Think Like A Key 2024
Recently discovered snapshot of a great singer-songwriter and his classically inclined sidekick in full creative flight.
Outrageous
As self-sufficient as Shawn Phillips is as a one-man band, the presence of other musicians on his platters has always enriched the American troubadour’s melodies. But while there was a time when he toured with a full ensemble, as the "Live In The Seventies" compilation demonstrated in style, in the second half of that decade the Texan used to take the stage with just a single, albeit most accomplished, accompanist, Peter Robinson. Fortunately, the magic the duo conjured up didn’t get lost to the world, although the tapes from their two-night stint at Austin’s “Armadillo World Headquarters” in January 1976, shortly before the “Rumplestiltskin’s Resolve” LP saw the light of day, languished on the shelf for more than forty years. If not for the researchers who work on a documentary about the veteran and who saw a mention of the planned recording on the poster advertising those shows, this document could remain forgotten for eternity.
Sourced from the original multitrack and culled from both nights to present the friends’ typical performance in its entirety, these pieces – from the crowd-uniting, vigorous lament of “We” that gets high on jazzy chords and freeform vocalese to the encore of “Keep On” that bids farewell on a swell of energy – run through Shawn’s milestones into the future, where a couple of cuts from his forthcoming release, the hard-hitting ballad “Today” and the haunting titular number, lurk in seductive gloom. But while Robinson’s piano ripples and Phillips’ transparent twelve-string strum turn the ever-magnificent “Woman” – the concert’s proper finale – and “Looking At The Angel” from the then-recent “Do You Wonder” album, which was planned to bear the “Outrageous” legend, into tremendous, tremulous chamber experiences, each one a sonic spectacle, the barebone arrangements render the socially minded “Man Hole Covered Wagon” and “Coming Down Soft And Easy” punchier than the their studio originals and elevate them to impressionistic heights. However, the short, if fantastic, “All Our Love” – that would see the light of day, as a purely acoustic aural painting, only once “Spaced” is out in 1977 – sounds much eerier here, given an ethereal synthesizer backdrop, and “Withered Roses” acquires a new dimension and a new dynamic which are available only for two instruments’ interplay.
Such looseness allowed the artists go, rather unreservedly, for several improvisatory flights, solo and together, informing the proceedings with wondrous, vigorous immediacy, yet “As All Is Played” and “Ballad Of Casey Deiss” offer infinite vibrancy via Shawn’s voice more than Peter’s Rachmaninoff-esque splashes of ivories that accentuate the song’s sentimental depth. But then there’s “Moonshine” to balance it all and up the emotional stakes to the sheer rapture of the audience – the same delight which this double-CD set will continue delivering to the listener over and over again. A sensational find!
*****
