Heavy Rotation: Eddie Lott - Blame It on My Wild Soul

I am a sucker for an earnest underdog. I also unapologetically harbor a sweet spot for the feeling of southwestern air - that open road beneath the endless Texan sky, those traversed miles littered with American dreams, worn barstools, empty bottles, front porch nights and whiskey-wetted harmonies.

These affinities are anything but mutually exclusive, which should go a long way to explain why a songwriter and musician like Eddie Lott and his songs of Blame It on My Wild Soul possess a gentle magnetism tuned into my own internal frequency.

 

Lott describes his songs as “country music for lost souls.” His preferred backdrop for listeners is a late night drive with no set destination and Blame It on My Wild Soul as the soundtrack to get lost to. Perhaps it won’t come as much of a surprise that this is also one of my ideals avenues for absorbing records in totality, and Lott’s songs of wanderlust and introspective grappling succeed in warm, rewarding fashion.

“I’m always alone in my mind. They say that men cannot survive these islands, but I will, or at least I will die trying.”

The definitive influence for nearly any upstart country-tinged songwriter from west of the Mississippi and south of the Rockies in the past forty years or so is, naturally, Townes, and Lott is no exception. Having been playing guitar for more than twenty years, Lott says it wasn’t until, years after giving up on music and founding a green DIY waste management business in North Texas, he wandered into a bar and heard a desperado cover of a Van Zandt tune that hit him squarely and fueled a fire to go all in on his songwriting, record an album and lay the foundation for a serious musical career.

In the years between deciding to leap the uncertain chasm and Blame It on My Wild Soul coming to fruition (released September 27), Lott won a Dallas songwriter competition, recorded a series of demos (that would eventually end up comprising BIOMWS) on an iPhone, enlisted the skills of Austin-based producer Bryan Ray (Lonely Child), and placed his hopes and bets on a Kickstarter campaign that successfully funded the production and completion of the 32-year-old Texan’s debut album.

I first came across Lott’s music when Ray forwarded me four of those iPhone demos in the months prior to the Kickstarter launch. Even then, without proper arrangements and knowing nothing of Lott’s backstory or his motivations, the yearning and passion of his vocals, the evocative precision of his lyrics and the beating heart of his songs spoke to me. The more I listened, the more I heard something of a kindred spirit who I couldn’t help but root for. It’s a communicative exchange through strangers, but the intangible magic of good songs like these is how, with artifice stripped away and a yearning artist’s personal expression on display and set to melodic and pedal steel-accented accompaniment, this music becomes more like a dialogue between compadres. It’s the sort of relationship Lott reminisces about and celebrates on “From One Soul to Another” (#FOTSA).

“I miss your soul next to mine / I was hoping that you would sing a song with me...Is it strange for me to say I miss you all the time? / From one soul to another / not like lovers, friends or brothers / more like porches, guitars and wine.”

These are Lott’s songs and it’s not difficult to hear a burning man throwing his all into taking his shot at his own American dream, but I always feel like an accomplice on the journey when I listen to the record. Perhaps, like many records that feel good to get lost to, its loveliest strength is its relatability for the listener. I’m a fan of Lott and his songs and, should my saying somehow lead you astray, I guess you can blame it on our wild souls.  

Buy/Listen: Blame It on My Wild Soul

Vonnegut Sessions: Celebrating Kurt's Ideal with Music

“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.” – Kurt Vonnegut

That quote from Indianapolis’ hometown literary titan and cultural conscience provides the foundation for the unveiling of a new music series at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library. The Vonnegut Sessions, an intimate series of performances conducted within the gallery of the KVML and consisting of music and readings of poetry, prose, short stories and more by national and local acts, recently debuted with concerts from Austin bluegrass band Wood & Wire and Portland-based musician and author Nick Jaina. For the uninitiated, the KVML, a delightful, boutique-style not-for-profit library/museum decked with singular Vonnegut artifacts, correspondences, timelines, typewriters, and eclectic Vonnegut-inspired portraits and modern art, is modestly tucked away (befitting of its subject) downtown in the red brick Emelie Building on North Senate and has established itself as a gem of the city.

