Review Under Two: Van Plating's The Way Down

Photo by Bethany Blanton

Review Under Two is a segment of The Marinade with Jason Earle podcast where host Jason Earle reviews a work he finds inspiring in under two minutes.

Our Review Under Two for Episode 98 with singer-songwriter Jeremie Albino focuses on Van Plating’s record The Way Down.

Van Plating’s forthcoming record The Way Down is a top self bourbon served neat on the back deck at twilight. Its complexities are immediately apparent but still best enjoyed with slow, rapt attention and an awareness of their context.

Plating spent her 20s playing and singing in indie rock bands. When her band Pemberley broke up she decided to take some time off from touring and making records. Then life happened and a little time off turned into years.

Once the need to create, the pang that pushes one to make beautiful things, enters the system it never leaves. Like a blood flute quietly doing its work, the need to make art will rear its head even decades after the bug first arrives. 

Photo by Bethany Blanton

Plating’s 2019 self-titled record was the first manifestation of the creative bug pushing itself from the cocoon. The Way Down (set for release on 11/19/21) is where the butterfly takes flight. A decade of reflection and growth baked into a collection of songs that celebrates the person Plating has become and is becoming. 

So often we think of creative change in terms of rebound or redemption. An artist who overcame addiction or was left for dead by the industry. In the case of Van Plating’s The Way Down, the change is not a return from oblivion. It is a leap back into a life that was always there percolating just below the surface of a “normal” existence.

The spiritual centerpoint of the record is the final track “Oxygen.” It is a song about the loss and recovery of love. Its imagery is stark and powerful, with the ocean setting the stage for an examination of what it means to lose something essential and recover it through perseverance. 

“Whose side are you on? My wings are made to soar.”

“Oxygen” is the second song on the record to mention wings- the appearance of which nods both to Van Plating’s complicated relationship with the church and her determination to rise above the noise. Who should make art? How and when should it be made? Throughout The Way Down Plating decides the answers to those questions on her terms. 

“Oxygen” is a fitting closer to the record. With little more than three chords and an acoustic guitar, Plating makes apparent that while she may have had a hard time breathing at points in her life, on this record the creative airways are clear.

The Consequence of Genius: Some Words About Jason Isbell's Reunions

Photo by Jason Earle

An odd consequence of genius is we come to expect it. When Bob Dylan puts out a mediocre or even slightly sub-par by his standards collection of songs, the effort is met with vitriolic critical rebuke. Such is the price of creating art that inspires across cultures and generations. Songs by Dylan and his ilk are not to be casually enjoyed. They are events requiring time to marinate and then parse.

The difference between Dylan and modern standard-bearers is the former is going to have an audience even after each perceived misstep. Everyone watches his mulligans because the competition in his heyday was minimal compared to geniuses in an internet-connected, streaming world.

Today we have instant access to truckloads of great songwriters. If one stumbles, our collective attention wanes, and in that lapse a writer may not recover for two or three albums- if at all. Jason Isbell has admitted to feeling a bit of this pressure. In a very candid New York Times piece, he confessed his new record Reunions was a different beast.

Long an Americana darling, Isbell’s notoriety and prestige stepped into a different gear with the Dave Cobb-produced trio of records Southeastern, Something More Than Free, and The Nashville Sound. Ask an Isbell obsessive about their favorite record and you will likely get a different answer depending on the day. This is because Jason Isbell is the best songwriter in popular American roots music. With the mantle of greatest comes a more critical and less forgiving eye.

Reunions will not settle the score. Art is not an objective competition so we cannot discharge the debate. Frankly, Isbell does not owe any further proof of greatness, yet further proof is exactly what this collection delivers.

With every song, he challenges us to think about our place in the world. By turning a mirror on himself, in this case a far-sighted mirror reaching to less proud moments of the past, he challenges the stories of internal valor we tell ourselves and roots out questions about how we are actually going to confront our issues.

