The note Lucinda Williams sent when I asked Wednesday for her reflections about Louvin Brothers singer Charlie Louvin, on getting word of his death at age 83 from pancreatic cancer, was exceptionally touching, and warm and funny.

I quoted just part of it in the obituary I wrote for Thursday's paper, but the whole thing is worth sharing:

"I got word of Charlie Louvin's passing today, which is also my birthday. Losing Charlie means that we have lost one of the last of the founding fathers of honest-to-god country music. Charlie was a legend as one half of the Louvin Brothers and left a deep impression on me. I had the honor of working with him in the studio and touring with him.

"Every show would end with the two of us trading out verses on his song, 'When I Stop Dreaming' followed by my song 'Get Right With God,'" Williams wrote in her e-mail, "Charlie loved that song and he loved to dance and as the band rocked out, he would grab my arms and spin me around.

"One time we were performing in Kansas City outdoors and it was very windy that evening. Charlie's set list kept blowing away. At one point, he'd finally had enough and he grabbed his pocket knife and planted that thing right through the set list into the stage floor to keep it from blowing away. Later, that same night, after the show, we sat on the bus and, with sadness in his eyes, he told us that, on the way to Kansas City, we had driven right by the milepost where his brother, Ira, had been killed in a car wreck.

"Charlie was eternally youthful, full of spitfire, vim and vigor and, like Hank Williams, was a true punk, in the best sense of the word. We will miss Charlie but like he said, shortly before he left us, 'I'm ready to go home.'"

 
There’s a raw, almost primitive electricity that sizzles off “Lucy & Wayne and the Amairican Stream,” the new album from Philadelphia duo Hymn for Her.  The husband-wife team, who use the stage names Wayne Waxing and Lucy Tight, have drawn comparisons to the White Stripes for their powerfully stripped-down sound, but there’s a more rural, old-school feeling to the music they create together.

A big part of their sound comes from the three-string cigar-box guitar that Lucy plays, a throwback to the kind of instrument many old blues players built for themselves because they couldn’t afford a bona fide guitar.

Hymn for Her will have it along when the duo reach Southern California on their current tour for stops Friday at Molly Malone’s in Los Angeles and the Viento y Agua coffeehouse in Long Beach.  Tight explained by phone on the way to a show earlier this week in Lubbock, Texas, that the instrument she’s come to adore came to her through a chain of events worthy of a “Twilight Zone”-meets-“Jackass” episode.

Previously, she and Waxing played in a trio called the MPE band with a third musician known as EJ. They were helping him clean up his property after a big storm ripped through Memphis, Tenn.,  when the chainsaw he was using to clear some downed trees hit him in the head, putting him out of commission as a musician. EJ turned over the cigar box guitar to the couple, and after leaving it in a closet for several months, unsure what to do with it, she and Waxing decided it was worth exploring.

Guitarist John Jorgenson gave Grammy Museum officials a special challenge during his question-answer-performance session Monday night: how to shoehorn the myriad aspects of an extraordinarily multifaceted career into the usual two-hour time slot and leave any time at all for him to actually play some music.

Interviewer Scott Goldman, head of the Recording Academy’s MusiCares Foundation, did a yeoman’s job of steering the conversation through Jorgenson’s upbringing in Redlands, his years honing his skills as an instrumentalist playing in three Disneyland house bands by day while moonlighting in a new wave band that was slogging it out in Hollywood clubs by night and on weekends, his role as  a founding member of the country-rock Desert Rose Band in the '80s, his six years touring with Elton John in the '90s and his passionate advocacy over the years for the Gypsy jazz guitar music of Django Reinhardt.

Jorgenson, 54, touched on the highs -- in 2005, he became the first American musician to headline the annual Reinhardt tribute concert in France in the town where Reinhardt lived out the final years of his life -- and the lows: appearing once with the Desert Rose Band at a show in Mississippi, second-billed to a wrestling bear.

Hollywood Bowl-minded pop, rock, jazz and country fans have some intriguing choices ahead in the 2011 season being announced Wednesday.

Perhaps tops on the list is an Aug. 17 date in which the music of the acclaimed singer and songwriter Joni Mitchell will presented with a “Jazz at the Bowl” evening under the direction of drummer Brian Blade and featuring jazz musicians still to be announced. In addition, country music queen Dolly Parton is slated to give her first Bowl concerts on July 22 and 23, and Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan makes her concert debut with an orchestra when the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra accompanies her on July 15 and 16.