Vonnegut Sessions organizers plan to host performances by a wide range of artists who possess a passion for the finer points of life Kurt cared about most: “free expression, common decency and music.” In conversation with KMVL’s Kate Newman (the library’s community relations associate, who also spoke on behalf of fellow colleague Matthew Altizer) and through an interview with Nick Jaina ahead of his May 3 performance, I sought to gather a fairly comprehensive portrait of what the Vonnegut Sessions hope to showcase in the months ahead, what attracts artists to the new and unique series, and how the performances may do justice to Vonnegut’s oft-quoted, humanistic worldview and his beloved literary output and legacy, which are the driving force behind the KVML’s mission.

To describe the impetus for embarking on a concert series at the Vonnegut Library, Newman explains, “Kurt Vonnegut liked music. And the funny thing about Vonnegut is that many people who pursue art-- many thoughtful, expressive people-- have a Vonnegut story. So far, all of the bands we have booked have at least one member who has something to say about Kurt Vonnegut.”

This is certainly true of Jaina, who performed inside the KVML alongside his friend Stelth Ulvang (multi-instrumentalist for The Lumineers) last year. “He always seemed like a really smart guy,” Jaina says. “Vonnegut was really intelligent, but he could find joys and could find ways of seeing suffering in people and making them happy as opposed to just pummeling readers with how intelligent he is, and I’ve always appreciated that.”

Jaina, a veteran songwriter and musician, is touring the country in support of his recently released first book, Get It While You Can (published in January by Perfect Day). His live performances blend spoken word deliveries of his own prose atop guitar and found sounds while intermittently incorporating songs between readings.

“Most of the shows on this tour are living room shows and houses and are semi-private, so it’s nice to play an open show where anyone can come. I think it will be a different cross-section of an audience,” Jaina explains, “That, and the connection to Vonnegut. I like that it is more of a literary crowd. I’ve played in bookstores and cafes, and I like being surrounded by books and how there is a different vibe to it.” He believes the intimacy of the Vonnegut Library suits his performance, and his depiction of an ideal audience seems to have a kindred link to what Vonnegut sought in an audience.  As Jaina says on his website,“It’s (Jaina’s music and writing) not just for intellectuals. It’s for lovers of life.”

Newman gives the impression there is almost an idealistic, optimistic measuring stick the KVML will be using during the sessions’ inaugural year to deem how successful these Vonnegut Sessions are as more and more are booked and performed.

“If we've brought in genres from all over the globe, through musicians from all over the country, with viewpoints that both align with Vonnegut's values and stimulate discussion, then I think we will have succeeded,” Newman says. “If we've helped to give local artists a platform and to introduce them to a new audience, then we will have succeeded. If every guest who attends a Vonnegut Session leaves ready to create some art of his or her own, then we will have REALLY succeeded!”

Read that mission again and take note, Indianapolis musicians and artists – especially those of you with an allegiance towards this city’s esteemed cultural laureate.

“We (the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library) are huge champions of Indianapolis, and we would be thrilled to contribute to its music scene. Local bands-- call us up!”

Newman cites a line from Vonnegut’s A Man Without a Country, his classic 2005 non-fiction collection of essays that still read as ten times more inspiring for creatives and blooming humanists than any self-help book sitting on a best-seller shelf, to summarize what the sessions hope to achieve for the artists and audiences alike:

“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake.”

With quotes like that one as guiding the direction of the series, Newman says, “My hope is that people leave a Vonnegut Sessions show brimming with energy to create their own art.”

As for the logistics of the Vonnegut Sessions, the shows are all ages with limited seating (the KVML encourages purchasing advance tickets without additional fees through its website or at the library). Portions of all ticket sales and all alcohol sales (provided by KVML supporters Sun King Brewing and Monarch Beverages) from the cash bar are designated as charitable donations to the Vonnegut Library’s Annual Fund, which helps keep the doors open at the not-for-profit museum and fuels the cycle of original artistic expression and special events on showcase. 

