[Shuffle 17] Bring me my gypsy queen
Alone at Last, Tasha
One Stone, Trixie Mattel
His Band and the Street Choir, Van Morrison
Tracy Chapman, Tracy Chapman
City of Refuge, Abigail Washburn
New-to-me Tasha and Trixie presented the oppy. Tasha hit me hard in late 2019 (all over my Top 2019 everything with Patty and Lizzo). Both torque the lyric-forward female folk singer form that’s driven my musical taste most of my life. Both queer, but in very different ways. Tasha floats at times, an ethereal quality that recalls Van, to my ear. Street Choir never hooked me like Astral Weeks or Moondance, but it’s right up there. Tracy’s self-titled album defined the voice of black women in my mind for a long time. Her storytelling haunts me, still. Tracy Martel, I mean, Trixie Mattel surprised the hell out of me. Both Two Birds and One Stone hold gems I hadn’t expected to treasure quite as much as I do. Some rhinestones I love just as much, too. Its country roots reach deeper than I’m used to, calling on Dolly, who I never heard much growing up, with strings that remind me of Abigail’s pickin’ and fiddlin’. The tales and the twang. Like Van, though, Abigail weaves in and out of the story, carried off sometimes. Yearning echoes thru repetitive refrains. Queens and mothers and best Judy’s; rave on.
Heard this go’round: April 28, 2020
Tasha lilts in with “black girl, we’ll leave this fight to someone else for now; you can close your eyes let your hair down. Breathe in; breathe out,” just after Tracy finishes her intense a cappella ode to battered black mothers, “Behind the Wall.” Van’s “woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman… alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright…” echoes (“you know it’s alright”) Tasha’s “tell me I’m doin’ alright, I’m doin’ alright, I’m doin’ alright,” and come back thru Abigail’s “I gotta run, I gotta run….” Trixie’s little sister “can run in the cover of the night sky when it falls.” But “where there’s a mother, where there’s a father, Adam’s on the roof and Eve is in the gutter. Eden’s on the far side where the circle started. To run with the gods, you’ve gotta run harder. Run run run….”
Fast Car
Alright
Behind the Wall
Lullaby
Gypsy Queen
I’ve Been Working
If Not Now…
Little Sister
City of Refuge
Red Side of the Moon
a way to listen