Master songwriter Richard Shindell coming to The Ark
A few years back, in her review of a Richard Shindell concert, The New York Times’ Ann Powers wrote: “Occasionally, an artist has a night that makes even skeptics think, ‘O.K., maybe he is the best.’ Richard Shindell achieved this (last) night.”
A bold statement, that one — since Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman and John Prine are still writing and recording songs. But it illustrates the lasting impression that Shindell’s songs have made — both on critics and on fans of his work.
Shindell is indeed a master songwriter. Many of his sometimes-cinematic narratives are full of incisive detail, disarming insights and thought-provoking juxtapositions. But, like Prine, he also knows that what he leaves out is often as important as what he leaves in.
Those qualities are on full display on Shindell’s latest album, “Not Far Now” — his first recording of new original songs in 5 years, following an all-covers album, “South of Delia,” that was released in 2007.
But the 5-year gap should not be mistaken as a sign that Shindell had temporarily lost his muse, or was slumming.
“I’m actually always writing,” says Shindell, who comes to The Ark on Sunday, March 7. “But not all of my songs see the light of day. I’m not one to think that I need to adhere to a schedule, so when I have a group of songs that go well together, and that I think are up to snuff, that’s when it’s time to record. ”
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Shindell says that the writing process, for him, depends on the type of song. “There’s one type of song, that, when I’m writing it, it comes very quickly to me. I call those ‘songy’ songs — that is, they’re purely songs, as opposed to being a vehicle or delivery system for a narrative, if that makes any sense. In those songs, the angle is so particular that it almost writes itself,” says Shindell from his home in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he’s lived with his Argentine-native wife and children for 10 years now.
“For example, ‘Get Up Clara’ (from “Not Far Now”) came to me in about an hour.” In that subtly amusing tune, which is set during the days of the Roman Empire, a wandering traveler tries to verbally prod his listless mule into action. “That one wasn’t trying to be anything other than a song,” says Shindell, before adding, “although I guess the mule could be a metaphor for the body, and the narrator is the soul, which gets into my whole ‘ex-churchy’ thing.” (Shindell was once a seminary student.)
“Then there are other songs, which are all over the place, and I find myself including a lot of disparate elements that, on the surface, don’t seem to have very much to do with each other.” That’s when songcraft comes into play, and the process is more time-intensive, says Shindell.
An example of the latter on his latest disc is “State of the Union” — a story of an addict’s journey in and out of recovery. Shindell wrote the song a few years ago, and it’s been on his live-show set list ever since. Shindell set the addict’s story against the backdrop of then-President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address.
In the song, the addict, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, decides to take stock of his life and clean up his act. So he stops robbing people to support his habit, backslides, and ends up in a halfway house, watching the address on TV with other addicts. In the address, Bush was talking about drilling for oil and the war in Iraq. “I wanted to juxtapose their efforts to stay on the straight and narrow with Bush’s inability to make certain changes that needed to be made. Plus, there’s the whole addiction thing in Bush’s past,” says Shindell.
An especially striking song on “Not Far Now” is “Bye Bye,” which revisits the Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home.” “I initially thought it would be a sequel, an update, where the girl comes back to her parents,” says Shindell, who cites Paul McCartney and John Lennon as 2 of his songwriting heroes. “But as I got into it, and started going down that road, I thought, ‘No, this is too Hollywood — it’s pretentious and presumptuous, and not keeping with the spirit of the song. I concluded that there are some things you don’t want to mess with.”
So the tune ends up being an homage to the Beatles’ song, and includes some observations about songwriting — and about how songs can still connect with listeners, four decades after they were written.
Stylistically, the music on Shindell’s albums could best be categorized as folk-rock. His acoustic guitar or bouzouki are often front and center, and then he recruits others to add electric guitar, bass, drums, Hammond organ, etc.
And since he lives on another continent, Shindell has had to take full advantage of digital technology: On a couple of his records, including “Not Far Now,” he recorded many of the songs in his home, with just his producer, and then sent the files to musicians here in the U.S., who added their parts, and sent the files back to Shindell — who then dubbed those onto the master recording.
“It’s an interesting way to work, and I generally give them an idea of what I’m looking for, but not too much — I don’t want to constrain them. I like to trust their instincts, and let them do whatever it is they do that drew me to their playing in the first place.”
Kevin Ransom is a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.
Richard Shindell performing live in the Netherlands last May: