Exclusive interview with Alana Amram and folk legend Vince Martin.
Neville Elder
Posted On July 22, 2011
‘Joe’s’ on Avenue U, in Gravesend, Brooklyn, New York is an old fashioned Italian American family restaurant. Meatball heros, calamari cooked to tender perfection, all the wonderful American Italian dishes Brooklyn can offer in one unassuming Formica table topped restaurant. New York singer Alana Amram and legendary folk singer Vince Martin are sat at a corner table. Vince blends into this Italian neighborhood eatery with ease – he was brought up in Gravesend – A vigorous tanned man in his 70s, he is still handsome behind his tinted glasses. He flirts with the waitress: “You’re a hell-of-a cook!” and orders food and coffee in Italian. Alana is a slim, pale, pretty woman in her early thirties with long curly auburn hair. She sits in her sundress and crushed cowboy hat, sipping ice water and listening to Vince as she studies the laminated menu.
Vince is pissed about something, it isn’t clear what. it isn’t clear if he’s serious, either. Later, during photos he would make a big show of combing the remnants if his wispy white hair across his scalp, ever the ‘ham’ he will flick a striking ‘showbiz’ grin ant the camera while Alana, shy and pale in her crumpled Stetson hat, will perch uncomfortably near Vince waiting for the photographs to stop.
They seem an odd couple but they are perfect foils for each other. Vince, with his often outlandish outbursts, defers to Alana when she raises objections to his more outrageous remarks, either from indulgence or simply because he think she’s right. And Alana guides Vince gently back to the point when we become engrossed in yet another tale of 60s folk Babylon. In fact the conversation will balance precariously on discussion of Alana Amram’s wonderful new recording of his songs and Vince’s explicit tales of debauchery and chaos during the height of the sixties and seventies music scene.
Stephen Stills, Jimmy Buffet, Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs. All names Vince drops without a thought. It sounds like one day he took the whole of Greenwich Village to Florida on a package tour.. but that’s another story…
‘Record geek’ Alana, had been a fan of Vince’s since discovering his 1969 album ‘If the Jasmine don’t get you the bay breeze will’ and ‘tear down the walls’ Vince’s other collaboration, with singer Fred Neil. Vince’s partnership with Neil is one of the most rewarding of that era but probably because of the renown Fred Neil achieved later – he is author of the massive Nilsson hit ‘Everybody’s Talking’ – it is easy to forget that his partner was much better known when Martin & Neil released their sole album in 1964:
“Martin possessed the sort of forceful tenor that enabled Glenn Yarbrough to lead the Limeliters to success, and he used it in a similarly dramatic way.” – William Ruhlmann (All Music).
Alana tracked down Vince on MySpace and a bell rang in Vince’s elephant-like memory. Alana’s father is the well known composer (including memorable film scores such for ‘Splendor in the Grass’ and ‘The Manchurian Candidate’) and beat icon David Amram a Greenwich Village contemporary, in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Vince describes that magical era:
“I met Alana’s father David, in 1959 with Jack Kerouac, Theolonius Monk and Miles Davies. Steve Knight (from Mountain) introduced us. They’d been listening to a lot of eastern music and they taught me about different time signatures: 7/8, 5/8, They were very hip. David listened to my seven chords and he was the only one who didn’t turn his nose up! All those Jazz guys hated folk music! The Modern Jazz quartet would even turn their backs on the audience! But we jammed together at the Fejam.”
Vince started showing up at Alana’s gigs in New York and Brooklyn each time he’d bring her a meatball sandwich from Joe’s!
“She was responsible for pulling me out of a long period of inactivity. “
Vince was demoralized. He had spent months online arguing with people/publishers trying to get proper credit and royalties for songs he’s written over the years.
“Right before I met Alana I was in Woodstock with my friend John Sebastian (who also plays on the new record.) John said: ‘Don’t go backwards go forward.’ It was making me sick. So I stopped fighting. I became like a computer in rest.”
He talks about Alana like a good luck charm. When Vince met Alana he may well have been ‘in rest’ as he puts it but soon he was performing with her.
Todd Kwait’s documentary about Vince Martin ‘Vagabondo!’ was in the process of being released and Alana took her band ‘Alana Amram and The Rough Gems’ to open at the premiere of the film in Cleveland in June of 2010. In preparing for the concert, Alana had the idea to record Vince’s songs:
“We picked a couple of songs (for the premiere) and I had Vince come over we worked them up. It was good for me as a songwriter (and as a musician) to break into Vince’s style of music and writing. There are themes and metaphors that are consistent in his work – that was neat to see. I picked up on his changes, and melodies…”
“Yeah like the bridge in South Wind.” interjects Vince.
