Discography |
Pricing: $10.00
David Greenberger & Paul Cebar Artist David Greenberger, best known for 30 years of his ongoing periodical, The Duplex Planet, created his ninth CD of monologues with music, titled Cherry Picking Apple Blossom Time, in collaboration with Paul Cebar (The Milwaukeeans, Tomorrow Sound). Inspired by characters with memory loss, the CD weaves together dozens of funny, fractured, and heartfelt vignettes that leave you a little dazed and smiling, and reaching for the play button to start over again from the beginning. Cherry Picking Apple Blossom Time is the culmination of Greenberger’s three-month artist residency in Milwaukee for UWM’s Center on Age & Community. His artistic focus has always been on aging, however this project has a specific spotlight on memory loss. Greenberger observed that the people he met had a wide range of conversational skills, from smoothly functioning (such as the closing track, “Satisfied”) to profoundly disjointed (“Used to Say,” “No Rooms Here,” “Plans”). His solution was to fill the CD with so many pieces, each with its own distinct character, that the experience might in itself mimic the unsettled ground of short-term memory loss. The listener can’t hold all the songs in their head, compelling them instead to stay in the moment of the audio experience. Greenberger and Cebar selected 38 tracks from their ten days of recording, each of the “songs” has its own distinct atmosphere, marrying words to music, for an end result that Greenberger describes as “a band with a guy talking.” Greenberger’s portraits capture the spark of people who are otherwise fading from view. Cebar’s music subtly entwines itself with the narrative with plenty of unexpected, joyfully pensive side-trips along the way. Bandleader Paul Cebar is a dance hall guitarist, singer and songwriter following his musical muses from New Orleans, to Havana, Port of Spain and Salvador creating a gumbo of his own exquisitely soulful, foot shuffling sounds. The five albums with his dance bands are the tip of the iceberg, with upcoming projects featuring Olu Dara, Curtis Lundy, George Braith, Jeffrey Haynes, and Marty Stonely. Other musical monologue collaborators with Greenberger have included Terry Adams (NRBQ), David Hidalgo & Louis Perez (Los Lobos), 3 Leg Torso, Ralph Carney, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, Shaking Ray Levis, Bangalore and others. Greenberger’s warmth and respect for people going through one of the most feared aspects of aging shines through all his projects. He accepts them as they are in the moment, following the conversation wherever it leads. These are people who still find pleasure in the company of others, and who open, sometimes in very small ways, to someone taking an interest in them. This is Greenberger’s art – building his experiences into something that resonates with the shared humanity among us all.
Robyn Hitchcock on Cherry Picking Apple Blossom Time: David Greenberger meanders around America, lovingly collecting the life stories of old people like fireflies in a jar. On Cherry Picking Apple Blossom Time, he visits Milwaukee, which as one elderly resident explains, has the same number of letters as Wisconsin. Over a smoky grid of blues-funk and acoustic guitar played by Paul Cebar and his band, David recites anecdotes and reflections from the Milwaukee senior citizens that he has interviewed on his recent visits there. In an America that seems increasingly dominated by amnesia, and the erosion of its history, it’s very heartening – and poignant – to hear these fragments of lives as they draw to a close. The rootsy tone of the music - Ry Cooder, Tom Waits, David Byrne and even Beefheart’s Magic Band come to the mind’s ear - adds Americana to these tales of vanishing Midwestern life. Here are the man who cheated at tomato-growing by hanging a purchased one on a vine; the man who made peace with his artificial arm and hung shopping bags from it; and the man in a red shirt who feels like a king. There are exuberant moments, but the most moving pieces are the elegies: people who gently mourn their vanished partners – one speaks of his wife as his co-pilot, another of how he’s tried to replace his wife with crossword puzzles. The matter-of-fact tone that David uses in these vignettes is partly what makes them so emotional. In “No Rooms Here” you can hear the life and memory of the elderly female narrator dissolving as she speaks. Just as certain as our death is the uncertainty of what follows – this ambiguity riddles the inhabitants of Cherry Picking Apple Blossom Time. The fragments drift by in a meditational parade – the slow shuffle of people preparing to exit their lives, setting things down, and then picking them up a few minutes later, trying to weigh everything up while it’s still theirs. Here, in this album, they can dwell a little longer, and we can hear them until our echoes fade with theirs. I recommend this record to anybody who cares about people. – Robyn Hitchcock, September 2009 |