If you just looked at Jason Isbell, maybe caught a tiny snippet of him saying something seemingly inconsequential, you would be forgiven for thinking he was just like us. He has a way of remaining authentically down-to-earth while orbiting the creative sphere in rare air.

The truth is in short supply even as access to information increases exponentially. We still get romanticized, sometimes sterilized versions of artists and ideas. Merchants of misinformation point fingers rather than offer honest appraisals of the way things are. Thankfully, Isbell is hyper-committed to the truth to the point of expecting it from himself and the listener.

Like a dog’s peanut butter coated pill, facts are better consumed on a full stomach with an appetizing presentation. All great songwriters have this ability. Isbell does it better than anyone.

On “Dreamsicle” — one of the biggest triumphs in his storied career — the narrator reminisces about a mother trying to make the most of a dysfunctional situation. Despite multiple narratives throughout the album, there are common threads to which we have grown accustomed with Jason Isbell records. Namely, everyone is doing their best, and if they are not then it’s time to start. His characters are broken and battered but each tale is delivered with empathy for the realities that lead to less than ideal situations.

Photo by Jason Earle

Even if you can’t directly relate to growing up in a dysfunctional family, the humanity in each story offers something universally unifying. Isbell never misses. There are polarizing songs on the other records. One person finds “Anxiety” speaks directly to them. Another thinks it a bit too much. A diehard fan names “24 Frames” as their favorite while someone else thinks it falls short of his best. Reunions does not have those tunes. It offers not a moment to check out or allow the songs shelter as background noise.

Honest introspection is typically tough by nature. Baring your scars for a discerning audience to examine and apply their own whims is an even bigger display of honesty. The characters of Reunions leave nothing on the field, including the role of a man supporting his grieving partner and trying to suppress his own jealousy or the performer exhorting their cohort to “be afraid but do it anyway.”

Each song is a masterpiece worthy of marination, and even after just a couple of weeks in the world they already feel all-consuming. It is the right kind of possession, one where the possessed grows stronger with each listen.

Artists on the level of Jason Isbell are lucky to get mulligans these days. Fortunately for Isbell, he has not needed one. If that day ever comes, let’s remember Reunions- a record that raised a bar already set so high only one writer could have cleared it.

The Last Time I Saw John

John Prine played Orlando on December 6, 2019. Kelsey Waldon - John’s label mate, friend, and protege - graciously agreed to record an episode of my podcast before she and her band opened the show. We laughed and got serious and talked about beauty and art. We gushed about John Anderson, Lucinda Williams, and John Prine. The latter came up just as the sound of the man himself began to bleed into the dressing room in which we were recording.

It was my birthday and I couldn’t stop grinning. We opened the door to better hear Prine’s voice, maybe even get a little of it on the recording. Kelsey, who has heard John sing dozens of times, was nearly as excited as me at that moment.

On my way out I walked by the main stage. John was up there getting the lay of the land in a black t-shirt and jeans. I stopped and allowed myself a brief voyeur. It is probably tautological to say John Prine is an otherworldly, generational writer. Yet, he seemed remarkably human on that stage.

Here is a cancer survivor. A Grammy winner. A person who has inspired an uplifted some of the best talents we have in contemporary roots music.

John and I never met but all accounts are he straddled that rare air between being an authentic, down-to-earth guy and one who belongs in the pantheon of American writers. A normal person who was anything but.

Prine later put on one of the best shows I have seen in a really long time. A true master class in performance. I don’t remember which song it was, but at some point I started thinking about my grandmother. Inspiration struck while he was painting a picture of home and the comfort of simple pleasures in the way John Prine was able to do better than just about anyone.

John and my grandmother grew up in a similar time and place. The scene he set sent my hands to scribbling. Somehow it felt like John was giving me a gift, a mystical cowrite of sorts. By the end of his set, I had an all-but-finished song of my own. A poor imitation of John Prine to be sure, but one that means a ton to me.

A magical cowrite with John Prine probably sounds hokey to a lot of readers, but it’s the truth of how I felt then and now. If there is one thing I feel confident saying about John Prine, it’s that he put a premium on telling the truth through art.

