Cover series #3 Cypress Grove Blues

Those of you who’ve been to a gig recently may well have heard me sing this haunting song first written and recorded by Skip James back in the 1930’s.
When I was 17 years old and I was into picking up cheap second hand vinyl in
the markets in London, I’d often buy music on a whim, not knowing the artist or the genre.
That was how I ended up with a record that I chose initially for the cover and the price before being rooted to the spot as the turntable revealed the inimitable sound of Skip James, his unique picking guitar style, his high voice and his extraordinary lyrics. It’s no understatement to say that song and that moment changed my life.
I sold my electric guitar, stopped playing with my band at the time, threw away my plectrum and learnt slowly how to play with my fingers on a battered old Epiphone.
I spent the following years addicted to all types of acoustic blues from the Mississippi Delta and I was incapable of listening to anything else, with the exception of Malians, Ali Farka Toure and Boubakar Traore who I’d also picked up on vinyl back in the day!

To cut a long story short, it took me pretty much twenty years to find the courage to play this song, I have never had a music lesson in my life, I’ve only ever learnt from records or from playing with other musicians over the years. Skip James was and will always remain an absolute master for me, someone who took the form of song to its most poignant and touching heights.

He wrote complex and immensely poetic lyrics, not merely to have words to moan and wail to the music but to express as a poet would, profound and specific images, ideas and stories through his words. (See his “Washington DC hospital Blues’ or his ‘Cherry Ball Blues’)

The idea that I would one day be able to play, in some form or other, this man’s music is some testament to stubborn determination and hard work. When I first heard that song all those years ago, I was capable only of strumming open chords and struggled with bar chords!

When Ben Harper heard me play Cypress Grove he jokingly said, ‘No one plays Skip James’ meaning you’d have to be crazy to learn a song that difficult!

Like all of these songs in this little series of covers, if people get to discover Skip James through my humble little version, it’s a good job done for me!

I will always carry the torch for the great Skip James.

'I used to have a good mother and a father'

I first heard this song many moons ago when the bulk of what I listened to consisted almost entirely of music from the deep American south recorded between 1920 and 1933. Such was the power, artistry and invention of the great and innumerable artists from this time and place that everything else seemed to pale in comparison. Aged twenty I tried very hard to become a delta bluesman before realising the comic futility of my ambition but sometimes we are so touched by something, we inevitably at first try to become it.
Back then I wanted to sing and touch the places that Skip James reached, not what the English
pop-stars of the time were singing about but I later realised that you can't sing another man's life, you can only sing your own. Realising that was the most important step I made in becoming a songwriter.

We cannot be what we are not and yet paradoxically music can only move us if it speaks to something already inside us. Falling in love with a song outside our usual cultural references is the proof of existence of a common echo that binds us all and pulls us back to a primal universal source.  I'm getting carried away but roll with me for a few lines!
This is the wonderful paradox that makes a Tokyo businessman become obsessed by Charlie Parker or a Scandinavian postman by Cuban Son or a Nigerian taxi driver by Hank Williams to pull some unlikely examples out of the hat

Early black American music always transported me, mysteriously these voices called to me.
Years later I've tried to understand what it was that resonated in me then and to put it clumsily into words , I came to see that it was a recognition or acknowledgement of something that goes beyond race, culture and geography. Since then I've experienced this same resonance not only in the early bluesmen from Mississippi but in music from all over the world and in places much closer to my place of birth. I once heard a blind Irish street musician on a cold London street corner sing note for note the same melody that Mississippi John Hurt had sang 60 years earlier and that I'd listened to that very morning on an old scratchy record.

There's a phenomenon in music called sympathetic resonance that you can hear clearly in Indian classical music. In an instrument like the sitar there are strings which are plucked by the player but there are other numerous strings that are never physically touched and yet when tuned carefully simply play themselves, activated by the vibration of the strings that are plucked by the player.
When i hear Washington Phillips I feel like those strings that play themselves, humming in shared resonance.

So what is this primal sound, this universal hum, if we can call it that? You could also call it, the song of being, it's at once an anguished wail and a celebratory cry. It's the essence of what you hear when Souther Italian Uccio Aloisi roars, when Bukka White moans, when the Malian troubadour Boubacar Traore sings or even when June Tabor bears her heart a cappella. If we had to play one song to a Martian for him to understand what music is, I'd play him Washington Phillips's 'I used to have a good mother and a father.'

