Best albums of 2012

In previous years I've occasionally had a tough time coming up with my annual list of favorite albums. This year was different...I had some obvious slam-dunk favorites.

1. BUTTERFLY BOUCHER: Butterfly Boucher

I've been a Butterfly fan for many years, but her new album totally captivated me, and has been in non-stop rotation since I bought it back in September. I'm swooning...

2. MICHAEL MONROE: Sensory Overdrive

Thanks to my cousin Micke in Helsinki for sending me this album by Finnish rock legend Michael Monroe. Totally inspiring and positive lyrics with mind-blowingly fun and rocking arrangements. Try not to go 100MPH while listening to this one in the car.

3. BRENDAN BENSON: What Kind of World
4. RICK SPRINGFIELD: Songs For The End of the World
5. MARVIN ETZIONI: Marvin Country
6. FOO FIGHTERS: Wasting Light
7. MISSY HIGGINS: The Ol' Razzle Dazzle
8. ARTO JÄRVELÄ: Plays Fiddle Vol. 3 - On The Coast
9. BEKI HEMINGWAY: I Have Big Plans For The World
10. JULIANA HATFIELD: Juliana Hatfield (covers)

Update for 2012

Happy 2012, blog visitors! Here’s what’s new for the new year:

I HAVE A NEW ALBUM!
Available now, this 20-song self-titled retrospective collects my best songs from the past decade. Check more information here at my freshly updated and overhauled webpage.

I’VE POSTED AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO TRAILER IN SUPPORT OF THE ALBUM
View parts 1 and 2 of this mini-documentary on YouTube, below. I dug through 10 years of unreleased video and photos to trace the assembly of these songs from the Sound Theology era until the present. Check out some rather candid tour footage with Beki Hemingway and studio session clips with The Silos during the recording of the Public Library album, plus performance and travel clips from Finland.






MY SONGS ARE STREAMING, SHARABLE, AND DOWNLOADABLE AT BANDCAMP
I’ve been experimenting with this interesting online music service. Songs from my recent albums are posted for streaming, and can be shared and viral-ized by anyone on Facebook. Surf around my corner of Bandcamp and feel free to post your favorite tunes on your FB profile…I’d appreciate the traffic and the exposure to new listeners. And of course, visit my Facebook musician page, and “like” me there.

COAST-TO-COAST TOURS ARE BOOKED WITH KAIVAMA
2011 was an amazing year of writing, arranging, recording and performing Finnish folk music with violinist Sara Pajunen. Sara and I released our debut album as KAIVAMA back in June of last year, and since then have performed in Minneapolis, Chicago, Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Seattle, Portland, San Diego, and Vancouver BC. In February of 2012 we’ll be back on the road with a tour of the Southern USA, and in March we’ll swing across the Midwest with Finnish multi-instrumentalist and composer Arto Järvelä. Check out the Kaivama webpage, see our tour schedule, and “like” us at our Facebook page.
That’s the update. Follow along on Facebook for up-to-the-minute details as the year rolls along...

June tour dates: Kaivama and Arto Järvelä

World renowned composer and master fiddler from Finland Arto Järvelä is coming to the USA for a series of performances this June, and my new Finnish-American band Kaivama is very excited to join him at some of the best venues in the Midwest.

We'll wrap up the tour with our CD release show in our hometown of Minneapolis at the Cedar Cultural Center.

ARTO JÄRVELÄ and KAIVAMA 2011 tour schedule:

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8th

Old Town School of Folk Music

Chicago, IL

JUNE 10, 11

Nisswa-stämman Nordic Folk Music Festival

Nisswa, MN

SUNDAY, JUNE 12th

Kaleva Hall

Virgina, MN

MONDAY, JUNE 13th

Sacred Heart Music Center

Duluth, MN

TUESDAY, JUNE 14th

Cambridge Lutheran Church

Cambridge, MN

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15th

Bethania Church @ Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum

Decorah, IA

THURSDAY, JUNE 16th

live broadcast TV performance on "Showcase Minnesota" KARE 11

Minneapolis, MN

FRIDAY, JUNE 17th

Cedar Cultural Center

Minneapolis, MN

The greatest gathering of contemporary Lutheran songwriters in history. Period.

Next Friday, February 25th, at 7PM, at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN, something amazing will happen. It will be the greatest gathering of contemporary Lutheran songwriters in history. No kidding. Check out this line-up.
And if that's not enough, I just heard today that Jay Beech will join us as well!