“There’s no bridge in South Wind!” Alana exclaims, confused.
“You never caught the bridge, huh?”
“The one that had the bridge was the one we never got to do!” Alana looks exasperated.
Vince chuckles and winks. Sometimes Vince is teasing Alana, sometimes Vince just doesn’t remember, he’s written so many songs over the years.
She’d been planning to home produce the collection but then Todd Kwait stepped in. He’s credited on the album as executive producer for Kingswood Records, an unusual title on a record but appropriate. He set it all up and let Alana and producer Mark Sebastian (The writer of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s ‘Summer in the City’) put it together. She started listening to old recordings, tapes and records looking for songs to work on. Alana had about 15 or so of Vince’s songs kicking around when she sat down with Mark and they figured out which ones she had th e best feel for and they settled on a list, Mark then got out of her way and let her approach the songs with her own voice.
“I found a live recording of Vince singing ‘Joe Panther’ and I asked him if it was one of his. He said it wasn’t.” Alana recalls. ‘Really, Vince?’ I said ‘are you sure? It’s such a great song! We have a recording of you and David Crosby singing it and I want to put it on the record! Tell me you wrote it!’. He said ‘I didn’t write that shit! I don’t know what fuck you’re talking about!’
‘So I play him the song and he’s says: ‘That’s great! I DID write that!’ Then he starts to remember…” Alana rolls her eyes and Vince chuckles indulgently.
‘I’ve got so many songs, if I don’t record them I forget them. You can’t just walk out of your house and go into a recording studio.”
With the huge overnight pop hit in 1956 “Oh Cindy”, Vince was swept into the Greenwich village folk and roots music movement of the 1950’s.The hippies followed into the 1960’s and it’s natural successor: the overblown consumption and drug fried 1970’s. Along the way made friends with some of the most important musicians of that period Including Mark Sebastian who once opened for Vince at the Gaslight in the Village.
Todd Kwait, Sebastian describes him as a ‘one man folk renaissance!’ and Mark made a conscious effort to reunite many of the performers who recorded with Vince on his 1973 Capitol album ‘Vince Martin.’
That time he used the backing band Dylan used on ‘Nashville Skyline’. Some of the Memphis Horns and Lowell George made appearances too. This time Alana brought her band The Rough Gems, who include Scott Metzger (guitar), David Lindsay (drums), James Preston (bass) and Phil Sterk (pedal steel). John Sebastian, (brother John from the Lovin’ Spoonful) stepped up to play baritone guitar and harmonica and Van Dyke Parks stepped in to arrange the strings. All old friends of Vince reunited here on Alana’s tribute for the first time in 35 years.
The string arrangements are particularly noteworthy.
‘We gave him (Van Dyke Parks) the tracks and he just went nuts.” Say Alana. “They recorded the strings in a closed session, so I wasn’t there for the track. When I finally heard it my jaw just dropped.”
Vince went on: “I’d been in touch over with Van Dyke and Mark over the years but when we saw each other it was like ‘how’s it going?’ like the time never passed. That’s what good friends are about.”
Van Dyke Parks’ strings appear on three tracks here. ‘Joe Panther’, ‘Summer Wind’ and the collection’s opener ‘Fayetteville’ a perfect mid 1970’s folk pop song with a splendid rolling string accompaniment.
“I wrote that song in a motel in Fayetteville, North Carolina in 1965. If you’ve ever been stuck in a motel in Fayetteville you’d know why I wrote it!”
It’s a beautiful version. Alana’s voice is relaxed and sultry. It’s a song that conjures up images of soldiers sliding around a tired, overheated aimless southern town tired of it’s whorehouse and bars.
I pull out my advance copy of the CD to look at the track list and Vince jumps on me:
“You got the record? I don’t have the record yet!” This seems fire up an earlier argument. But Alana calms him as quickly as his passion rises.
“You have that, Vince! I gave it to you this is just the advance press copy.”
“Oh.”
As coffee and dessert arrive, we pore over the track list together, and I pick out some of my favorite moments.
On the ‘Joe Panther’ string themes overwhelm each other in to make a tightly wound folk protest song lush and intense. Alana’s voice is suitably mournful and plaintive.
