Some new songs will debut this Tuesday when Kelley and her “Orchestra Jr.” will join the Silver Lining at their Abbey Lounge residency. It’s only the third time she’s played in town since the move, and her first full-band set. On July 8, she’ll be back at the Lizard Lounge for a one-time reunion of the Boyjoys, the Bee Gees tribute group she and Ad Frank put together a few years ago.
TRADITION AND THE INDIVIDUAL TALENT: Merrie Amsterburg comes to the rescue of “My Darling Clementine.” |
If you’re of a certain demographic, you’ll never be able to hear “My Darling Clementine” without imagining it sung by Huckleberry Hound. That’s one reason Merrie Amsterburg recorded the new Clementine & Other Stories (Q Division) — to rescue traditional songs. Interviewed at the Cambridge Common, she notes that she also turned up a version of “Streets of Laredo” by ’70s troubadour and “Wildfire” guy Michael Murphey, who treated it about as well as Huckleberry Hound did “Clementine.” More important, Amsterburg, who’s written plenty of deep and haunting songs herself, wound up falling in love with the traditional material. So what began life as a breather between original projects has now eaten up most of the six years since Little Steps (Zoë/Rounder).Clementine still sounds very much like a Merrie Amsterburg album, with the same blend of rock, pop, and folk elements and a voice full of longing and regret. Some songs are done in traditional style; “Clementine,” however, becomes a full-fledged rocker with long-time partner Peter Linton doing some ripping lead guitar. And you don’t often hear the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts” with drum loops. “I was surprised myself at how they came out,” she admits. “That was the hard thing — to make it sound genuine for me but also to be true to the spirit of the song. I realized there were people living in these songs. ‘Simple Gifts’ had to be frenetic, so it could capture the Shaker experience of ecstasy. And I realized ‘Clementine’ had to be in a minor key when I thought about the history and the lyrics. Being stuck in a cave with your father is not a very attractive life.”
The closing funereal version of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” sounds like a political statement, but she says she recorded it before the Iraq War was declared. “It plays into my own memories of the Vietnam War, seeing the brutality everyday on TV and knowing my brothers would’ve had to go if they’d been drafted. I’ve never forgotten that.”
Amsterburg has written the songs for her next album, and she’ll be working on that next year. Meanwhile she’s been performing at grade schools, much as Pete Seeger used to, and largely for the same reasons. “Hopefully it will teach kids something about history and geography, where they live and where they come from.”
PAULA KELLEY + SILVER LINING | June 27 | Abbey Lounge, 3 Beacon St, Somerville | 617.441.9631
Topics:
New England Music News
, The Bee Gees, Pete Seeger, Merrie Amsterburg, More 
, The Bee Gees, Pete Seeger, Merrie Amsterburg, Blue Oyster Cult, Huckleberry Hound, Paula Kelley, Darling Clementine, Michael Murphey, Peter Linton, The Bee Gees, Less 