How could it be? Not even the ELCA Churchwide Youth Gathering has been able to get all these people in the same room at the same time!

The event is part of the Lutheran Songs Today series of performances, CDs, songbooks, and resources, masterminded by Rev. Eric Wefald from New England. Eric always appreciated the great creative work of independent Lutheran musicians over the years, but noticed there was no easy and central way to access their material, and no published books or recordings collecting their best congregational songs. So, he solved the problem himself, reaching out to the artists and compiling their work. Now, with the help of the Center for Missional Leadership at Luther Seminary, these artists will share the same stage!

Of course, I'm thrilled to be on the bill myself, and happy to collaborate with my peers like Nate Houge, Richard Bruxvoort Colligan, etc. But it's very exciting to have some of the pioneers of mainline Protestant indie music on the schedule: Ray Makeever, John Ylvisaker, and Jay Beech are kind of like the Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Bruce Springsteen of Lutheran music. And in the generation following them we have Lost And Found, also on the schedule!

If you've been involved in the more youth-ful edge of American Lutheranism for the past 40 years, you've sung the songs of these composers. "Borning Cry," "Baptized," "We Come to the Hungry Feast," and "Lions"...sheesh! Big hits for Lutherans.

If you recognize any of these names or any of these songs, you should be at the show next Friday!

Free MP3 for February 2011: "Liberty Island" (remix)

This month's free MP3 features a very old song with a long and complex evolutionary history. "Liberty Island" is a co-write between me and my cousin Bruce Rundman.

I wrote the lyrics in 1993 after Bruce and I visited New York City. We waited in line to climb up into the crown of the Statue of Liberty. It was a fun adventure, but the interior of the statue creeped me out, and made me claustrophobic, so I wrote about how I felt. Initially it was called "The Girl in Green."

Bruce added music and lyrical evolution in the late '90s, and the song took its final form.

Lowell Michelson's drum performance was recorded in his then-basement in North Minneapolis for use on the Styx Tribute album. I recorded him on a minidisc 4-track playing a Styx song, but I can't recall which one...it was "Grand Illusion" or "Lorelei" I think. Ultimately, that Styx cover song was abandoned, and Lowell's drums were resurrected for use on Bruce's solo album version of "Liberty Island."

We transferred the drum tracks from the minidisc over to ProTools on the computer, edited the drumming to fit "Liberty Island," and tracked over the top of the new structure. We recorded Bruce's solo album in my basement in North Minneapolis in Summer 2003. This original recording of "Liberty Island" can be heard on Bruce's True North album.

Later, in the mid-aughts, I dug back into the "Liberty Island" session and added additional instrumentation and vocals. Since it was a co-write, I thought it would be fun to record an alternate version of the tune with myself on lead vocals. I also set some strict rules for myself to follow, just for fun. The rules were:

+ lyrics must be tweaked to follow the rules of "perfect rhyme," inspired by the Jimmy Webb songwriting book Tunesmith

+ I would allow no guitar parts other than bass guitar

This new version sat unheard and unmixed for many years, until Mark LaForest was enlisted to mix the song a few months ago in the Fall of 2010. Mark made some excellent production and arrangement decisions, as well as added some tasty electric guitar tracks. Find out more about Mark via his prog-rock band Flincho.

Listening now to this recording, which I hadn't worked on since about 2005, I'm struck by how influenced it is by the band Styx. To me, I hear echoes of the darker Tommy Shaw songs like "Love in the Midnight" or "Man in the Wilderness." The monophonic synthesizer solos that Bruce and I play throughout the song were directly inspired by Dennis DeYoung's soloing from the Grand Illusion and Pieces of Eight album eras.

The lyrics place this song squarely in the genre of "Rock Songs About the Statue of Liberty," the most famous one, of course, being "American Woman" by the Guess Who. Looking back on these nearly-20-year-old lyrics, they read a bit anti-American to me. However, that was not the intent! They're supposed to be read literally, as an observational tune about how weird it is to crawl up inside a giant woman's body, and to be just one of countless little people in line to peek through her forehead.

Download the song from my Audio Page.

LIBERTY ISLAND

words and music by Jonathan & Bruce Rundman

up against the empty April skies

feeling young and small beneath her crown

I could see inside her hollow eyes

I could step behind her quiet frown

closed inside her clothes I stayed

I could feel the shivers up her spine

and I knew with every move I made

I was one more number in her line

and I'm back again on Liberty Island

for the girl in green

and she stands alone on Liberty Island

and I remain unseen

people wait for hours with no complaint

they can't seem to turn their eyes away

tell me is she some kind of saint?

