Jackson Browne: Summoning a Sky Blue and Black

It’s topsy-turvy, free falling through the reality of social order and truth about what this country really means, not haranguing, not proclaiming-but showing through the basic questions facing anyone facing Katrina. And the questions, like the reality-chasm opening over the course of the nine-minute song, only became starker.

… Where were you when you heard the stranded,
the injured and the empty-handed
were running out of food and water at the Superdome?
with the newborn and the elderly
exposed to even more misery
while those in charge waited for the Guard to come
and those who left the Convention Center
were stopped on the bridge when they tried to enter
the safety of the west bank and higher ground
And when the Guard finally did arrive
And got to work on about day five
mainly they were used to keep the looting down…

It’s not accusatory, and the music is so engaging you can’t help but get drawn in. And this is before a well-rested President, returning from vacation circles twice, gets the photo and moves on-never truly looking back or taking in the wreckage.

What you see-what you’re shown-is riveting. That’s the magic of songs well realized; in this case, though we expect Jackson Browne the master songwriter to craft every last note before hitting the studio, it is the alchemy of the parts on the fly that lend the song its temerity.

“One of the quests I went on was how to make a bunch of songs not really based on the way I play and to make use of these great players,” he explains of the creative evolution that produced many of Time‘s best songs. “Every night, I’d come in here after everyone had left and get a verse or two.

“I wouldn’t know how to end it, so I’d pull up what I’d done originally…and I don’t know how these guys got days of sessions listening to me sing nonsense. Amazingly. I think it frees them up, ‘cause they probably tune out and play more emotionally. They might have half the song written, then a whole section they don’t know what’s coming.

“‘Where Were You’ was basically written based on a guitar lick. Whole movements of that song came from a session where Jeff just started playing beautiful stuff. I key them off and go where the music wants to go.

As David Lindley said, ‘The thing about music is it’s supposed to sound good.’  It’s true in so many ways…and those recordings that’ve been led on what feels good-it’s like doing the crossword; that doesn’t fit there, but it’ll work here.”

Elevating the collaboration with core band of guitarist Mark Goldenberg, keyboardist Jeff Young, bassist Kevin McCormick and drummer Mauricio “Fritz” Lewak are singers Chavonne Morris and Alethea Mills, who came to Browne as teenage soloists with South Central L.A. choirmaster Fred Martin and his Levite Camp.

Browne eventually co-produced an album merging his own songs with blues and gospel standards called Some Bridges, which not only shifted his recording aesthetics (drums are now in the vocal booth, allowing the other instruments to be together and the energy to commingle more organically) but also the collaboration. Both opened up his worldview in new ways and provided other voices to inform his songs.