JJ Cale – Stay Around
Because Music – 26 April 2019
Six years on from his death at the age of 74, this first posthumous release of new material is J J Cale proving that, as the title suggests, his music will indeed stick around. His work is an integral thread in the weave that is 20th-century music. There aren’t many artists who’s after-life releases stand up alongside their premier work, as a rule, people want to get the essential music heard as quickly as they can. Jimi Hendrix is the first name to spring to mind when pondering acts who had an abundance of top-quality recordings left in the can after they passed. Occasionally an untimely death occurs immediately before a planned release, Otis Redding and Elliott Smith being good examples, but mostly a posthumous collection is nothing more than a mopping up of studio out-takes, rehearsals and unfinished works in progress. These are only ever really of interest to the die-hard fans and completists of an artist’s work, never essential. But this new album from J J Cale is far from second rate residue; it’s a new, complete, produced and compiled piece of work that stands proudly alongside other original releases. How does this come to be?
J J Cale didn’t approach studio work with the same marketing strategies as your average recording artist. He did not record twelve tracks for an album and leave it at that. His muse was solely song focused, rightly so for a writer whose main bread and butter was compositions recorded by other higher profile singers. Everyone from Eric Clapton, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Captain Beefheart to Bryan Ferry, John Mayer, Lucinda Williams, Beck and Iron & Wine have put J J Cale material down on record freeing the man himself to doggedly duck and dodge his way out of the spotlight. It just wasn’t where this former US Air Force electronics technicians’ interests lie. That late fifties grounding had planted a seed in his mind that would develop into a dexterity in mixing and sound recording. This later gave his recording a rather individualist, distinct grain. And so, by the time he was a fully formed recording artist in the early seventies, his approach to his craft drove unusual decisions such as a refusal to play Dick Clark’s American Bandstand (when enjoying his biggest success on the US singles charts with ‘Crazy Mama’) because they wouldn’t allow his band along and he would have to lip-sync. Despite any commercial payback, he would have received from such an endurance, J J Cale did not see the value in investing time and effort into something that benefitted his fame and not his craft. So, he simply didn’t do that. When he worked on his music, he really worked on his music. Inevitably, recording sessions would stack up unused, but generally completed songs. He had no qualms about having tracks ready to go but still on the shelf, and he would find a place on an album for them when a suitable place became available. For example, ‘Roll On’, the title track from Cale’s last studio album in 2009, was 34 years old.
‘Stay Around’ has been assembled from J J Cale recordings casting its net over a similarly long distance, four-decade span. Christine Lakeland Cale, his widow and long-time band member, has curated this incredibly cohesive collection. The evidence to his recording approach can be indisputably heard for all tracks are already produced to the Cale standard. He clearly didn’t casually put stuff down knowing it wouldn’t appear on the next scheduled release, it seems he knew every track would eventually have its moment. And Christine admits that she was able to stick with Johns mixes saying “you can make things so sterile that you take the human feel out. But John left a lot of that human feel in. He left so much room for interpretation”.
The first song that Christine and John cut together as a four-piece combo was ‘My Baby Blues’. It was captured on tape at Bradley’s Barn studio in 1977 and is included here, one of the oldest selections and the only song not written by J J Cale himself. However, the remarkable thing about this Christine Lakeland Cale song is how neatly it beds in with all the other material and furthermore, it highlights the timelessness of that J J Cale vibe. Labelled at times as the originator of the ‘Tulsa’ sound, a vague configuration of influences from jazz, blues, country and rockabilly, what strikes you in this set is that he was simply the master of the J J Cale sound. There are echoes of 20th-century country, but it doesn’t sound old or traditional. There are touches of blues, but it is not stuck in that structure. There’s a free and easy looseness that occurs in jazz, but the songs never lose direction or overextend. This is far from tub-thumping rockabilly but a track like ‘Chasing You’ does swing its pants and carries the listener along with them! It’s a stand-out tune on ‘Stay Around’ and hints a touch at the Americana well Bob Dylan drank from on ‘Modern Times’.
It’s amazing how all the way this record has subtle diversions in each tune and yet it retains a sense that all this music is part of the same journey. ‘Tell Daddy’ has a gentle lolloping groove and bluesy piano. Shut your eyes during ‘Winter Snow’ and you’re staring out your window just like Cale, fighting off the cold chill and watching those white butterflies falling from the sky. Then on ‘Wish You Were Here’ we have a sunny, relaxed banjo lament that leaves us looking for our sun hat, rocking chair and porch. Everything is filtered through that delicate Cale light touch. You can appreciate why he fought off the mechanizations of the music industry so persistently. His music was a fine construct boiled up from natural elements and one man’s single-minded vision; too much heavy-handed outside interference would so easily have crushed the spell. J J Cale’s life work was focused on protecting that from happening. Even the gentle synths that appear on the backdrop of title track ‘Stay Around’ aren’t a jarring intrusion; they’re applied with restraint and prove that when a master craftsman is afforded the time and working conditions, they will never overcook their creation. J J Cale was a songsmith who served his muse with incredible care, attention and an individual magic flair that has ensured he will not be replicated or replaced. A true one-off and absolutely one of the greats. Whether this is a one-off archive trawl or the first of many is currently unclear, but it’s a valuable addition to the canon either way.
Video Premiere: Go Downtown (by Carine Khalife)
Carine Khalife on the Making of Go Downtown
Montreal-based visual artist Carine Khalife talks us through the idea and process behind the video.
The idea:
In a poetic dive into a colourful stained glass scenery, we accompany a character in his peregrinations. Light reveals warm and highly textured landscapes in which each piece of stained glass are intertwined.
From a subjective point of view, our character walks, ride, drive, restlessly. It takes efforts, it takes courage, it takes love. Time passes and everything changes but the determination remains like a clock that never stops. The gigantic nature seems infinite, but little by little the city lights start to shine.
The Process:
Based on cut-out shapes, everything is made to change. The backgrounds turn from morning first light to night sky. Shapes echos to themselves, continuously shifting, growing, moulting.
Stained glass style will be created using a mix of oil paint, stop motion animation and digital movements. Basically, my technique is to paint on a piece of glass fixed to a light box. A camera, fixed overhead above the animation table, would capture my paintings frame by frame and create the animated textures. The single light source comes from beneath the glass, reveals the textures and details of brushes movements.
Frames are then cut out and assembled digitally to compose scenes.
The main rhythm and frame rate will be based on the tempo of the track.
Inspired by rich and colourful modern stained glass designs as well as organic shapes of painters like Peter Doig, the video aims to immerse the viewer/listener in a soft, luminous and somehow mystical adventure.
Stay Around is out now on CD and Vinyl. Order here.
Photo Credit: Main image – Stephane Sednaoui