I meant to talk about the song specifically but I got carried away, waxing lyrical as the French country side whistled past me from the window of a high speed train. There is a beauty in this song and in the manner in which it was played by Washington Phillips all those years ago that will freeze you to the spot. No words can describe its power, its grace.

My humble version is just a small homage or a doffing of the hat to this forgotten master of early gospel music and if my version alone leads you to his miracle of early recorded song then it's job done for me..

We are what we hear, for we can only hear what we are!

see you folks and thanks for bearing with me in my mystic ramblings..
next cover will be up in November..watch this space!

P

Piers visited WNYC's radio station for a performance/interview on "Soundcheck with John Schaefer" on 9/22.

Piers performed three tracks off Two Grains of Sand, "A Home Away From Home,"Your Name No More" and "Two Grains of Sand"

Click here to listen to the segment,WNYC SOUNDCHECK

Piers flies to Los Angeles today to perform at Hotel Cafe, 7pm.

Songs I love.. I had an idea to start recording a little collection of covers over the next few months, the plan being to record one a month and to then to put them one up on the website as I go.

The songs will be downloadable for free for a couple of weeks after I post them and after that we'll make a playlist as we go..

I'll be recording at home on a very basic studio set up but the lo-finess'll be part of the process. For the most part, it'l be just a case of putting a mike in front of the guitar and another for the voice and pressing record with a quick mix afterwards.

The first song in the series takes me back to my teens and the band I and so many others in the U.K fell in love with, The Smiths. In my first ever band when I was fifteen we used to play half our own songs and half Smiths tunes.
So starting with this song is a way to build some kind of story together in the series about the various influences that I have. I'll leave you to guess which other artists I'll cover later!

For me the idea of this cover series is just a way for me to share the joy I have in playing these incredible songs..It's no more than that, hopefully you'll dig them too.

Sometimes I might be tempted to stray from the original arrangement othertimes I'll stick closer to the versions I first heard of the songs like I have here in the first one in the series: Please Please Please let me get what I want by The Smiths

So here's to melancholy adolescence
and all the fruits it bears in the hearts of lonely souls!

Thankyou Morrissey and Johnny Marr!
p

After a brief trip to New York this June, I'm very happy to announce we have a small handfull of gigs coming soon in the U.S.
We'll be playing at Crown Point on 9/19, the City Winery in New York on  9/22 and at the Hotel Cafe, LA on 9/23.
In between there'll be a couple of live radio sessions on 9/22 at 10am on WFUV http://www.wfuv.org/ and then at 2.30pm on WNYC for a program called 'soundcheck'. http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/episodes/2009/09/02
Over the last few years, I've played a bunch of shows in the U.S , mostly small club shows, outside of opening for Ben Harper  and it seems now that everywhere I go, I have my little  select band of fans/friends who dig the music and come along to the shows and that's what makes it all worthwhile for me..to know the music gets through to someone, somehow, somewhere.
So for those of you more familiar with Tearing Sky or even the songs from Leave no trace, this will be an opportunity to hear songs from the new album, Two grains of sand.
Look forward to seeing you there!
P

I recently had the fortune of seeing Leonard Cohen in concert. He was playing in the ancient Roman colosseum in Nimes an hour away from where I live. It's hard to think of anyone who has influenced me more than this man and his extraordinary legacy of songs. I was a little uncertain as to what to expect despite the 5 star reviews from around the world. Being so in love with his recorded work I had some trepidation that the live shows might be a disappointment.
But pretty much from the first moment the man skipped onto the stage, all fears evaporated away and as he played song after song, I realised I haven't been as captivated by a concert in years.
There was time to savour every word, every nuance of language from all the songs I knew so well, time to delve into the depths of this man's poetry and song. A time to feel his life's work in one concert.
I know of no other writer who has overwhelmed me with words in such a way and although I deal a poor hand compared to his great offering, I feel total affinity with the themes of his writing. He is a kind of guru for me, no doubt about it.

