Ry Cooder - the first 40 years

Ry Cooder - the first 40 years
November 24, 2009
by STEVE MOFFATT
Rouse Hill Times

WHEN blues singer Blind Alfred Reed wrote the song How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live it was 1929 and the height (or depth) of the Great Depression.

Ry Cooder took the song and made it his on his self-titled 1970 debut album. And on Monday night he closed the first night of his Sydney tour with a little added verse that made it even more relevant to today’s post-Lehman Brothers world: “We’ve lost the farm and they took the store, How could they do that? All that we worked for”.

Cooder has been mining the rich vein of America’s musical multicultural heritage for four decades, occasionally surfacing in the mainstream with a big hit album like Paris Texas or the Buena Vista Social Club.

But for the most part he has stayed out of the spotlight, making no concessions to the rock-and-roll lifestyle. He is the consummate musician’s musician, a guitarist whose trademark slide solos etch into your soul.

He has explored Mexican, calypso, zydeco, blues, jazz, latin and folk, but always in his own way and with a voice that cajoles, moves and shakes you by turns and puts over a tale like few others can.

Another vocalist and songwriter who can tell a story simply and directly and give it that timeless relevance is Nick Lowe, an Englishman who found fame with the 1970s band Brinsley Schwarz, which started recording round the time that Cooder did. Since then Lowe has worked with a number of luminaries, including Elvis Costello.

Lowe and Cooder have been friends for a long time and Lowe persuaded his American amigo to go on the road to “relive the past, sing some old songs, some middle-aged songs and some songs that are thinking of buying a house”.

Add into the mix Cooder’s son Joaquin on drums - a worthy successor to the great Jim Keltner - and his high-school sweetheart, LA songstress Juliette Commagere, and you have a show with the same folksy, family feel that Neil Young put over in his tour here earlier in the year.

As promised Cooder and Lowe delivered 100 minutes of lip-smacking, foot-stomping nostalgia, from Jesus On the Mainline to Little Sister, Fool For A Cigarette to the hilarious Thirteen Question Method is the One to Use.

Cooder champions the poor and exploited in many of his songs and you won’t find much political correctness here (Every Woman I Know is Crazy ‘bout an Automobile). He exposes the seedy underside of American cities in Down In Hollywood, pared down in his 2009 version.

And then there’s the goodtime songs from the Chicken Skin Music era. But for me the defining moment of the set was Cooder’s beautifully bleak slide working of Bessy Smith’s Careless Love blues into Woody Guthrie’s Vigilante Man.

Lowe, meanwhile, a witty raconteur and host, doubling bass and acoustic guitar, was the perfect foil to his friend.

Juliette Commagere and her sister Carla provided the backing vocals with some nice little dance moves and Lowe sang some of his perfect country-tinged ballads like Crying In My Sleep and the knockout What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?.

Apart from one song, Shrinking Man, the duo stayed planted in the late last century. After his latest offering Cooder asked the audience: “Did you like it? Well, we might just record it, as my boyhood idol Hank Snow used to say.”

Now that would be a CD worth queueing up for.

The show is repeated tonight at the State Theatre.