The pop offerings will also include the usual sampling of international music under the umbrella of the KCRW-FM (89.9) World Festival, this year featuring a Serge Gainsbourg Tribute with Gainsbourg’s longtime collaborator, conductor and composer Jean Claude Vannier and guest singers Beck, Sean lennon, China Forbes and Charlotte Kemp Muhl on Aug. 28. 

Other highlights of the world festival include the reunited Japanese electronic band Yellow Magic Orchestra, with Big in Japan and Cibo Matto, on June 26; a reggae program with Ziggy Marley, Maytals singer Toots Hibbert and the Mighty Diamonds (July 31); and a soul review led by “American Idol” bandleader Rickey Minor with guests Stevie Wonder, Rocky Dawuni and Ceci Bastida (July 24).

The Oklahoma firebrand once dubbed “the female Elvis” for raucous rockabilly records such as “Let’s Have a Party” shows that a 73-year-old grandmother is still fully capable of ripping things up — especially when you throw in with someone as party-ready as producer Jack White.

Like his “Van Lear Rose” collaboration with Loretta Lynn, White surrounds one of his heroines with the kind of sizzling and muscular instrumental backing you’d expect from a brash rock upstart, replete with reverb-soaked vocals over blazing, electric guitars, bass, drums and horns.

Several of the song choices — Harlan Howard’s down-and-out “Busted,” Little Richard’s hit “Rip It Up,” Johnny Kidd’s “Shakin’ All Over,” Eddie Cochran’s “Nervous Breakdown” — are era-appropriate for Jackson. The real treat is in the way she and White tackle more contemporary stuff like Bob Dylan’s “Thunder on the Mountain” (in place of the composer’s reference to lusting after Alicia Keys, Jackson sings of wondering “where Jerry Lee could be”) and Amy Winehouse’s spooky “You Know I’m No Good.”

Her thin, raspy voice retains plenty of sass six decades on, and White’s live-sounding band conjures the ambience of a gritty gig in some back alley bar for a rowdy crowd of mariachi bikers. Well done, Grandma Wanda.

—Randy Lewis

Wanda Jackson
“The Party Ain’t Over”
Third Man/Nonesuch
Three stars (Out of four)

In the Beatles’ song “Across the Universe,” John Lennon famously sang that “Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,” and next year a slew of the former Beatle’s words that flowed onto paper in the form of his private letters will be collected in a volume to be published by London-based Orion Books, according to the Guardian in London.

Orion bought the rights from Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, to about 150 letters filling hundreds of pages that Lennon wrote over the years to friends, fans and business associates. The physical letters have been in the possession of Beatles biographer Hunter Davies, but Ono controls the intellectual property rights to them.

"These letters have never been collected in one place before, and for the most part they have never been seen before," Orion Publishing Group executive Alan Samson told the Guardian. "The other reason people have gone crazy for it is the fact that there are half a dozen icons of the 20th century –- Marilyn Monroe, Kennedy, Elvis –- and Lennon is one of them."

Orion plans to publish them in October 2012 in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the release of the Beatles' first hit single, “Love Me Do.” The price Samson and Orion paid has not been specified, but is said to be between 500,000 and 1 million pounds, or between $800,000 and $1.6 million U.S. dollars.

"They are full of wonderful drawings,” Samson said. “They are funny, sad ... they are very human letters."

-- Randy Lewis

Photo of John Lennon in 1980. Credit: David Spindel/PBS

 
Bob Dylan reportedly has signed a six-book deal with Simon & Schuster for two more volumes of his acclaimed “Chronicles, Vol. 1” autobiography, which was tied to his “Theme Time Radio Hour” program that ran for three years on Sirius XM radio and additional works, according to Crain’s New York Business.

A spokeswoman for Simon & Schuster, the publisher of the first installment in the projected multi-volume autobiography, said Thursday that the company had no comment on the report.

Crain’s credited the information to “several industry insiders” and said the deal was put together by Dylan's literary agent, Andrew Wylie. No monetary figure was specified in the report, nor any proposed release dates of new books from Dylan.