Driving back from the concert, I thought many thoughts about the nature of writing, why it is we write and what it is we write about and how we fashion words to visit and revisit the same ground all our lives. Despite the enormous complexity of his or any other great writer's work, I couldn't help thinking singers only ever write one song in their lives; we just write the same song differently each time around but some, definitely, do it better than others.
For me Leonard Cohen's one song covers pretty much all the bases: it's essentially a love song, how could it be anything else? But it's a love song caught between heaven and earth, between god and godlessness, faith and non belief, man and woman, passion and longing, ecstacy and loss and birth and death.
Who needs to write more than one song if the one song contains all of the above?
Each one of us carries their own song and  whether we write it down or not, it's unique to our experience and it's carved into our DNA. Our songs are on the end of the tip of each of our tongues. The greatness of this man's work is to know how to speak it.

Leonard Cohen practiced, and perhaps still does, the way of Zen Buddhism for many years in the hills of California. Zen is the religion that doesn't believe in god, making it my favourite too.
There's a Zen saying that says "Before Enlightenment chop wood carry water, after Enlightenment, chop wood carry water." It's a saying I've been practicing phyiscally these days, (see photos) if not always metaphorically, as I begin the preparations for Autumn and eventual Wintertime. Having only a wood fired stove to heat ourselves, I have the gargantuan task each year of chopping large logs for several days into smaller pieces that will fit and burn in our stove.
As I chopped log after log, my mind wandered to the rythmn of the axe and I realised, as I brought it down time and again to split the core of the log, that this mundane but necessary task is just like songwriting. So if chopping wood is like writing songs, that makes Leonard Cohen the lumberjack of songwriters!
We find a song, we build it and shape it. It's different each time in the detail but in the end and in essence, it's the same as the one we fashioned before, the same but different. We chop wood because that's what we have to do to stay warm and we write songs because that's what we have to do to live with and learn by and each year as the seasons come around we do the same tasks for the same reasons.

So nothing changes in the end, this is it friends!
There's only one song in each of us, and it sings a perfect 5th if you can hear it.  
We're all just chopping wood carrying water.
Thankyou Mr Cohen,
Sincerely P Faccini.

Your name no more top tune of the day on LA's KCRW
http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/tu/tu090714piers_faccini_your_n

THE EYES OF A MAN BY DOM GABRIELLI

I recently had the great pleasure of illustrating a book of prose and poetry by the poet Dom Gabrielli, the book entitled, 'The Eyes of a Man' brings together a collection of his writing from the last twenty years of his wandering life.
Gabrielli is a poet who defies categorisation, prefering the artistic freedom of anonymity to the prying eyes that wider recognition brings with it. This book is the first publication of his writing which until now had remained, for the priviliged few of us that knew his work, a closely guarded secret. For Gabrielli, to write is what matters above all else, to write unconditionlally,  to write much as one would breathe, simply because it is necessary to live. This urgency and rythmic hertbeat runs through every aspect of his work. And so the wheels turn in Gabrielli's poems, bringing together his unique writing with a practiced nomadic lifestyle. Being with these poems, living with them, one gets the sense that the precise quality of his words rested on the capacity to keep moving, dare I say it, to be free in mind.

Movement is an integral axis in the flowing structure that is his work and this flow matters above all else for him, his words are like water in the driving currents, at times creating gentle pools to bathe and rest in and at other times raging tides to be swept away and driven against the rocks.

These poems have a tender cruelty to them, a strong arm love that binds and crafts them and his voice is above all, the voice of a true outsider.

Half of the images I made to accompany the poems were done in response to the writing as the form of the book took its final form in the hands of editor Marcus Reichert, the other prints were pooled from work I'd made some years back. All of the images are monotypes in black ink.

'The Eyes of a Man' is published by Ziggurat Books International, below are some prints from the book as well as Gabrielli's heart shattering poem 'Mother'.

p.s This Autumn will see the publication of ' Art & Death' by Ziggurat Books for which I have also contributed Images and two pieces of writing.

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/browse/book/isbn/9780956103819

www.domgabrielli.net








                                                      Mother

Born of love,
I was born of love,
of a love loved.
I was born of being loved,
with love‐words
pronounced over me,
with your eyes
fixed upon me,
with the hurt I had already
inflicted upon you.

Born into love
into the ocean of love,
cleansed of deadly knowledge.
Born of your loves loved,
I felt your eyes dim
and fall away into dusk.
I never heard a scream
nor a cough,
never saw a tear fall
nor your head sway
with inner fear.
I was love, my name love.

You look at me
with love.
You look at my words now
with love,
wondering how I managed to
escape you,
how love could have
escaped love.

---------------------

24-27th May - Paris, La Maroquinerie

We had four nights in a row in one of my favourite clubs in Paris, La Maroquinerie. It's the venue of choice for a lot of bands that come through Paris. They need to work on their air con in there but somehow the cramped stifling conditions add to the vibe. I love playing up close to the people, watching their expressions as I sing.
Having said that watching people while playing can be a dangerous business for your concentration, as much as I can be inspired by someone singing along, eyes closed in rapture, the flip side is someone picking their nose or yawning.

Audiences are like animals, they start as single entities and end up as multi celled flaying limbed organisms. One night they behave one way, the next night another.
One night they're a camel, another a sloth, one night they're a fleet footed mare another night a baying hound.

On these 4 nights, the bestiary was well covered.

-----------

I have a pair of red vans that I sometimes wear, for a couple of nights I wore them, one guy came up to me after the show to say how much he loved the music but he also expressed a profound and unsettling level of hate for my shoes. Strange that he could like the songs and not the shoes..I mean surely the songs and the shoes are one. You can't like one without the other.

If I think of artists that I like, I'm sure I'd like their shoes.
I bet P.J Harvey has a great array of shoes, Bonnie prince Billy too, I was playing with Andrew Bird the other day and he had cool shoes, compatible with his music.
I'm not sure I can say the same for artists I have less fondness for, taking an easy target out of the hat, James Blunt is bound to wear dodgy shoes.

I propose that on the back of our albums we could have a snap of our favourite footwear so that way the discerning punter could truly know whether the songs were for him or not.

Here's an example of a potential conversation in a record shop (if you can find one still in business)

"hey have you seen this record? I heard this guy is really good!"

"yeah, but did you see his shoes"

Enough said..
------------

P





















photos by Ann Cantat Corsini www.anncantatcorsini.com

SUD ITALIA 2009

New band...
The various individual elements were starting to sound like one whole machine.
A moaning, groaning, siren engine fit to carry an audience..maybe
To use a football cliche , a band has to be way more than the sum of its parts..there has to be some transformation.
The animal was becoming a beast.
But hopefully one one you wouldn't run screaming away from.

We had a little tour organised in the south of Italy, four gigs taking us from the heart of Rome down to the heel of the Italian boot in Puglia via Napoli.
For the occasion, I had the chance to take Rodrigo Derasmo, the incredibly talented violinist with us a s a fourth member.
We all met up in Rome and after a quick soundcheck, there began our little journey taking these new songs to the various shores that would kindly have us.

In Italy there are two things among many that make me very happy as I stumble into the bus in the morning after too little sleep:

1.The best coffee in the world

2.The thought that even if we have to stop
on the motorway for a snack, i won't be wondering how many years I'm taking off my life eating the usual toxic rubbish passed off as food
and if we have to stop I'll happily munch my way through a panino with prosciuto di parma, melanzane sott'olio and mozzarella di buffala.
Wouldn't you? (plenty of veggie options too I should add)

It's hard to talk about this part of the world without talking about food so here's another list of favourite culinary moments from the tour:

Laetitia Sherif's face when she ate the real Mozzarella from Campania for the first time..hear the sound of a jaw hitting the ground

The little trattoria in Sanicandro di Bari where they brought dish after dish for the us to taste, highlights being the cime di rapa ( a kind of cross between brocoli and spinach cooked in garlic and chili)

The cauliflower in a puree of chickpeas, I swear it brought a tear to Simone's eye, I know he's a drummer but still..a tear!

The Focaccia, and the burrata, a creamy cheese from the south of Italia which I've never tasted so fresh.

This will no doubt make it sound like we returned with a size up around the waist but most of the food down here is very fresh and healthy
and mostly free of the refined sugars, flours and fats that one can find so much of elsewhere.

So over four days and four gigs we slowly wound our way down to Lecce our last gig.
Before the soundcheck, we managed to find half an hour to plunge into the Mediterranean.
Across the waters you could see the outline of Albania, further south the scent of Greece on the breeze.
Here the borders aren't so watertight, there's been so much cultural exchange over the centuries, It's the kind of place I feel at home in,
away from absolutes and definitions, drifting at the edges of different worlds.

After this delicious little journey, I felt like Mercedes Sosa singing ' Gracias a la vida!'


next up LA MAROQUINERIE and other short anecdotes..

p