Three Kings: Genre-Defying Greatness as Relevant as Ever

“No input, no output.”

Joe Strummer said that. It’s a mantra that always held true for me as a writer and music journalist. Conversely, all input no output is equally true, and the supremely exhausting and inexhaustible content vehicle that is the internet ecosystem (an ecosystem that I feed in minimal capacities at varying frequencies, often based on my internal hunger for and regulation of aforementioned input, and feast upon regularly) sometimes suffocates my own desire to offer up opinions on anything or take the time to focus and churn out thoughtful output.

In any case, I haven’t offered up much in the way of output in recent months, especially compared to the amount of reviews, interviews, essays and the like I’ve written the past several years. Often, the only time I feel desire enough to put something out there these days is when I believe I have an opinion I haven’t read a hundred times on a dozen rival content-churning sites cranked out a dozen times a day, headlined and linked like baited hooks for people to read what they already know and have consumed in five ever-so-slightly differently-worded ways.

Perhaps all of this is neither here nor there. Maybe it’s an expositional means to say my some of my inputs of late have consisted of the usual news coverage of ISIS attacks, 2016 presidential bids, Donald Trump, the Clintons, the Bushes, Obama, American foreign policy, Snowden, and the excellent, Goodfellas-esque new Netflix series Narcos, which chronicles Pablo Escobar’s tyrannical empire in Colombia and the longstanding DEA campaign to capture and extradite him. All of those inputs compound with my steady diet of a dozen or so records, films and books a week. For whatever reason, this particular cocktail has me thinking about (in various indirect ways) Three Kings, the 1999 war-heist-action-satire-drama written and directed by David O. Russell. 

   

Three Kings, a non-franchise Warner Brothers mid-level studio film (the sort of film that is an endangered species at best in 2015), was one of those movies that garnered critical acclaim and awards consideration (National Board of Review Top 10 Film of 1999, Broadcast Film Critics Association nomination for Best Picture) and was met with a middling box office performance ($60 million domestic gross and $107 million worldwide gross on a $75 million budget *according to Box Office Mojo), but I rarely hear anybody mention the film.

Many other acclaimed films from 1999 come up in conversation more frequently, and several remain relevant, hold up beautifully and are pretty much perfect (American Beauty, Magnolia, Fight Club, Being John Malkovich**) while others feel almost cryogenically frozen and neutered thanks to their initial success and the parade of copycats that followed in their wake (The Matrix, The Blair Witch Project, The Sixth Sense).

What makes Three Kings great to me is I loved it when I first saw it in theaters as a 17-year-old kid in 1999, it retained its unique power with each successive DVD viewing soon after, and it has only grown more relevant as time has passed in post 9/11, War-on-Terror-entrenched America. All of that hardly takes into account writer-director David O. Russell’s career is hotter than ever, and the quartet of actors at the center of the action and drama in Three Kings were all making varying degrees of changes in their career arcs at that very moment, and the film allowed each of them to branch out and impress in new ways, even if it now could almost, given the trajectory of their successes over the years, seem like a memory of a memory to those who haven’t seen or revisited the film.

One of the things that makes Three Kings special and particularly relevant is that is set on familiar turf to many of the films that followed in the next fifteen years, but it bears no resemblance to any of them. It exists as neither a forbearer nor an outlier. Though released in theaters less than two years before the 9/11 attacks and set less than a decade prior, the outlandishly strange and ominous mental, political, and physical climate Three Kings captures is an intricate work of pulpy war-noir that serves as a puzzle piece linking together myriad trends that had/have coalesced in American culture, the media, and military affairs since. Its Gulf War narrative is portentous of American involvement in the Middle East in the 21^st Century while planting its roots in the very recent past of the peculiar Gulf War proceedings of Bush era 1990 and 1991. Supremely villainous tyrant Saddam with cartoonish proportions in American culture (substitute Osama bin Laden of the mid-00s, Escobar, or even a Trump-ish persona consumed by megalomania, intimidation, media influence, unthinkable wealth, and varying levels of unchecked brutality) terrorizes the dissenting population while simultaneously presenting himself as a sacred idol and philanthropist. It’s in this context that a quartet of mismatched American soldiers of varying rank, race, education, and background inadvertently come upon a treasure map of Saddam’s millions in gold bullion and fashion themselves into a ragtag group of covert bandits in hotbed of political turmoil, surreal cultural divides, and constant threat of violent outbursts.  