Thank you for the years of inspiration, John. I hope your wristwatch is off and you are enjoying that vodka and ginger ale. We miss you like crazy.

Thoughts on The Teenage Years of the 21st Century, an album by Micah Schnabel.

Sometimes, hell often, the constant barrage of information we consume can feel overwhelming. So many of us feel helpless watching from what seems like the sidelines, screaming our muffled voices and wishing for a sea change to wipe out the blatant corruption that assaults basic freedoms we once took for granted.

More than likely, if you read the above paragraph, you are a person who considers it uncontroversial. Maybe even tired. A bromide at this point. Thankfully, you don’t need to rely on me to express such sentiment in the way it deserves to be heard. Micah Schnabel continues to case the American condition in brutally honest and gorgeous prose with his latest record The Teenage Years of the 21st Century.

The bolts of this record are not new to fans of Schnabel’s work. The unmistakable sound of his voice. The tissue deep way in which he bares his feelings and thoughts. Those things are all consistently present in Micah Schnabel’s catalog and they ring true on this record.

What stands out is that he has taken another huge leap forward as a writer. One whose voice continually confronts its fears and anxieties. A voice punctuating conviction with poetry. 

It’s not easy hearing Schnabel sing about mobility justice, or the potential early unceremonious demise of those we love the most because they lack access to health care. Micah has always been gracious with his emotions for the sake of art. Perhaps never more so than on this record. 

Micah Schnabel’s work has aided a shift in my world paradigm. I was a libertarian-leaning registered Republican until the end of 2015, two years into my work with kids from underserved communities. Black kids in a racially segregated Southern town named after a genocidal former president. At that point, the Republican party had committed to an overtly racist platform, one that forced me to pay attention to not just race but class in this country.

I was reading Ta-nehisi Coates and Jeff Duncan-Andrade at the time. Both of whom heavily contributed to a reevaluation of how I viewed our political and social structures. In the summer of 2017, Youth Detention (Nail My Feet Down to the Southside of Town) by Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires and Your New Norman Rockwell by Micah Schnabel entered the canon of my personal midlife political revolution. Those records became the soundtrack for an unlikely transformation.

The characters in each of those albums were people I knew as a kid and folks I’d met as a thirty-something. People I viewed differently through the lens of time. In some ways, it took Schnabel’s Henry from his song and novel Hello, My Name is Henry and Bains’s young black girl who is just “too damn loud” for her teacher, to bridge that gap. 

The truth is, I’m a stubborn man. One who keeps an open mind but is nonetheless slow to change it. If nothing else, I am a thoughtful person. When I commit to an idea, it takes a person or movement for which I have a great deal of respect to shift that thinking. Ten years after I first started listening to Micah Schnabel, that shift has become tectonic.  

Schnabel has created an influential artistic world that deftly straddles fiction and real life. The protagonist in his excellent novel Hello, My Name is Henry reads a comic book called Memory Currency, which is also the title of my favorite song on The Teenage Years of the 21st Century. Micah has been playing it, and other songs from the album, live for a while now. The tune lays me out each time I hear it because I am confronted with Henry’s lessons on a regular basis. 

When we first recorded an Episode of The Marinade with Jason Earle, Micah said a number of things that made me reevaluate my worldview. I made a joke about people from Florida and Ohio being proud of the place from which they come. Micah’s whole demeanor changed. He said that being proud of the place from which you come is ridiculous. 

I was in my thirties. Well educated, well-read, and well-traveled by most of society’s standards. The simplicity of the statement and the way in which it was matter-of-factly delivered shook me. The fact that I had not fully considered such an obvious reality left me second-guessing a lot about how I viewed the world. Micah had not expressed a new idea to me, but I was not ready to holistically commit to an examination of my attitude about place until he challenged me. 

Micah Schnabel has a lot to say about place, class, policy, politics, humanity, and so much more on this record. He chooses words carefully but bares his heart with abandon. 

