered off , bored by the conspicuous lack of energy, past a sign reading “Republican’s Are Makers Democrats Are Takers” [sic, of course], and tables featuring free DVDs on both the glories of Scott Walker and the United Nation’s plan to enslave the United States, in the direction of a a second, entirely separate, stage across the field put up by the Racine Tea Party. A few minutes later, the rest of the crowd followed me there. For, yes, an entirely separate rally, which had nothing to do with the nonpartisan one two hundred yards away that had just ended. There they heard Walker’s running mate Rebecca Kleefisch rant about the “big union bosses from out of state,” and how the unions were just like Goliath, and her boss was exactly like David.

Me, I fingered my slick Americans for Prosperity – Wisconsin flier, which I later noticed contained the most revealing typo in the history of politics. “The forces of BIG GOVERNMENT would like nothing more than for you to DO NOTHING,” it warned, but promised, “We are gathering citizens together from across Michigan to make phone calls, knock on doors and educate their friends, family and neighbors.”

The tag line? “Join forces with Americans for Prosperity to defend the Wisconsin Way and fight back against the failed policies of Barack Obama.” Michigan Way, Wisconsin Way: what’s the diff? It’s the Koch Brothers’ Way all the way, and if Wisconsin doesn’t vote right today, it’s where we all are heading.

Rick Perlstein is the author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus and Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. He writes a weekly column for RollingStone.com.

Read more at rollingstone.com

Jackson Browne Announces Fall Leg of 2012 U.S. Acoustic Tour with Special Guest Sara Watkins. Tickets On Sale Now

June 18, 2012

Singer-songwriter Jackson Browne has added a string of Fall dates to his 2012 U.S. Acoustic Tour. The tour, which begins this summer on July 14 in Charlotte, NC runs thru mid-August, before picking up again mid-October and ending on November 15 in Colorado Springs, CO. Playing guitar and piano, Jackson will perform songs from his entire body of work, with varying set lists each night. Singer-songwriter and fiddle player Sara Watkins will open the Acoustic Tour as a special guest. Tickets are on-sale now for the summer tour and the pre-sales for the fall tour begin this week; information is available at www.jacksonbrowne.com.

Sara Watkins first gained recognition as a founding member of the GRAMMY-winning trio Nickel Creek. Sun Midnight Sun, the second solo album from acclaimed singer, songwriter, and fiddle player will be released May 8 on Nonesuch Records. Produced by guitarist, singer, and songwriter Blake Mills, co-founder of the band Simon Dawes, the album features special guest appearances by Fiona Apple, Jackson Browne, Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes), Benmont Tench, and Sean Watkins. Im really excited to have Sara joining me on this tour, says Jackson. We’ve played together a number of times in the last few years, sometimes on her show and sometimes mine, and it’s always been a thrill for me. I’m floored by her amazing instrumental virtuosity and by her beautiful voice, and most of all, I love her songs.

The summer run of the 2012 U.S. Acoustic Tour includes Jackson’s first-ever performance at the legendary Newport Folk Festival in Newport, RI (7/29), founded in 1954; the tour’s other festival stop is the 11th annual carbon-conscious Floyd Fest on the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Floyd, VA (7/26). Other tour highlights include concerts at Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN (7/18), Filene Center at Wolf Trap in Vienna, VA (7/23), the Beacon Theatre in New York City (8/3), and Cain Park in Cleveland Heights, OH (8/15). The fall leg runs through mid-November, with dates that span from the Virginias to Colorado with several stops in between. Tour highlights include concerts at the stunning Riverside Theater in Milwaukee, WI (10/21), Chicago Theater in Chicago, IL (10/26) and the Paramount Theater in Denver, CO (11/14).

Jackson will be donating $1 from each ticket sold on the U.S. Acoustic Tour to charity. In addition, premium benefit seats are available for purchase through The Guacamole Fund: www.guacfund.org.

Jackson Browne has written and performed some of the most literate and moving songs in popular music and has defined a genre of songwriting charged with honesty, emotion and personal politics. He was honored with induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2007. Beyond his music, he is known for his advocacy on behalf of the environment, human rights, and arts education. He’s a co-founder of the groups Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE), Nukefree.org, and, Success Through the Arts Foundation, which provides education opportunities for students in South Los Angeles.

Jackson Browne 2012 Acoustic Tour Dates with special guest Sara Watkins: