Nellie McKay – My Weekly Reader

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

Nellie Mckay celebrated the release of first album, Get Away From Me, in 2004 by appearing at the SXSW festival that March. Little did the indie and Americana world know what she had in store for us. Nor me, when I first saw her on May 16 of that year. I was immediately taken. And at this point I do not know if I have her, or she has me. Metaphorically, the line is blurred. 

Nellie McKay defies expectations. Besides five albums of original material and one of Doris Day covers, and numerous contributions to soundtracks, parts in movies and Broadway, she has conceived and performed conceptual cabaret shows as diverse as Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” “I Want to Live!” (Barbara Graham,the third woman to die in San Quentin’s gas chamber) to her most recent one about Billy Tipton, the jazz pianist who, it was only learned after passing away in 1989, was a woman who was accepted as a man. Who could ever think of doing just one of these, let alone all three.

What I do know is that as that 11th anniversary rolls around, and this year’s SXSW is about to begin, a lot has transpired as her new album My Weekly Reader is about to be released on March 24. Following her critically acclaimed Home Sweet Mobile Home, Nellie choses — paradoxically, perhaps — to do a second album of covers. And just as unexpected to many as the Doris Day album was, this collection of covers is comprised entirely of a spacious assortment of songs from 1964-69. And not the usual suspects either. The range is wide — from sentimental top 40 pop to semi-obscure psychedelia to songs of protest.

Geoff Emerick is back from the first album and produced the new album.  Emerick is best known for working as the Beatles’ engineer on such albums as Revolver and Abbey Road. His input, likely, lends a consistent tonality to My Weekly Reader despite its musical diversity. Nor is this is a trip down memory lane or revisionist look at the past. No, the intent seems squarely, and securely, to juxtapose those sweet 60s pop songs that ignored the Vietnam War with those who, to paraphrase Dylan, sought to find some way outta there.

It is fairly indicative of the path she has taken this time out when she chose to nationally premiere the album on A Prairie Home Companion, with Garrison as her perpetually favorite foil, by performing Country Joe and the Fish’s “Not So Sweet Marta Lorraine” (from their exquisite Electric Music For the Mind and Body) in a deliberate manner without irony or overt nostalgia that has infiltrated too much of popular music these days.

What is equally amazing is that she plays most of the instruments on the album, including a mean harmonica intro that seems to me to have been lifted from Dylan’s thin-mercury sound of “I Want You” to the Cyrkle’s “Red Rubber Ball” (which somehow went to #2 on the Billboard chart).

There is another juxtaposition going on with the album as well. It begins and ends with ships on the water, both harrowing protest songs even though one was not viewed that way at the time. That first being “Sunny Afternoon” by the only real, consistent competition the Beatles had with other bands, the Kinks. Lyrically, it surpasses “Taxman” as it seemingly identifies with the idle rich but slyly condemns them and their lifestyles. All on a sunny afternoon overlooking the water. Now, jump to the album’s final song, CS&N’s “Wooden Ships,” but this time on the water facing  those on that southeast Asian shore, helpless:  “Horror grips us as we watch you die/All we can do is echo your anguished cries.” 

In between we get lilting takes on “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” and “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying” to Zappa’s “Hungry Freaks, Daddy” and Moby Grape’s “Murder in My Heart for the Judge” complete with Bela Fleck’s banjo. The first two being part of the English Invasion, the latter two American. Then, take the two most obvious acid songs, the Small Faces’ “Itychoo Park” and Country Joe and the Fish’s “Not So Sweet Marta Lorraine.” Both released during the summer of 1967, but worlds apart, both musically and commercially. 

Notice the continuing juxtapositions? 

But the primary one exists in what are my favorites on the album. First, the Beatles 1964’s song of pure teenage angst, “If I Fell” which is so deceptively simple and so gorgeously done that you let slide its insecure, manipulative center.  Contrast that with the original acid protest song for adults, Richard and Mimi Farina’s “Bold Marauder” from their great 1965 album,Reflections in a Crystal Wind, complete with it’s striking, surrealist cover. Some of its lyrics: “And we will dress in helmet and sword/and dip our tongues in slaughter/And we will sing the warrior’s song/and lift the praise of murder/And Christ will be our darlin’/and Fear will be our name/I am the bold marauder/I am the white destroyer.” Some 50 years later, sell prescient and such protest largely, sadly forgotten. Theirs, and their songs, were one of the most intriguing stories of the era, rivaling Dylan and Baez, with Richard being one of the few artists at the time that Dylan was jealous of, dying too young, in 1966. Mimi passed away in the summer of 2001.

My Weekly Reader is a helluva album, full of risks that would sink many an artist who would even attempt to navigate the icy waters of the past, let alone arrive on same sunny Caribbean shore. Which leads me to the final irony, just as SXSW begins Nellie takes off on March 14 for the week long “A Prairie Home Companion’s Caribbean Cruise.” With her favorite foil.

When she returns to the city there is an album release party at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble on March 24, and an expanded tour that takes her all the way through July.  In the meantime here’s a link to her very recent radio gig on Michael Feinstein’s NPR’s Song Travels:

http://www.npr.org/2015/02/27/389478030/nellie-mckay-on-song-travels

Tracklist:
1. Sunny Afternoon (The Kinks)
2. Quicksilver Girl (Steve Miller Band)
3. Poor People / Justice – medley (Alan Price)
4. Murder in My Heart for the Judge (Moby Grape)
5. Bold Marauder (Richard & Mimi Farina)
6. Itchycoo Park (Small Faces)
7. Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter (Herman’s Hermits)
8. Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine (Country Joe McDonald)
9. If I Fell (The Beatles)
10. Red Rubber Ball (The Cyrcle, co-written by Paul Simon and Bruce Woodley)
11. Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
12. Hungry Freaks, Daddy (Frank Zappa)
13. Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills & Nash)

2015 Tour Dates
03/14/15 – 03/21/15 Fort Lauderdale, Caribbean Sea! A Prairie Home Companion Caribbean Cruise
03/24/15 New York, NY Barnes & Noble – Tribeca
04/03/15 Boulder, CO E-Town
04/04/15 Schenectady, NY The Van Dyck
04/05/15 Hudson, NY Club Helsinki*
04/09/15 Vienna, VA Jammin Java
04/10/15 New Hope, PA The Rrazz Room
04/12/15 Delaware Water Gap, PA Deerhead Inn
04/13/15 New York, NY 54 Below 
04/15/15 New York, NY 54 Below 
04/16/15 New York, NY 54 Below 
04/17/15 New York, NY 54 Below 
04/18/15 New York, NY 54 Below 
04/19/15 Richmond, VA The Tin Pan
04/21/15 Goshen, IN Sauder Hall at Goshen College (with Turtle Island Quartet)
04/22/15 Lafayette, Indiana Friends of Bob – Duncan Hall
04/24/15 Indianapolis, IN The Cabaret at The Columbia Club
04/25/15 Chicago, IL Old Town
04/26/15 Minneapolis Dakota
04/27/15 Iowa City, IA 
05/01/15 Denver, CO Swallow Hill
05/08/15 Seattle, WA The Triple Door
05/09/15 Eugene, OR Shedd Institute
05/13/15 Napa, CA City Winery – Napa
05/15/15 San Francisco, CA The Independent
05/16/15 Los Angeles, CA Largo
05/18/15 Phoenix, AZ MIM Music Theatre
05/21/15 Austin, TX The Paramount Theater
06/25/15 Natick, MA The Center for Arts in Natick
07/11/15 Portsmouth, NH The Music Hall