Maybe we are headed for “nuclear war.” Maybe the currency of our memories is all we will ever have left. None of it is easy to hear and Schnabel does not spare the listener many details of the peculiar times in which we live. 

Still, I find solace in the fact that, in spite of overwhelming messages to the contrary, there are a lot of powerfully convicted people like Micah Schnabel- courageously making art and treating it as their lifeblood. 

The Teenage Years of the 21st Century is triumphant, even if its namesake has not always gone that way.

Album Review | Rod Picott's Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil

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Rod Picott found himself free-soloing up a sheer face. The soles of his shoes slipping 2,000 feet above an abyss, imminent peril the likely result. While confronting impossible odds, Picott kept creating. And, after some semblance of normalcy was restored, he created some more. The result is a stunning work of art called Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil.

Picott has long been one of the great songwriters of his generation. His bonafides are well established, but this record cements him as something different. It is the best of an impressive catalog and there are a few clear reasons for that.

Born on either end of a major health scare, Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil is as raw as a fresh breakup wound, a reflection on the origin story of a man’s life as he stares down death and loneliness and wonders where to go from here. The record is not overly romantic. In fact, in parts it thumbs its nose at the notion of romanticizing life’s brutal bits.

The mood is one of sitting on a precipice looking down between dangling feet, taking in the struggle of of the climb. Celebrating progress while recognizing the mistakes that were and those that could have let to the catastrophic destruction of everything that matters.

The gift of this record is that it is a window into the thoughts and emotions of a great writer. Picott opens the cellar door on his fears, crutches, and desires. He leads us down the rickety steps of his psyche by shining a lantern on each rung. At the end of the journey we reach a room filled with hope. Not a dank, closed basement, but a space walled with doors and mirrors, reflections of ourselves leading to the possibility of self-discovery and improvement.

Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil demands heavy lifting from both artist and consumer. The work is rewarding. Rod Picott’s new record Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil comes out on July 19. Stay tuned to marinadepodcast.com for a conversation with the man himself starting July 5th. It’ll pair well with your Fourth of July hangover.

The Night I Opened for Eugene Snowden

“Most importantly I have learned that the voices, both internal and external, telling you your art is silly or unimportant are wrong.”

Photo by Philly Kennedy

by Jason Earle

J.J. Grey and Mofro is one of my all-time favorite live bands. The first time I saw them, circa 2004, they played with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, back when the band was just known as Mofro. The symphony players donned camouflage hats to mirror their “conductor” that night, J.J. Grey and his band’s southern swampy sound.

Thus began over a decade long love affair with Jacksonville’s Mofro. A couple shows, a few dozen beers, and a year or two later, I saw Mofro at what used to be called Common Grounds in Gainesville, FL. Bands like Avail and Against Me! used to pack the place in the 1990s when it was in some other incarnation. It’s a big room that feels like a mini high school cafetorium. The opener that night was a band called the Legendary JC’s.

My practice is to watch the opener whenever possible. That’s how I learned about Joe Pug, Matthew Fowler, and countless other musicians I love. The Legendary JC’s were unfamiliar to me but anyone hitched to J.J. Grey and Mofro was worth a listen. The JC’s is a band fronted by Central Florida musical legend Eugene Snowden.

Eugene Snowden is a force of fucking nature, now, fifteen years later. A decade and a half ago he was a sexual dynamo who wailed on the microphone, made love to it, then abandoned its embrace to leap off the stage into a split on the dance floor. That’s not a hyperbolic metaphor. He literally did all of the above as an opening act. Never before or since have I seen someone upstage J.J. Grey. Eugene did it that night.

Opening the Portal

The Marinade has opened a lot of creative doors for me. For my partner in life. For my friends. My family. The Marinade is a portal. A way that things I never thought possible could come true. I’ve interviewed and become buddies with creative heroes. I’ve seen my favorite bands from just feet away.

Most importantly I have learned that the voices, both internal and external, telling you your art is silly or unimportant are wrong.

If ten people listen to the show and think it matters, or they learn something, then damnit it matters. But, if no one listens, it still matters. It matters for all the cliche reasons but also because we are nothing without art.

