Subject: Hick Oar e-win Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 22:03:53 -0400 On Disk: Tributes to Two Musical Mentors By Jim Fusilli 09/20/1999 The Wall Street Journal (Copyright (c) 1999, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.) Tribute albums work best when the subject deserves to be better known and the participating singers and musicians reveal how he influenced them. It gets even better when the singers and players turn in outstanding performances. All that is true with "More Oar -- A Tribute to the Skip Spence Album" (Birdman) and "Return of the Grievous Angel -- A Tribute to Gram Parsons" (Almo). Parsons, who nudged the Byrds toward country music and co-founded the Flying Burrito Brothers, died in 1973 at age 26. Spence, the original drummer of Jefferson Airplane and guitarist and co-founder of Moby Grape, died in April of this year. The Spence tribute is a retelling of his only solo album, "Oar" (Sundazed), which he recorded in 1968 when he was 22 years old and fresh from involuntary commitment in New York's Bellevue Hospital. Spence, who had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, rode into Nashville on a motorcycle, went into a recording studio for six days, and cut the songs that he wrote while in custody, playing all the instruments that accompany his fragile vocals, which tell, directly and metaphorically, of his troubling existence. Long out of print, "Oar" nevertheless had many devotees. Among them are the musicians who cover Spence's compositions on "More Oar": Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant, Tom Waits, Beck, Robyn Hitchcock and Son Volt 's Jay Farrar, who performs a fine version of "Weighted Down (The Prison Song)." While the sense of displacement and confusion that marked the original disk is occasionally replaced on "More Oar" with brightness and good cheer, the tribute works because it brims with affection for Spence and his songs as well as sympathy for his plight. And the musicians' expanded arrangements reveal the structural integrity of Spence's seemingly frail compositions. On "Cripple Creek," Mark Lanegan comes closest to tapping into the spirit of "Oar," though Mudhoney's "War in Peace," Outrageous Cherry's "Keep Everything Under Your Hat" and the Durocs' "Margaret-Tiger Rug" suggest where Spence might've wanted to go. The terrific U.K. band Diesel Park West offers a brooding, fully realized "All Come to Meet Her" and Alastair Galbraith contributes an airy, Radiohead-like "This Time He Has Come." These last two are the best two tracks on this admirable album. As for the very pleasing "Return of the Grievous Angel": Parsons participated in a handful of studio recordings during his short career, including the Byrds' "Sweetheart of the Rodeo," two Burrito Brothers disks and two solo albums, but his sway far exceeded his sparse output. For example, he recruited a then-unknown Emmylou Harris to join him on his first solo album, and he remains an influence on her notable career. She returns the spotlight to her mentor by serving as executive producer for this project, singing on three tracks -- "Sin City," a duet with Beck; "Juanita," where she's joined by Sheryl Crow; and a tender version of "She" with Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders -- and playing guitar on Lucinda Williams's reading of the title track. Parsons also inspired the Rolling Stones to dabble in country music, and the covers on the new disk of "A Song for You" by Whiskeytown and "One Hundred Years From Now" by Wilco sound like outtakes from the Stones' "Sticky Fingers." The singers are supported by a bevy of musicians who performed over the years with Parsons: Jay Dee Maness, who played pedal steel on the Byrds' "Sweetheart"; Chris Etheridge and former Eagle Bernie Leadon, who were in the Burrito Brothers; and Chris Hillman, who recruited Parsons for the Byrds and left with him to start the Burritos, making the album sort of a tribute within a tribute. "Return of the Grievous Angel" is sprinkled with treats. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, as is their custom, offer a chilling performance; in this case, it's Parsons's gorgeous ballad "Hickory Wind." The Mavericks, led by the wonderful vocalist Raul Malo, recall Parsons's sentimentally romantic nature on "Hot Burrito No.1." And Evan Dando, former frontman of the Lemonheads, and friend Julianna Hatfield's "$1,000 Wedding" packs a punch that reinforces the dark lyric. The album ends on a high note: a peppy, appreciative cover of Parsons and Harris's "In My Hour of Darkness" by The Rolling Creekdippers, a pseudonym for Victoria Williams, ex-Jayhawk Mark Olson, Jim Lauderdale and others who admire Gram Parsons.