Dave Mason Alone Again by Myself
Dave Mason was just 22 when he started recording his debut anthology, Alone Together. Recently departed from his band Traffic, which he co-founded three years earlier with Steve Winwood, and the late Chris Wood and Jim Capaldi, Mason establish himself in America in 1969, pulling together tracks he had originally written for the band's tertiary album. Enlisting an assemblage of tiptop studio musicians, including singers Rita Coolidge and Bonnie Bramlett, pianist Leon Russell, bassist Chris Etheridge, and drummers Jim Gordon, Jim Keltner, and fifty-fifty Traffic bandmate Capaldi, all offered their musical part in Bricklayer's solo career. Lone Together was a timeless tale of the era, a slight naivete, and the first of a massive musical journey.
Honoring the 50th ceremony of the anthology that started it all for him, Stonemason reimagined the 8 tracks, reviving each in the studio on Lonely Together… Again.
"Basically, the whole project started for my ain amusement when I started screwing around with some of the songs," says Bricklayer from his home in Maui. Regularly a Reno, Nevada resident, Mason relocated to Hawaii one time the pandemic hit in 2020 and admits he feels fortunate to ride it out in some kind of paradise.
"I day, we were on the route, and nosotros had a couple of days off, so I went into a studio, and cut all the other songs, basically, everything in there, except for the vocals, which were put on afterwards," says Mason. "Everything else is live. We played everything straight out in the studio, so in that location's a lot more energy in this music than the original tracks."
Originally, Stonemason wanted to reimagine Alone Together, considering he was never satisfied with his original vocals. "I like the songs and I like the performances, but I was so young and it was my first solo anthology," says Mason. "The older I got, the more the vocals bothered me then I finally thought that I would sing the songs the way I get-go imagined them when I wrote them."
Through Lonely Together… Again there's a new depth and energy to the original arrangements, and Mason stays by and large faithful to "Only You lot Know and I Know," "Waitin' on Y'all," and "Expect at You, Look at Me," offer a slightly extended outro to "Tin't Stop Worrying, Can't End Loving" and the lusher soul of "Look at You, Look at Me." More textured guitar revives the nevertheless deeply moving "Every bit Sad and As Deep As You," a version Mason—who slyly renamed the track from its original "Lamentable and Deep As You"—says he prefers to the 1970 original.
A reggae-fused "World in Changes," which Mason originally re-recorded nigh 10 years agone, is the more striking departure on Again. "I really beloved the way it turned out," says Bricklayer. "It's the perfect kind of a change upwardly, and 'Globe in Changes' is a timeless theme song that's very relevant now."
Produced by Mason, Alone Together… Again features a new collection of musicians made up of his touring ring with guitarist Johnne Sambataro, bassist and keyboardist Tony Patler, drummer Alvino Bennett, forth with guests John McFee, Jason Roller, Jonathan McEuen, Gretchen Rhodes, Neb Reynolds, Jesse Siebenberg, Teddy Jack Russell, and Billy Mason.
"Looking dorsum in hindsight, if I'd accept had those players out on the road with me for a calendar month or so before I went in and originally cut 'Lone Together,' that album would have had a completely different energy to it," says Stonemason. "It would have been a little something of players who knew the songs and weren't thinking near information technology while they were doing, but 'Again' has got that."
One of the reasons Alone Together always stuck, says Mason, is because it's timeless. "I guess I've always sort of tried to write basically what are timeless themes," says Mason. "They're all very personal in some way. As much as things change, zip really changes. Nosotros all get through the aforementioned. Everybody's got their own version of their proficient times, bad times, any loves and losses, so they're very timeless, in a lot of ways. Almost of these songs have been in my set, one way or another, for fifty years."
E'er thinking in terms of live performance, Mason tends to write songs that are besides open to some musical improvisation. "'Look at You, Look at Me' and 'Shouldn't Have Took More Yous Gave' have lots of room, peculiarly solo-wise, to be unlike every night, which keeps information technology interesting for u.s. as a band," says Mason. "Basically, we're up there just playing for ourselves. Otherwise, we're simply going through the motions. I always want to go along that room for everybody to have something to add in."
Admittedly not the most prolific writer, with Alone Together taking 2 years to terminate, songwriting is a typically long procedure for Mason. "I'one thousand not somebody who just churns out stuff, so information technology'due south there when it's in that location," he says. "And it has to exist something that can hold up if it's merely me with an acoustic guitar every bit a song. Otherwise, I won't pursue it."
Inducted into the Rock & Coil Hall of Fame with Traffic in 2004, Mason's own career has crossed genres in his songwriting and production contributions, from his work The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Eric Clapton and a brief stint with Fleetwood Mac in 1995. Surprisingly nonchalant about his entire ride through stone royalty, peradventure a more momentous moment was playing rhythm guitar on Jim Hendrix's cover of "All Forth the Watchtower."
More than remains in Mason'due south musical vault, merely he admits a hesitancy in releasing new music in today's climate. "I don't really write that much at all anymore, but that'south a whole other conversation about the futility of putting out new product," shares Bricklayer. "These days, in that location'southward no tape sales, at that place are no keen DJs and no great terrestrial radio, which is even so a hugely powerful medium. There's nobody there. There'southward nobody home."
In the digital landscape, specifically, music has become more expendable, says Mason. "It's become disposable, so the route is what you have left," says Stonemason. "If you have something new, you take it out on the road with you lot and hope people will want to listen to information technology and buy it."
Mason says at that place'southward this two percent in the so-called superstar bracket in music—and then at that place'southward everybody else. "Touring is how nosotros survive, and a big role of our income has been taken away," says Mason. "Information technology'southward not but for performers, but if you're just a songwriter, your copyrights take been so diluted, and there's seemingly nothing you tin do about it at this point. Pandora is out of the box. C'est la vie. Onward."
Mayhap at that place's something to Bricklayer's revising the classics. He recently shared a "quarantine" rendition of his 1968 Traffic hit "Feelin' Alright," with special guests Mick Fleetwood, Sammy Hagar, Michael McDonald, and The Doobie Brothers' John McFee, Tom Johnston, John Cowan and Pat Simmons. "Even though nosotros're in dissimilar locations on the planet, information technology just came out as if we were all there together," says Mason. "We're all going through this isolation, and so it'southward got a group of people in there having fun, and the music is in that location to option upward your twenty-four hour period."
Working on a volume, an autobiography tentatively scheduled for 2022, Stonemason is besides exploring music in film and looking forward to a render to phase. Sometimes it feels like a decade, then at that place'southward the realization that 50 years take passed since Lonely Together. Still, time is mostly irrelevant to Mason.
"Sometimes I look back and call back 'wow, World in Changes is magical, and I wrote that,'" says Mason. "It all goes by speedily, so make the nearly of existence in the here and now."
Source: https://americansongwriter.com/dave-mason-revisits-re-records-1970-debut-on-alone-together-again/
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