I'm afraid of heights like these today

and she haunts me every day and night

I can trace the pictures of her face

she's an angel shining bright

I'm a shadow cast in a far away place

and I'm back again on Liberty Island

for the girl in green

and she stands alone on Liberty Island

and I remain unseen

Free MP3 for January 2011: "Local Road" (remix)

The first free MP3 download I'll post in 2011 is "Local Road," one of my earliest songs. This particular recording was freshly remixed last month, which marks the 20th year of this song's evolution! Sheesh, when I write that, I realize how long I've been a songwriter (or else, how young I was when I started).

Here's the history of the song:

Back in the Fall of 1991 I was a student (for only one semester!) at Luther College in Decorah, IA. My then-girlfriend Dawn was a senior at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL, about 5 hours away. She had no car, so for us to see each other on weekends I would drive Southeast across Iowa to meet her in Rock Island. Over the few months I drove that route so many times I had memorized and ritualized the trip.

One Friday as I drove Eastbound on I-80 about 50 miles before the Iowa/Illinois border (which is the Mississippi River) I saw an exit sign marked as "Local Road" and I immediately got off the freeway on the exit ramp, parked my car on the gravel shoulder, got out my journal and wrote the lyrics of the song. At the time I was very affected by James McMurtry's debut album Too Long in the Wasteland, so as I look back I can see McMurtry's influence in the lyrics...."dirty trucks in single file," etc.

A few months later in the Winter of 1992 I had moved back to Michigan, where I recorded a cassette 4-track demo of this new song in my parents' basement. This original melody and chords for "Local Road" had a much more arena-rock feel, and it never felt right. I never found an effective way to play the song solo on acoustic guitar, so I shelved the tune and didn't revisit it until seven years later.

In 1999 I was collecting material for my upcoming 52-song double-CD Sound Theology, and I thought the ritualistic imagery in the "Local Road" lyrics could play a role in this ambitious concept album. At the time I was living in Chicago and playing with an excellent rhythm section, Benji Derrick on bass guitar and Andy Deitrich on drums. The three of us figured out a way to interpret the song, and for the first time, "Local Road" had a musical arrangement that felt good and correct.

The key to the resuscitation of the song was to slow down the groove to a mid-tempo stomp, and use heavy, crunchy electric guitar as the chordal foundation...a trick used very effectively by early-'90s-era retro bands: give a listen to The Jayhawks "Waiting For the Sun," or Matthew Sweet's "Divine Intervention." Benji, Andy, and I recorded the bass, drums, and telecaster live in the room together in the Fall of 1999...we set up in my 3rd floor rehearsal space in a huge warehouse in Maywood, IL, and recorded to a Sony mini-disc 4-track machine with Randy Kerkman engineering. A few months later in Winter of 2000 I moved my recording rig to my 4th floor condo overlooking the West side of Chicago and finished the tracking by singing, playing acoustic guitar, and playing harmonica live on the same track, over the electric guitar, bass and drums. This is the version of "Local Road" that can be heard on the Sound Theology album, released in Summer of 2000.

A few months ago in the Fall of 2010 I dug back into my old mini-disc archives and found the raw individual tracks from the "Local Road" recording session. I transferred them to ProTools on my computer and was able to analyze each instrument solo-ed for the first time in a decade. Knowing that drummer Andy Deitrich continues to be a performer (with circus-punk marching band Mucca Pazza) as well as a serious studio musician and producer in Chicago, I thought it would be fun to turn these old tracks over to him, to see if he could reinterpret them. Andy was pleased to participate, so last Fall he spent some time updating the recording of "Local Road." His biggest limitation was the fact that my vocals and acoustic guitar AND harmonica were all recorded live on the same track (old school!) so he didn't have a lot of options for remixing that part of the recording. Working within those bounds, Andy added lots of new percussion sounds, played additional bass guitar and organ, and updated the structure of the tune. Now in 2011, twenty years after the song was written, I'm happy to post Andy's remix of "Local Road." Download it at my Audio Page.

