Sat 7 Jun 2008

3 tracks from my forthcoming album

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To listen to three new songs from my forthcoming album titled “Buddy Holly”, follow this link:
http://www.last.fm/music/LARRY+JOHN+McNALLY
“Buddy Holly”, “New York, New York” my 12 minute epic, and “The Music Mattered” one of a group of songs of mine inspired by/for Chet Baker

Mon 2 Jun 2008

rainy night in new york

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RAIN
by Don Paterson

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one long thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from the play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a rain-dark gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign,
and I’d read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood—
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.

Sun 1 Jun 2008

Florent closing in NYC

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Phantom Limbs
by Anne Michaels

So much of the city
is our bodies. Places in us
old light still slants through to.
Places that no longer exist but are full of
feeling,
like phantom limbs.

Even the city carries ruins in it’s heart.
Longs to be touched in places
only it remembers.

Picked up the New York Times the other day to see that my favorite late night NYC haunt, Florent, is closing. His rent was to go up to $30,000 a month. What’s happening to New York? I’ll quote my song “New York, New York”:

“New York has changed
New York hasn’t changed at all
Someone’s going outa business
Someone else’ll open up a new one
Rents were down then up again
Higher than ever last Fall”

Just what the city needs, another high end women’s shoe store.
Man, those NYC developer’s wives must have a gorgeous shoe collection in their closets!

Well, there are other late night restaurants, but it won’t be the same. Sitting at the counter
there, way past midnight, the place packed…
Do me a favor and stop by for a glass of wine and a toast to the collective memory of a New York past.

Sat 15 Mar 2008

what’s up?

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What is up is that I’ve been in the studio non-stop. I have 3 albums, 95% done. As my engineer friend says, now comes the other 95%. Instrumental album called “BQE” is done and in the pre-printing process. Group of produced songs featuring “Buddy Holly” and songs for Chet Baker is being mixed. Album called “Folksinger” needs a few more overdubs. Should be done in April. All cover artwork is by Hatch Show Print in Nashville. I’m printing special limited edition versions of the albums in a DVD size package. Having a lot of fun with the Folksinger project. Playing bass for the first time and even sat down at the drum kit the other day to overdub some cymbals. Some cool guitar sounds including a bunch of dobro. Can’t wait to get out into the world to play this stuff live. As I’ve been promising for the last few years, see you soon!

Tue 15 Jan 2008

horses

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Horses are part of life in Los Angeles. At different points along Sunset Blvd., the horse trails curve down to meet the traffic. Horses amble by- cowboy hats- even I have a cowboy hat. I probably look ridiculous wearing it. I’ve wanted to be a cowboy since childhood, but I’ll probably only ever qualify as a “Dude.” Remember when Country music was called “C&W?” Country & Western. I live in the West (for now). I play the Dobro. I listen to Country music. Does that make me “Country?” I doubt it.
Here is a poem by James Wright:

A Blessing
by James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their
happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the
darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

Thu 3 Jan 2008

poem by Martha Hollander

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Central Park

One November on a nervous amble
in the chilly dusk, we stop, turn, and fall.
The corresponding flurry of dry leaves
sweeps over us, spreadeagled as we are,
drenched in the early attitudes of lovers.
Leaves alone inhabit the charged space
between us, hint and crackle underneath,
behind, around, creeping into an ear
(dangerously), across the refusing
crook of arm and sluggish knee, against
brow and eyelid and the sweat, resting there.
Lips left bare for motion or meeting, we
will stir at the chosen moment and reach
for newer terrain under all these clothes.
When our backs arch and stiffen and shudder
we will shake off the ministering leaves,
and as if in agreement with each other
our bodies will mash the life out of them.

Mon 31 Dec 2007

end of december

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I should be writing about the holidays, shouldn’t I. Well, best of all to all of you. I got myself my first ipod for Xmas. Perhaps that’s old news for many of you, but it’s so cool. It holds 40,000 songs, though I’ve only thought of a few hundred that I want to listen to. My favorite new music is from Amy Winehouse. She is amazing. It wasn’t her albums that brought me in, though, it was the ‘bootleg’ videos on You Tube from her live shows. Check her out singing ‘Back to Black’ in Amsterdam. She’s high on something. God bless her, hope she survives. Did I buy the CDs, no, I downloaded the songs that I liked from itunes. No wonder songwriters like myself are in trouble. Even I don’t buy CDs any more. Fortunately plenty of people are buying The Eagles CD with my song on it. It pays my studio bills for all the new music I’m recording. Spent the day there today. Having fun. Hope you will when you hear it. Oh, yeah, another gorgeous record you need to hear is Corinne Bailey Rae singing Joni Mitchell’s song “River” on Herbie Hancock’s Joni tribute album. Man, there’s some incredible talent coming out of the UK these days. My favorites are Amy Winehouse, Corinne Bailey Rae, James Morrison, and from Ireland, Damien Rice. Happy New Year to all.