“I wrote the theme song for an ABC special about the Everglades (in the 1970’s) and from the knowledge I gained, I wrote ‘Joe Panther’. Joe Panther was a Seminole chief driven out of the everglades by pollution. The Evergla des are a river, an ecosystem, I read about him and empathized.’
‘There’s songs you write that you like, songs you like better than others, there’s songs you do with more gusto. When someone sings a song they’re supposed to sing, you can tell. When you’re close to a song you can tell. When I sing ‘Summer Wind’ I go someplace else.”
On ‘Summer Wind’ Alana delivers a warm deep vocal, without melodrama. A simple song about lost love rises above the understated imagery in the lyric.
‘I can taste your lips sweet and warm from the sea/ and the darkness would disappear when you touch me /your love was the wind/ soft and warm like the summer wind and I don’t know when it will blow again.’
‘The Leaving Song’ is about…
“ I was leaving. I met a girl. I left her!” Vince guffaws.
“Alana laughs: “It’s a pop song. AM Radio 1970s sort of sound to me…”
“It IS a pop song!” Vince claps “ Van Dyke loves that song .”
‘If the Jasmine don’t get the Bay Breeze Will.’ (see Alana’s performance video below) Is the jewel in the crown. A dark brooding theme riffing on a single chord the song picks up and rumbles into the storm of Phil Sterk’s pedal steel. One of the great things about this record is the simple arrangements. Sterk is a great steel player and Alana defers to him for the solos. It’s a key part of her sound.
It is the second time the title track ‘Snow Shadows’ has appeared on an Alana Amram record. Her first Album ‘Painted Lady’ itself a bold and excellent record, which showcases Alana’s own hard hitting country/folk rock sound, features an earlier mix the song. Here Eric Gorman manages to draw even more from the singer’s rich tones. This song carries particular significance for Vince.
“I was in Detroit and the girl I was going with I really cared for. We sitting by Lake St. Clare one night and she said: ‘What’s the color of the wind?’ ‘Good question.’ I said and she said ‘I think it’s blue.’ We we’re leaving each other her we sat in her kitchen – then I started writing it.” But Vince wasn’t just leaving her, he was trying to kick a drug habit, too:
“Stumbling through the snow/even my shadow’s gone lame/You once asked me it’s color/ baby, the blue wind carries your name.”
“I finished it sick, behind a Denny’s in my Volkswagen and I sang it all the way back to Miami so I didn’t forget it because my tape recorder didn’t have batteries!”
Sometimes those songs just have to be written, they fight to get out. Alana agrees.
“Yes. I get pushed into it too. And I pick up a pen and paper. I have a hard time writing when I’m happy. I can’t seem write funny songs. But dark humor I get.”
“Dark songs people, dig.” Says Vince. “folk music and blues has resolution, it’s got an appealing structure.”
“Yes and no.” Says Alana. “Some ‘Carter Family’ and ‘Hank Williams’ songs hang on the 7th.”
“Well, sure but it was done for a reason.”
“ A haunting reason.” Alana adopts a sing-song voice: “I took her down the river and shot her..haha.” They both laugh.
Vince is connected to Alana through her reaction to his work. Alana delivers all the songs on the album with weight appropriate to each one. Without drama and with a soul that is distinctly her own, she sings confidently as if they were her own songs. She makes bold changes to the songs’ structures and melodies, sometimes omitting sections to give them more of contemporary feel. These are Vince Martin songs but it’s an Alana Amram record.
“Snow Shadows: Songs of Vince Martin.” Sounds vital and energetic in an unexpected way. The collaboration of the veterans of the Greenwich Village folk scene and their heirs could have been a sickly sweet mix but Alana’s clean and unsentimental delivery gives this set of tunes a new life and her band The Rough Gems provides drive in the way Crazy Horse added a punch Neil Young’s music.
The coupling is initially a strange one. But for all Vince’s showmanship and Alana’s shy reserve there’s a simpatico and a balance that you only really understand when you first hear her sing his songs. Then it all makes sense.
NEVILLE ELDER July 2011
Neville Elder is a writer, photographer and musician and the leader of the folk rock band “Thee Shambels“. He lives in Brooklyn.
Click on the image to the right for Alana Amram and The Rough Gems performing:
‘If the Jasmine don’t get you, the Bay Breeze will.’
(Video courtesy of Todd Kwait.)
Alana Amram and the Rough Gems new recording “Snow Shadows: Songs of Vince Martin.” Is released on Kingswood records on August 30th. CD and Digital Download. A free download of ‘Summer Wind’ HERE
Photographs of Alana and Vince and text copyright Neville Elder 2011