Considering what a novice I was when I wrote this song, it's still a favorite of mine, and I continue to perform it occasionally in concert. "Local Road" strikes a nerve with people in long-distance relationships who often tell me they relate to the story of geographic separation and the long road trips to reunite. Lyrics below:

LOCAL ROAD

never driven it myself but i've seen it many times
driving fast alone to see my girl across the borderline
up ahead i see the sign

local road exits to the side
i don't need to drive it
i just need to pass it by
local road turns off from the eastbound lane
and tells me i will soon be holding her in my arms again

all the yellow fields look the same, dirty trucks in single file
then i see the sign with basic name and it's only fifty miles
until i see her smile

local road exits to the side
i don't need to drive it
i just need to pass it by
local road turns off from the eastbound lane
and tells me i will soon be holding her in my arms again

it's good to have a landmark on your way to watch for as you go
everybody needs some ritual
this i know
i watch for local road

local road exits to the side
i don't need to drive it
i just need to pass it by
local road turns off from the eastbound lane
and tells me i will soon be holding her in my arms again

Best albums of 2010

Happy Christmas Eve everyone! I shall now share my annual list of favorite albums. 2010 was a strange one for me, and I couldn't even find ten albums that I liked that came out this past year...so we'll have to settle for the Top 7. However, I did discover great albums that came out many years ago that dominated my playlists this year...stuff like the Beatles Box Set and a variety of awesome Nordic folk music including my favorite Finnish folk album, Ampron Prunni. You can buy this album here, along with other cool Finnish CDs. I bought mine at the bookstore at Finlandia University in Hancock, MI.

Okay, but now for the real list. MY FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2010!

1. JAKOB DYLAN "WOMEN & COUNTRY"

Of course I appreciate the work of Father Bob, and I liked a few of those big hits by Jakob's '90s band The Wallflowers, but I haven't really followed the work of the younger Dylan. I bought this album because my production hero T Bone Burnett was the producer, and T Bone has delivered yet again. This album sounds great, but above all, the songwriting is really fine. Interesting lyrics, and timeless melodies. In some ways it feels like a companion piece to the Robert Plant / Alison Krauss "Rising Sand" duet album that T Bone cranked out a couple years ago. Similar atmosphere, and equally ideal for late night driving.

2. PETE YORN "PETE YORN"

Pete had TWO of my favorite albums of last year, and he did well again in 2010. This new self-titled record is a bit more garagey than the previous few, but features more of his fresh wordsmithing and hooky hard pop. Contains my favorite single of the year, the kick off track "Precious Stone" with very deft, spare production.

3. JASON & THE SCORCHERS "HALCYON TIMES"

Holy cow, what a career resurrection! I first heard this band as a high schooler in the mid-80s and they've drifted in and out of existence ever since. But WOW, they get back together, hook up with one of my rock heros Dan Baird and brilliant songwriter Tommy Womack and crank out easily the best Americana album of the past few years. It's the Stones meets the Carter Family meets AC/DC meets the Charlie Daniels Band. Telecaster inspiration abounds! And it's really cool to hear an album where there's a sense of pure fun and joy pouring through the speakers....how obvious that these guys are having a blast in the studio. Check out the song "Land of the Free" and rock to the contrast between the verses and the chorus! Sweet!

4. EELS "TOMORROW MORNING"

I'll listen to anything E and the Eels release, but their past few have been a little lacking. However on this new album, E delivers a few of his finest songs ever, including "The Man"...these lyrics soaked into me gradually as I listened and give me the chills and a smile simultaneously.

5. ELIZABETH COOK "WELDER"

As I posted on Facebook upon my first listen of this album, Nashville retro country singer Cook has managed the almost-impossible balancing act of being clever, dangerous, cute, risque, fun, and profound. Check out the harrowing "Heroin Addict Sister."

6. BUTCH WALKER AND THE BLACK WIDOWS "I LIKED YOU BETTER WHEN YOU HAD NO HEART"

Again, I'll listen to anything Butch puts out. His 2010 release had some fine moments including the great "Trash Day" where he skewers Nashville CCM culture with laser focus. Lighthearted and snide and rocking, with musical brilliance underneath all the snark and attitude.

7. CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG "IRM"

A real surprise for me, and a record that I'd most likely not discover in my usual life. But this year I was lucky to stumble across it and found a very hip and slinky album with Gainsbourg's dreamy Euro-vocals and amazing production and composing by Beck. I checked her out on Wikipedia to find that she was born exactly one day after me! Maybe I related to her because she's truly my generation.

There you have it. My Top 7 for 2010. Let me know, dear readers, what your faves were this past year!