Sun 2 Dec 2007

Elsie May Larson-Kunkel

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Played a benefit show last night in Culver City (Los Angeles neighborhood). It was a tribute to Nicolette Larson. Her daughter played 3 songs. That was the high point of the evening for me. Elsie May Larson-Kunkel. She’s the daughter of Russ Kunkel, famed James Taylor drummer (& more) and Nicolette. Elsie is a senior in high school. She has the same beauty and soul and charisma that her mother had. Actually, to be fair, she has her OWN beauty, soul & charisma, but there are certainly echoes of her mother in there. Beautiful to see the music being passed along to the next generation. Not sure exactly what defines a generation, but you get my drift. With her father as a guide, she’s in good hands. Can’t wait to hear her first album.
I played, “Nobody’s Girl”, “I Love to Watch A Woman Dance”, a snippet of “When You Come Around” (the song I co-wrote with Nicolette years ago) and “Just My Imagination.” The choir singing the chorus with me was exceptional. Turns out that many in the audience are, in fact, part of a choir of assorted LA music biz vets, including Rosemary Butler, who sang for years with Jackson Browne. As I’ve said before, the music world is a circus world. All the different writers, performers and otherwise that I’ve run into over the years. Didn’t feel like going straight home so I stopped at the Cinema Bar down the street. It was packed. The LA Alt-Country all stars were playing, featuring Randy Weeks. It was great. Two guitars, bass and drums and great songs. What else do you need. Los Angeles is so strange. The streets are deserted but then, behind closed doors there are some amazing scenes going on.
One positive aspect of the constant driving in LA is the time to listen to music in the car. I’ve compiled a CD of songs from my forthcoming album of songs (versus the instrumental album that I’m also about to release) to listen to for mixing ideas and other details. Sure sounded good to me last night. Can’t wait to get it into the world and get out and tour again.

