I had the unalloyed pleasure of singing in Hal Willer's SHEL-ebration of the music and poetry of the crazy wonderful Shel Silverstein. Of all the shows I have made and done with Mr. Willner, this was the most loose-limbed and something-for-everybody ever. Unlike the, say, Leonard Cohen shows, where every song is a Faberge egg, Shel's songs and stories are so deeply free-wheeling, that even when they break your heart, they're just pure joy.
Let me say something else too. To be treated, regarded, as an artist by Hal Willner is am amazing thing. He says so little, but his confidence in you and the song is complete and causes you to really dig deep -- and to make him happy! It wasn't until the week of the show that he emailed me with a suggestion. "Could be a beautiful ballad," he wrote, meaning "The Taker," a song co-written with Kris Kristofferson, who recorded it on The Silver-Tongued Devil and I, and later by Waylon Jennings and the yodelin Marty Robbins, who I swear could sing any damn thing, the phone book, and make you smile. I've worked with Hal long enough to know that if he thinks a song is right for you, it is. Right again. The Taker is a keeper.
The song has a great rhyme scheme – "taker" with "take her" – and it's written from the perspective of a guy who's losing his girlfriend to a sweet-talking loser (specifically, a taker) because he wasn't even nice to her. But to my mind the Tex-Mex arrangements all three did only undercut the story of the lyric. So I slowed it down, way down, switched the perspective to the voice of a woman who knows all parties involved, tuned the G string on my guitar up to A for a new voicing, and there it was. Steve Weisberg did an amazing string arrangement, bless him, just killer.
Hal was happy too. I wish there was an iPhone video of it but there seems only to be one from the entire show, of Lou Reed and Emily Haines doing an amazing job on Shel's deathhouse ballad 25 Minutes To Go. She's really something, that Emily. I met her on the Neil Young shows in Vancouver during the Olympics, where she sang the shit out of A Man Needs A Maid. Then I saw her in Prospect Park, me a Boomer among the teens, and she was bopping around like a pogo stick, just a ball of fire. See her sometime.
All thanks and respect to the crowd who filled the playfield in the pouring rain and stayed for the whole 3 hour show. Among the other videos I wish existed: Reggie Bennett's killin version of Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout (Would Not Take The Garbage Out) into The Collector, a list poem about what used to be called a garbageman, again with a slamming string arrangement by Weisberg. Also, Brett Sparks' (of The Handsome Family) rockin version of A Boy Named Sue, Roswell Rudd's crazy crooked Freakin' at the Freaker's Ball, Laurie Anderson's tender reading of The Giving Tree, Chloe Webb's tell-the-truth Bury Me In My Shades, Richard Belzer's Cover of the Rolling Stone (on which I sang along with Don "Penicillin Penny" Fleming), Terry Adams' 26 Second Song. The whole list of performers is here. Melvin Van Peebles, Annabella Sciorra, John Ventimiglia (especially Ugliest Man in Town). Believe me, I could go on.
Wish you were there or that I had a picture!
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