The show J.J. and his band played with the symphony might as well have been tomorrow it’s so fresh. Eugene’s split does not happen anymore but that does not matter. It resides in my memory and every time he does some bat shit wild thing on stage now, I am transported to that moment when I was creatively stifled but there were people like Eugene Snowden and J.J. Grey who let me escape to a place where I could not otherwise travel. I could not do what they were doing but no matters of the ego would survive that moment.

Uncovering the Well

The song you hear playing in the background of The Marinade intro is by Explosions in the Sky. It’s called “First Breath After Coma.” You may not have noticed it the first twenty-plus times you heard the intro, but now it’ll be dialed in. The song is an ear worm of the best sort.

That intro was recorded on a whim. My partner Kris had just gifted me mic stands, a present that ranks among my favorite to this day. She put a ton of thought into what I might need while recording intros and outros, or while having people over for interviews.

We were hanging out late one night and I enthusiastically asked her to play around with our new recording setup. On her worst day, Kris is my favorite singer. Her singing blends pain with hope and ties the two in a bow of universal class. That’s how I fell in love with her. All of that.

She has always supported my creative endeavors, but those mic stands sent a message that she was all in on my creative pursuits. And, her subsequent renderings of my logo concepts proved to me that I was on to something with The Marinade. If Kris likes it, or at least supports it, then I have a chance.

Years of writing, interviewing, and recording later, The Marinade reached a place where we not only had our feature episodes, but a few tendrils to manicure as well. One of those vines is our website exclusive episodes. Episode 4 of that series is with the incredible songwriter Amy McCarley.

A Push From New Friends

Interviews are almost never bad. I’m okay at this by now. But, some are amazing. Sometimes you hit a flow of sorts. My website exclusive episode with Amy McCarley was one of those moments. During our conversation, I mentioned that I had some songs written but they had not been consumed by anyone other than me and a few select girlfriends over the years. To which she basically replied, tighten up and put yourself out there.

Barley and Vine Biergarten is my home base. A local bar where everyone knows all your shit - the good and the not-so-good - and they want you to succeed. A week after my conversation with Amy, I showed up to play some original songs only to find that open mic was cancelled. I told Amy what happened and she said not to give up, to give it another go in a week or so. The same thing happened to her the first time she tried to play an open mic.

Two weeks later, I was preparing to emcee the Rockin’ Robinson music festival, an easy excuse not to face my anxiety about playing. It’s not that I don’t think my songs are any good, or that I don’t like my voice. It’s that I feel like a poseur. I can’t help comparing myself to these brilliant musicians I work with, a standard of which I fall well short.

Meanwhile, my episode with Amy went live and I sent her the links. In her response to my note, she asked about whether I had gotten up to play! Persistently, lovingly, asking if I faced my anxieties and got up there.

It was good, tough medicine. I showed up again at the end of a really labor-intensive week, with all the excuse in the world to skip out again.

Photo by Philly Kennedy

Showtime

The place is packed but the sandwich board out front says the bar is closed for a private party, and will reopen at 8:00. It is 7:51. I am hungry, haven’t eaten since noon. I need to go for a run. There is time for both. I could go for a quick run and grab a snack. No, if I leave now I will probably conveniently run out of time and not be able to play. I could just scrap the whole thing for now. The universe seems to be conspiring against me and this open mic will always be here. If not this one, another.

No, today has to be the day. I will email Amy and tell her I am thinking about backing down but am going to get up there and play this time. That will give me some accountability.

The room comes together quickly. There is still an hour till open mic is slated to begin. And, this being rock n’ roll, who knows what time it will actually start. Philly runs the open mic and knows I want to go up early so he puts me first on the list. I decide one beer would be good. No more than one.

Several friends are here. I guess they were watching some kind of documentary about the racial history of Orlando. That’s good. My first song is about racial injustice. I feel a little better about what is going to happen. It is comforting to see so many buddies in attendance. So is Eugene Snowden.

