Nashville Sept 20th 2007 Dixiana Recording Studios Music Row
Dylan recorded near here yesterday, he’s playing the Ryman Auditorium tonight. Hope that means the unedifying Rubin prospect is nipped in the bud.
I pity the Poor geezer in the recording studio who got sacked for taking a Bob pic on his mobile phone but I guess that’s the price of experience
No such restrictions in Dixiana the guys here don’t object to me sticking the video cam in their faces as they help Dean Johnson go from strength to strength.
Legendary Brit rock n roll producer Stuart Colman (I think we can call someone who marched on the BBC in 1976 to demand more rock n roll,who stood in a doorway discussing Bo Diddley and the blues with Watts and Richards in 1963, who has produced Phil Everly and Little Richard a legend, don’t you?) has invited Dean out here to cut some originals.
Stuart has gathered real studio hotshots (Dennis the keyboard player vibing on Nat King Cole, Dougie the guitarist riffing up a Les Paul storm and Pete the drummer offering the off and on beat drum punches, Colman himself doubling as producer and ( walking) bassist).
I keep writing good things about Dean and its a great arrangement because he keeps getting better, keeps refining his musical sources.
There’s 4 killer songs - additional to his recent album You Spill More Than You Drink - and Colman has matched him with players that completely and instinctively understand the musical roots and sources the songs come from.
I hope y’all live long enough to hear em reach full fruition - Previous Life, The Cradle Of The Blues, The Girl From Monterey, You Give What You Get.
These songs represent the full flowering of the sensual flow and philosophical and political insights that have run through Dean’s career since Dead Pan Alley (1994), at least .
And to hear these guys understand them, vibing with the words, their filigrees and licks lengthening and strengthening the words, creating heaven in a heartbeat?
Well looks its writ in the stars - the day Universal move off the Music Row Dean has moved onto it. Mystical time September – 39 years ago there was a similar meeting of minds. Van Morrison and the jazz cats who cut an album called Astral Weeks in New York.
Not a hit at the time, but the songs endured long after. And so will Deans…
