He's joined by frequent rhythm section members, bassist Andrew Scott Young and drummer Ryan Jewell, as well as saxophonist Nick Mazzarella-percussionist Quin Kirchner, vibist Rick Embach, and producer John Hughes, adding synthesizer and vocals, all contribute additional layers. The music was made with a stripped-down quartet, with the leader as sole guitarist. If you didn't know what inspired it, it wouldn't matter. part of the pop zeitgeist." Knowing Walker, that last phrase sounds like one of his excellent tweaks, but who knows? Last month Matthews posted on Facebook: "The first time I heard Ryley's cover of the Lilywhite Sessions, I was in a record store. Everyone who played on the record grew up in the suburbs and were big Daveheads. In November Walker told Billboard, "I made this record for Dave fans. Walker and Matthews have met and have publically formed a mutual admiration society. Walker released his best album yet in 2018 with Deafman Glance, so I wasn't anticipating a follow-up just months later, because even though he didn't write the material, his fingerprints are all over the music-it sure doesn't sound like a lark to me.
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On the other hand, earlier this year Walker made a quickie album as Crazy Bread with Good Willsmith keyboardist Max Allison called Vocoder Divorce (Astral Spirits) which sure sounds like a jam band take on experimental music to me, containing the sort of shapeless noodling that Walker has vigorously eschewed when he leads his own crack band. Although it pains me a bit, there's certainly a chance that Cimarusti is correct that Walker is "riding the Dave train." Still, I'd prefer to see this as a brilliant piss take. I mean, why would I? And after listening to Walker's version repeatedly in recent months I have no doubt that the original would be vastly inferior because Matthews is an annoying, soulless singer and his band possesses the grit of Jell-o. The piece focused on the recent release of Walker's unexpected album The Lillywhite Sessions (Dead Oceans), a back-to-front reimagining of a spiked but heavily bootlegged recording the Dave Matthews Band made with producer Steve Lillywhite during 1999-2000. In other words, Walker plays it exceedingly straight, even when he's delivering good-time numbers like "Kit Kat Jam." This po-faced sincerity winds up underscoring Walker's debt to Dave Matthews Band - they now seem like a clear influence on his adventurous folk-jazz - while also highlighting the imagination behind the original set of songs.A couple of weeks ago one of my former colleagues at the Chicago Reader wrote a concert preview of Ryley Walker in which he celebrated the fact that post-Grateful Dead music was no longer anathema to "punks and freaks." The writer, Luca Cimarusti, focused on the social stigma of digging that music, and while there has unquestionably been an element of smugness in dismissing jam band music, he completely bypasses the most obvious reason that shit has long been frowned upon-musically, it sucks. At times, he ratchets up the darkness - "Diggin' a Ditch" opens with a furious open-string guitar drone, his "Bartender" veers into claustrophobia, "Monkey Man" is turned into a cloistered clutter - but he also keeps an eye on both Matthews' elliptical songs and DMB's loose-limbed jazz fusion. Certainly, that dark atmosphere - dubbed "sad bastard" by Matthews - drew Walker to the record, but his version of The Lillywhite Sessions isn't especially gloomy. Despite Busted Stuff featuring renditions that weren't dramatically different in arrangement, The Lillywhite Sessions retained a cult following because it had a downer vibe unique among DMB albums. Eventually, drummer Carter Beauford instigated the shelving of The Lillywhite Sessions - so dubbed because it, like its three predecessors, was produced by Steve Lillywhite the record was never officially titled - but the group didn't abandon the material, choosing to revive nine of its 12 songs for 2002's Busted Stuff.īy that point, The Lillywhite Sessions became one of the first unreleased albums to leak on the internet, its circulation assisted by DMB fans who were already trading live tapes.
Matthews' love of drink isn't hidden - the man owns his own line of wine, Dreaming Tree - but he imbibed a little bit too much during the recording of The Lillywhite Sessions, a move that coincided with a general aimlessness within the ranks after the group vaulted to superstardom. Sobriety isn't a word associated with DMB at the dawn of the 2000s. Walker may crack wise on Twitter, but he takes his music seriously, so his version of this shelved 2001 album is very sober indeed.
Ryley Walker cultivated a reputation as an internet jester so news that he decided to cover the unreleased Dave Matthews Band album The Lillywhite Sessions initially seemed to be a prank.
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