“Chronicles” drew praise from critics, fans and peers for its impressionistic, time-hopping structure. “Theme Time Radio Hour” tapped Dylan’s deep knowledge of an array of pop music genres as well as his droll sense of humor during 100 episodes recorded over the show’s run.

Updated Jan. 21 at 11:07 a.m.: In response to an inquiry from Pop & Hiss, a source close to Dylan says there is "nothing to announce. [There is] a grain of truth in the Internet rumors, in that a variety of book projects are always being discussed, but no deal like that has been made."

-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Bob Dylan at last summer's Hop Farm Festival in England. Credit: Gareth Fuller / Associated Press

The lineup for the 2011 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival will bring together international rock, pop, jazz, country headliners, including Robert Plant, Jeff Beck, Arcade Fire, Bon Jovi, Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Sonny Rollins, it was announced today. Added into that impressive roster will be scores of acts based in and around Louisiana, along with a strong representation of Haitian performers.  

Also slated to appear on the 12 stages at this year's Fest, which takes place over a two-weekend run from April 29 to May 8, are Tom Jones, Lauryn Hill, the Avett Brothers, Cyndi Lauper, Mumford & Sons, Jamey Johnson, Jimmy Buffett and Louisiana rock, blues, Cajun, zydeco, gospel and folk musicians such as Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, the Neville Brothers, Trombone Shorty, Irma Thomas, Galactic and dozens of others.

Because of the strong historical and cultural connection between the Crescent City and Haiti, festival organizers have devoted much attention to the Caribbean nation’s performers, including Wyclef Jean, Tabou Combo, Boukman Eksperyans and Emeline Michele. Ticket information is available on the Jazz Fest website.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Robert Plant. Credit: Carlo Allegri / Associated Press

As must have been the case for a lot of people, when news broke about the death Monday of music mogul and TV impresario Don Kirshner, one of the first names that went through my mind was that of Paul Shaffer, for the spot-on Kirshner impersonation the comedian and musician did numerous times on “Saturday Night Live”  during his tenure on the show.

Shaffer spoke with Pop & Hiss shortly after he finished taping Tuesday’s episode of “Late Show With David Letterman,” on which he’s led the house band for years, talking about his relationship with Kirshner over the years and the development of his comedy bit.

“Back in 1977, I did a show for Don Kirshner and Norman Lear that was a partnership between the two of them: ‘The Year at the Top.’ In it, Greg Evigan and I played rock performers who had sold their souls to the devil. It played on CBS for just five episodes in the summer of ’77. Nonethless, I became friendly with Don during that time. I was a fan, and I knew about his association with what we know now as Brill Building rock, which was my favorite kind of music anyway, so we struck up a friendship.

“One day he called me, and ‘Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert’ was on the air at the time, and he told me,  ‘I’m going on-camera to do the introductions on the show.’ Up  until  this point, it had been completely sober [voiceover] introductons of the acts, but he had decided to do them on-camera.

He said, ‘A lot of people think maybe I’m stiff, but [Ed] Sullivan was stiff, and he had the gig.’ He asked if I wanted to come down and watch him tape his first introduction. It was at some studio near Hollywood and Vine. Of course I jumped at the chance and saw him tape those first introductions.

"He was a great character, a lovable character, certainly the most colorful character I’ve ever met. He was very fast talking, always very emotional about the music he loved and the music he was making. He was the ultimate when it came to promoting the songs he loved. He’d go on these runs and talk so fast that sometimes he’d break himself up.

“But when he went on-camera, he slowed right down. I guess he was nervous. He froze a little bit, but he still spoke from the heart. I found it very humorous, and I never forgot it. When the show ‘Year at the Top’ didn’t get picked up, I got my gig at 'SNL' back. I’d left 'SNL' and moved to California to do the show, but when I came back, I brought that impression back with me and started doing it.

“On one show we needed a way to set up a certain musical number, a rock number -- Garrett Morris did Tina Turner -- and I said I could do it as Don Kirshner. So that’s how it came about.

“He was asked all through the years, ‘Didn’t that impression that Paul Shaffer did [tick] you off?' He always said, ‘No, I loved it.’ l loved him, he loved me, and he loved the impression because he knew it came out of love for him.”