My name is called. I take the stage to some surprised looks on the faces of people who have known me for years and had no idea I played or sang. I fumble with my guitar. We finally get it figured out.

I’ve written a ton of tunes, played a few of them for people, and mostly filtered the ones that are universally appreciated by captive, sympathetic audiences. Again, I think art is mostly about the artist’s need to express something. How it is received should not be overly fretted. But, if you don’t like something then it probably should not go out in the world.

I’ve got one tune I know is good, one that is an acquired taste, and an a cappella cover I know I can crush. I am going to play them in that order - the powerful tune I love, the easier one I like, and then see whether the crowd is ready for the a cappella curveball.

The first song is called Brenton Butler. It’s a true story about a black teenage boy who was wrongly accused of murder in Jacksonville circa 2000. It’s a tough song to hear and sing but the crowd is ready for it and so am I. The whole place is cheering. I damn near get a standing ovation and Eugene Snowden of Legendary JCs fame, he who upstaged JJ Grey one night in Gainesville fifteen years ago is cheering as loud as anyone.

So fired up is he, as I stand here giddily grinning, that Eugene puts his name on the list to play next. I do my other two songs, finishing off with the Saul Williams cover as Eugene leads the room in a clap-along, and take my place among friends to watch Eugene Snowden follow me on stage.

That is the tale of how I opened for Eugene Snowden.

Album Review | Reed Foehl's Lucky Enough

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“We’ve all got holes to fill/Them holes are all that’s real” -Townes Van Zandt

Reed Foehl’s excellent album “Lucky Enough” (available 2/1/19) takes the listener on an existential journey to fill life’s holes. Written at an impossibly difficult time in Foehl’s life, while he was caring for his mother who was battling cancer, Foehl would be understood for writing a melancholy record. Lucky Enough ducks expectation. It does not feel melancholy. It feels settled. Not resigned, but at peace with life’s challenges and tribulations.

The common current running through Lucky Enough is acceptance. Going out and searching for something to make us whole. The album is sequenced as the tale of a person navigating existence, learning lessons, failing and growing, and finally finding a place and a person who fills in the holes.

Lucky Enough kicks off with the infectious melody of lovers “Stealing Starlight,” lyrics about the simple pleasures of life. The “taste of Basil Hayden’s” on the tongue. Footprints washed away in the sand. Sleeping in together. Stealing starlight.

But, as restless spirits are wont to do, our narrator takes off cross country clicking through “American Miles.” It’s a cinematic tune a la Bon Iver. A restive tale that acknowledges all the narrator loves is all he knows.

Who knows what we are going to encounter on that road; that American road, the one serving as a metaphor for our life’s journey. The journey is long yet it feels at times like it is flying by too quickly to grasp. It “takes a long time to make old friends,” our narrator tells us. And, really, we are just “charting the courses of carousel horses,” lost in this day-to-day.

Sometimes we feel we should be “on an Island” like the protagonist in the opening track to Lucky Enough’s side B. He admonishes us to remember that “You don’t know me till you can walk in my shoes.” But an island is no place for a battle.

Our struggles can seem so enormous yet really we ultimately “running out of nothing left to do.” A regiment of blinding agents keeps us moored to our carousel. None of us on our own really knows what we are doing. We need each other to navigate this world.

Foehl employs an almost whimsical feel to help his narrator work through this existential angst on the heavy yet fun “I Wish I Knew.” Ultimately, the heady musings of Lucky Enough come to the realization that what we all need is someone or some group of souls to fill in our holes. We can only do so much on our own. Once we have rambled the miles, made and lost friends, endured the day-to-day, and run out of nothing left to do we are faced with ourselves. Our strengths, our insecurities, our charms, our anxieties- all of it needs the tempering influence of people we love.

Lucky Enough ends with the arresting “Color Me In.” “What will you do with me, my darlin’?” Foehl’s narrator asks, followed by an entreaty to come and lay with him, to relish the moment they have together. Together they can make it. No, together they will make it. What may not be possible alone is attainable with someone there to fill the holes.

-Jason Earle