It’s a one of a kind film (a textbook example of genre-defying, a class in which Russell has often excelled) that deftly moves with brazen attitude, wisecracking wit, unsettling violence, suspense, complex moral dilemmas, empathy, redemption and melancholy. The razor-sharp direction, the chemistry between the actors, and script all sing and sting, while what starts as an offbeat heist flick (a reimagining of the 1970 Clint Eastwood film Kelly’s Heroes) and segues into a potboiler of spitfire satire, idealistic noir and compelling human drama on foreign soil that has only become more unrelentingly war-ravaged and hopelessly volatile in the years since. Hence, the litany of (mostly independent to mid-level studio) films indebted to America’s involvement in the Middle East post 9/11, ranging from overlooked, contemplative gems (The Messenger, Fort Bliss), heart-pounding action flicks that were box office smashes (American Sniper, Lone Survivor), Best Picture-winning (and Avatar/James Cameron-slaying) masterworks of suspense (The Hurt Locker), a great film railroaded by political agenda (Zero Dark Thirty) white-knuckle actioners that didn’t become American Sniper-sized monoliths (The Kingdom), and mostly forgotten hot-button-issue indies chronicling the tolls on veterans at home and abroad (Stop-Loss, Jarhead, In the Valley of Elah), are all set on soil similar to Three Kings, but Russell’s film acts like its own subversive, yet heartfelt, beast. It’s a cinematic entertainment with historical context and a long arm of relevance, but it lives in the unsettled land between straightforward popcorn flick and history lesson.

 

Three Kings’ long, if largely unmentioned, shelf life owes much to the careers of its principals. David O. Russell is currently one of the hottest directors in Hollywood thanks to his recent ensemble flicks that have blended Academy Awards bait with box office appeal primarily thanks to the pairing of Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper and the success of Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. Yes, The Fighter (my favorite film of 2010) garnered a heap of major award nominations and wins and performed well at the box office, but the lightning in a bottle pairing of Lawrence and Cooper as leads tapped some sort of mainstream zeitgeist thanks to the major success of The Hunger Games trilogy, American Sniper, Guardians of the Galaxy, and the current standing of Lawrence as America’s sweetheart. Even with the impressive string of critical and commercial hits with Hustle, Playbook, The Fighter, and given that his breakout film was the delirious, excellent comedy Flirting with Disaster starring Ben Stiller, I’ll still argue Three Kings is both an outstanding work of American cinema and David O. Russell’s finest film. Additionally, Three Kings helped solidify George Clooney as a legitimate leading man and charismatic movie star (in tandem with 1998’s Out of Sight, directed by Steven Soderbergh) as opposed to merely America’s favorite TV doctor, turned Marky Mark into a serious actor (alongside his breakout role as Dirk Diggler in Paul Thomas Anderson’s brilliant Boogie Nights, even if that role could be misconstrued as a coming-of-age porn star version of Marky Mark himself), allowed Ice Cube to act in a role beyond the genre comedy of Friday, the genre dramas of Boyz ‘n the Hood and Higher Learning, and the B-movie (at best) action of Anaconda, and offered Spike Jonze (whose own masterpiece, Being John Malkovich, also hit theaters in 1999) his first significant role in front of the camera.

Amongst the wealth of great films released in 1999, Three Kings had a niche, but it rarely gets mentioned in conversation nowadays, either as one of great movies of the late ‘90s, as a newer classic that went under the radar for many, or as a film that deserves being revisited given its exponentially increased cultural relevance over the years – both as a captivating fictional document of American politics and military action and as somewhat of a launching pad for career reinventions of many of its principals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Eyes Wide Shut, but that vastly misunderstood/underrated Kubrick elegy is for another essay