“I gave Don a call and spoke to him over the weekend, but I didn’t think he was going to slip away so soon. He sounded weak, but he rallied when he heard I was on the phone. He said ‘Paul, babe!’ He went right into his Don Kirshner for me. I certainly consider him a friend, and I’m very saddened by his passing.”

-- Randy Lewis

Social Distortion’s new album, “Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes,” officially surfaces Tuesday, and longtime followers of the veteran O.C. punk rock band probably have noticed the group’s profile surfacing in ways they might never had expected.

For one, there’s the massive billboard along the southbound Santa Ana Freeway in La Mirada, something that would have seemed impossible to imagine when the band was starting out three decades ago.  The group’s label, Epitaph Records, has erected another atop the Amoeba Music store in Hollywood, and a third across from the Hollywood Palladium noting the band’s three sold-out shows there Jan. 27-29.

A collaboration between the band’s website and Amazon.com has offered visitors the ability to stream the album for free, and for every 100,000 streams, Amazon.com drops its sale price on the album by $1. As of Tuesday afternoon, the album had been streamed more than 400,000 times, bringing Amazon’s price to $8.99 from the $12.99 starting point.

Last month the group made its first national TV appearance ever when it performed on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” and on Tuesday night, Social D returns to the late-night TV talk show arena for a performance on “Conan.”

On a recent stop at a Barnes & Noble bookstore, I even found a pile of complimentary Social Distortion bookmarks. Does the flurry of promotional and marketing efforts take away some of the band’s long-cultivated mystique?

“We always wanted to remain a little bit underground and unattainable,” singer and chief songwriter Mike Ness told me recently. “But at some point, you realize that the mystery is solved now. We’re just an O.C. rock 'n’ roll band that’s trying to get more fans, basically.”

As for the decision to stop declining requests for TV appearances, Ness said, “we’ve been asked before, and it was always one of those things where some of us wanted to do it and some of us didn’t. … Honestly, I feel now that there are thousands of people out there who just don’t know they’re Social D fans yet.  Besides, TV is cool now. Once we did it [for Kimmel], it was like, ‘Why didn’t we do this a long time ago?’ ”

-- Randy Lewis

 
Rocker Melissa Etheridge will jump into the role of St. Jimmy in the Broadway production of Green Day’s “American Idiot” for the first week of February, the show’s producers announced Tuesday. She’ll take over for Green Day frontman and songwriter Billie Joe Armstrong, who has been playing the character for a 50-performance limited engagement.

“Billie Joe and I always believed that it would be incredible to have a woman take on the role of St. Jimmy,” said the show’s director, Michael Mayer. “This character is seductive, thrilling and dangerous.  Melissa Etheridge is all that and so much more.”

The singer, songwriter and guitarist will appear in performances Feb. 1-6, after which Armstrong will resume the role Feb. 10 and continue his remaining performances through Feb. 27.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Melissa Etheridge in 2005. Credit: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times

At their worst, the blues are license for self-indulgent musicians to toss out all sense of restraint and taste as they let ego run wild. At their best, the blues are a vehicle in which genuinely inquisitive ones wrestle with inner demons in the hope, but with no guarantee, of exorcising them. Gregg Allman, who’s been driven to excess at times over the Southern rocker’s long career, takes the latter path in this masterful effort shepherded by T Bone Burnett and assisted in a big way by the producer’s mojo-wielding band of players.

His voice sounding strong, limber and decades younger than his 63 years might suggest, Allman wrestles with why he feels distant from his woman in Melvin London’s “Little by Little,” and then agonizes after she’s abandoned him in Skip James’ “Devil Got My Woman.” His troubles prompt him to light out for parts unknown in Muddy Waters’ “I Can’t Be Satisfied,” and maybe engage in a little retribution along the way.

It’s haunting, often harrowing stuff, but Allman knows this territory well, growling, yearning, pleading for some sense of peace that seems as if it will ever elude him — and maybe anyone who walks the earth. He gets close in the one song he wrote (with Gov’t Mule’s Warren Haynes), “Just Another Rider,” but the seeds of self-destruction are still apparent. With the help of stellar accomplices including Dr. John, guitarist Doyle Bramhall II and Burnett himself, Allman couldn’t be in better hands.

—Randy Lewis

Gregg Allman
“Low Country Blues”
(Rounder)
Three and a half stars (Out of four)