Sat 24 Nov 2007

I Love to Watch A Woman Dance

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The Eagles have released their version of my song, “I Love to Watch A Woman Dance” on their new “Long Road Out Of Eden” album. Glenn Frey sings it. Very beautifully. I’m going to speculate that he’s a romantic at heart, to sing the song as well as he does. As you may know, Don Henley recorded my song, “For My Wedding” on his last solo album, “Inside Job.” I sent him a CD of several other songs at that time. He and Glenn called me in 1999 to say that they were doing another Eagle’s album and would be recording ILTWAWD on it. That was 8 years ago, and a lot of silence in between. I’m not sure, but I think that they recorded it at that time, as Don Felder mentions the song in his book about life as an Eagle. They may have re-recorded it after the Felder/Eagles split, but I’m not sure. My dealings with The Eagles are through their business people and not direct, though over the years I’ve enjoyed a few conversations with Don, and Glenn lives just ‘up the street’ from me in California.
I released my version of the song on my “Dandelion Soul” album in 2000. I did tour support of that album in Europe & Japan and gigs here in New York, California and elsewhere. The only way you really know if a song is ‘working’ or not, is when you play it live. You can feel every second of an audience’s response when you’re up there on stage, and people seemed to love this song right from the start. I first performed it back in the 90’s, in New York, at my gigs at the Living Room on The Lower East Side. As a songwriter I use a few close friends as a sounding board, and then later live audiences to decide which songs ‘have it’ and which don’t. Just because I wrote it doesn’t always mean that it deserves to exist outside of me singing it alone in my room. But as I said, this one seemed to fly above and beyond me. As I’ve already seen from my songs being recorded by Bonnie Raitt, Aaron Neville, Rod Stewart and others, you no longer own the song after it goes into the world. There is some accurate metaphor that applies here, that relates to children growing up and leaving home. Yes, you loved them and nurtured them, yes, you wept tears of joy and anguish over them, but then they leave home, and go off and have a life of their own without you.
One new development with the internet is the guestbook forum. It gives new meaning to the phrase, “Opinions are like a**holes, everybody has one.” You can find a forum upon which to express your opinion on most anything and no one can stop you. Between some of The Eagles’ fan sites and various album reviews I’ve read a variety of opinions on my song. To take the bait and respond to negative criticisms would be a waste of time. As with anything, some people will like it and some won’t. I wrote about the inspiration for the song in the discography section of my website, which has already been quoted here and there on the web. Still, I thought I’d expand a liitle bit on the inspiration for, and history behind, writing the song.
I was in Amsterdam for the first time in the Fall of 1995. My album “Vibrolux” was selling well in Holland and I’d just done my first concert in Utrecht to support it. I wandered over to a club called Paradiso near my hotel in Amsterdam, just to get out and see some live music. Paradiso is an incredible music venue, that is a former church turned into a nightclub. The Sacred & the Profane, hand in hand. Later on I played gigs there and it is one of my favorite places to play anywhere. Maybe one of my favorite memories ever, was being the support act for Bill Wyman there (ex-Rolling Stone!) hanging out backstage talking music with him and his Brit bandmates. It was a night I won’t forget. I digress. My first night there I walked in to a packed house with a Gypsy band onstage. Not only ON stage but snaking through the crowd as well. Everyone was dancing and moving to the music. I stood at the bar and drank a few beers taking in the whole scene. Mind you, I was travelling alone and had no one to turn to to say, “Can you believe this!?” I remember there was one group of maybe six girls dancing together, holding hands in a circle. There was a guy close by who wanted very badly to be in the middle of that circle, but they weren’t paying any attention to him at all. He reminded me of myself. Tall with glasses. Not to be self-deprecating, but he wasn’t Tom Cruise and neither am I. Finally, they felt sorry for him and let him dance in the middle of their circle while they danced around him. Phew, they let him in! Maybe not all the way in, but, hey, you take what you can get in this world. Then, I noticed a girl dancing alone in that sort of hippie way. She was in a total trance. It had nothing to do with attracting anyone’s attention. She was communing with the music. She was celebrating herself and for that moment she was a million miles away. Much love to you, whoever you are, wherever you are. I went back to my room, picked up the guitar and started writing the song.
If you search ILTWAWD on YouTube there is a video of a girl dancing to The Eagles record of this song. She has a gorgeous body, and if you think I am ‘above’ feelings of lust, I’m here to tell you that I am not. I am male and I am human. Still, the girl and the moment that inspired this song was of a more spiritual nature. As the song says, “She bows her head and lifts her hands. Her hips begin to circle slowly, her eyes half closed, her face is holy. She holds the whole room in a trance…” I felt for her. What does that mean. That means that I too, have felt that “to dream sometimes is the only way, to go places you can’t get to any other way.” By the way, I am aware that rhyming ‘way’ with ‘way’ would upset any sixth grade poetry teacher. But any 7th grade poetry teacher would say, that you serve your muse and follow it even when it breaks the rules. Don had pointed out that rhyme to me back in 1999, and I re-wrote it for him several different ways. I’m going to assume that he decided to go with the original ‘flaw’ just ‘coz’, though you’d have to ask he and Glenn about that decision.
A lot can happen in eight years. I don’t think that there was ever a guarantee that there would be another Eagles album of new material. I remember standing beside Timothy Schmidt in Malibu, one evening a few summers ago. I almost introduced myself and wanted to ask what the news was with my song, but I hesitated. If you live in L.A., and you have any dignity, you have to honor the privacy of the celebrated people. I’m going to bet that Timothy, Don, Glenn & Joe Walsh, wouldn’t have been able to answer my question at that time. But, the albun did get finished, and my song did make it on the album. 3 million or more people have it in their hands so far, and I hope to hear from any of you, at any time- best to you, LJM

Sun 23 Sep 2007

Santa Barbara

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Played last night in Santa Barbara. Driving up and back along the coast, after the rain, the moon shining across the water, pure magic. The show was part of The Trinity Backstage series. Many thanks to Kate Wallace & Doug Clegg for putting together such a wonderful venue. It feels so good to play in such a great sounding room to such a warm audience.
I played:
Richie
Nobody’s Girl
I Love to Watch A Woman Dance
Everything Comes Easy to Me
I Love to Wake Up in New Orleans
Buddy Holly
read a poem by Jack Gilbert:”Naked Except for the Jewelry”
I Put A Spell On You
Mercy, Pity, Peace & Love

intermission

Sidewalks of Summer
Love is a Ruthless Thing
Over Fences
Carroll Gardens
Little Satellite
New York, New York
Jusy My Imagination
For My Wedding

3 tracks from my forthcoming album

rainy night in new york

Florent closing in NYC

what’s up?

horses

poem by Martha Hollander

end of december

Elsie May Larson-Kunkel

I Love to Watch A Woman Dance

Santa Barbara

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