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Reviews:
A Grain of Sand was chosen as
#10 out of 25 Essential Texas-Related CDs from
2004 by Texas music writer Tom Geddie in the Jan. 2005 issue of
Buddy (The Original Texas Music Magazine) :
A Collection of Mickey Newbury
Songs, MoonHouse: The combination of newly discovered singer doing classic
songs is potent. The performances are so unexpectedly good that they resonate
deeply. Johnson almost - without being silly about the thought - channels
Newbury on songs.
Buddy Magazine
review of Cowboy Johnson
"A Grain of Sand"
by Tom Geddie
I
never heard Mickey Newbury perform live, but somehow got on his "call
list"
in the last year or two of his life. He would call me every six weeks
or
so and talk, talk, and talk. I would stay with him for as long as I
could
- often an hour or more - before I had to do something else less
important.
I
still don't really know why he started calling me, although I
suspect
it was because somebody sent him something I wrote about him and he
liked
it. Mostly, when he called, I would listen. I couldn't recount the
specifics
of any one of those calls now, but Newbury was as fine a teacher
as
he was a writer and singer.
Sometimes, we want music to comfort us. Sometimes, we want music to
challenge
us. Within that context, the combination of a newly discovered
singer
doing classic songs is potent.
Many people have covered Newbury's songs. The most recent is Cowboy Johnson,
who just recorded his first CD, A Grain of Sand: A Collection of Mickey
Newbury Songs, on the Albert & Gage independent label, MoonHouse
Records.
This new CD's title comes from the masterful "Wish I Was," which
contains
these lines: "Wish I was a grain of sand / Playing in a baby's
hand
/ Falling like a diamond chain into the ocean," which poetically
summarizes
human fears and dreams.
Johnson, 51, but looking older and weathered in most of the CD
photos,
sang gospel in his church choir as a child. In 1969, age 16, he
left
home and spent the 1970s working the mines of South Dakota's Black
Hills, honky-tonking, marrying and divorcing four times, making a living as
a
carpenter, painter, and steel worker, and making music when he could. He
moved
to Austin in 1996.
Newbury, a legendary songwriter, died in 2002 of long, slow
consuming
illnesses. He grew up in Houston reading Cassidy, Kerouac, Keats,
and
Wilde. By 15, he read his poetry in Houston coffeehouses and played in
bands.
Newbury helped reshape country, folk, and even, to a lesser extent,
R&B from the mid 1960s through the 1970s with his writing and performing.
Ray Charles, B.B. King, Bobby Blue Bland, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley,
Willie Nelson, and Joan Baez, among others icons, recorded Newbury's songs.
His own hits include "San Francisco Mabel Joy," "Cortelia Clark," "'Frisco
Depot," "American Trilogy," "Angeline," "Heaven Help the Child," and "Easy
Street."
Newbury took Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark to Nashville for the
first
time, and helped Mickey Gilley get his first national recording
contract.
With old Air Force buddy Kris Kristofferson, Nelson, and others,
Newbury turned Tootsie's Orchid Lounge into a tourist attraction and helped
build
the creative revitalization of country music in Nashville that lasted
until
cautious corporate types took over the business.
During one week in the mid to late 60s, Kenny Rogers had the No. 1
pop
song with Newbury's "Just Dropped In (to See What Condition My
Condition Was In)," Eddy Arnold had the No. 1 country song with Newbury's
"Here Comes the Rain, Baby," Andy Williams had the No. 1 easy-listening
song
with Newbury's "Sweet Memories," and Solomon Burke had the No. 2 R&B
song
with Newbury's "Time is a Thief."
Nearly 20 years ago, Newbury began exiling himself into the long
night
of obscurity. People quit asking him for songs, he said.
The above is way too much background for this space, but it's
necessary
because people who know forget, and because people who never knew
need
to know.
Most of Newbury's music came out somewhere between country and pop; Johnson
turns a dozen songs into real country memories. The performances
are
so unexpectedly good that they resonate deeply. Johnson almost -
without
being silly about the thought - channels Newbury on songs including
the
heartbreak song "She Even Woke Me Up To Say Goodbye," the hopeful
"Country Boy Saturday Night," the prayerful "Lead On," the regretful "Makes
Me Wonder If I Ever Said Goodbye" and "Sweet Memories," and more.
Right here, I want to write long paragraphs about hearing artists
for
the first time - old, familiar names now, but new to me at the time.
There are too many who move me to try to name
them here. Instead, I'll stop with more of the lyrics from "Wish I Was:"
"Willow trees
are
strong enough to bend,
never like an oak that lives in fear of the
wind,
oh a grain of sand is all I ever wanted to
be, lay me down, let the
water
wash over me, wash over me, I wish I was an old guitar, I'd be
sitting
in a beat-up car, hitting every two-bit bar from here to Texas, and
I wouldn't be ashamed to
look up my old friends, they would be so proud to
see
me strung up again, now a grain of sand is all I ever wanted to be, lay
me
down and let the water wash over me, wash over me."
A grain of sand. Playing in a baby's hand.
Falling like a diamond
chain
into the ocean. What beautiful, meaningful imagery.
Thank you Mickey
Newbury,
and thank you Cowboy Johnson.
Tom Geddie |
| |
Houston Press
review of Cowboy Johnson
"A Grain of Sand"
by William Michael Smith
2004
The opening strains
of Cowboy Johnson's tribute to Houston's songwriting favorite son Mickey
Newbury instantly conjure the remarkable resurrection of Jerry Lee Lewis.
After his fall from rock and roll grace, the Killer reinvented himself as
a country singer in 1968, and his exquisite 1970 interpretation of
Newbury's "She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye" continued an amazing string
of Lewis hits that became legendary hard-core honky-tonk classics and
marked Lewis as a singular country stylist.
Wimberley's Johnson,
working with Austinite Chris Gage, pays homage to the master songsmith
with a 12-track sampling from the songbook of the prolific Newbury. Some
of the selections, like "Sweet Memories," "How I Love Them Old Songs" and
"Why You Been Gone So Long," are instantly recognizable by connoisseurs of
country music, but Johnson also has wisely chosen some of Newbury's most
worthy obscurities like "Wish I Was," "Lead On" and "You've Always Got the
Blues."
Johnson's mellow
voice recalls Mickey Gilley before he became a Vegas pop singer, and
Gage's minimalist arrangements put the spotlight squarely where it
belongs: on Newbury's incomparable lyrics. Locals should get a kick out of
Johnson's revival of "If You Ever Get to Houston (Look Me Down)," another
stone-cold honky-tonk classic, and one that Don Gibson made famous as the
title track to his 1977 album. While Newbury could be uplifting when he
wanted to, his true brilliance was in gritty details and down-and-out
characterizations of men often one step from divorce or the Salvation
Army. In "Mobile Blue," Newbury paints an accurate picture of an
archetypal Houstonian who "headed south to work the pipeline" and wound up
losing his woman. It doesn't get any more down-Houston-home than this:
"somebody musta told her that I trifled and I lied / they saw me drunk in
Mobile with some wired-up chick from Jacksonville / and, brother, did we
look like we could fly."
Newbury remains the
only songwriter to ever have songs in four separate charts at once
(country, R&B, easy listening and pop/rock), and Cowboy Johnson's Grain of
Sand ably demonstrates all the traits that make Newbury's work so diverse
and universal. |
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