The Milk Carton Kids 2011-10-02
The Skinny Pancake, Montpelier, VT
Set 1
Tuning
New York
Milk Carton Kid
Permanent
Charlie
Undress The World
Michigan
Rock & Roll'er
Queen Jane
Girls Gather 'round
Maybe It's Time
One Goodbye
Broken Headlights
Memoirs Of An Owned Dog
No Hammer To Hold
Stealing Romance
Once More
Like A Cloak
New York
Milk Carton Kid
Permanent
Charlie
Undress The World
Michigan
Rock & Roll'er
Queen Jane
Girls Gather 'round
Maybe It's Time
One Goodbye
Broken Headlights
Memoirs Of An Owned Dog
No Hammer To Hold
Stealing Romance
Once More
Like A Cloak
Set 2
Set 3
Comment
KEEP YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM
The Foreword to Prologue by Joe Henry
Many years ago, in a moment of professional crisis, I took up for a spell
with The Jayhawks, an earnest band from Minnesota with whom I shared a tour,
a dog-eared sensibility, and the lack of sufficient patronage that mightÃve
kept us from sleeping triple in the double beds of hard-lit motel rooms
scattered throughout the land of the Great Lakes. Before meeting them,
I had been given their most recent album by way of introduction; and I
will confess here that upon first listen I became so seduced by the
singular character that emerged from the songs, that I failed to register
that there were actually two very different singers giving rise to him.
Honest: I heard it all as if coming from one central figure who had a
voice all his own, and that neither lead singer in the band could wholly
claim or account for.
I was embarrassed when this mishearing was initially pointed out to me;
but had I been on the other end of that inadvertent deception I would have
thrilled to it: the notion that a nameless Other might have been rendered
so persuasively in song that the artists themselves disappeared fully
into its arc and service.
So now has proved the case with Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan, The Milk
Carton Kids: I listen and, try as I might, forget to hear them as distinct
collaborators in song and story. Instead, they move to become a single,
shadowy persona within the frame of Prologue ñlike young twins cast to tag-team
one demanding role in a terse-but-tender film by Elia Kazan, haunted and
hounded across a lonely landscape in search of the love that might provide
their collective character a fleeting taste of both redemption and self-recognition.
And it isnÃt only their singing voices that build this hall of mirrors for me:
their songwriting and string work wind around each other like coarse briar
at the base of a flag pole, confusing the mind as to how exactly it is
fixed to the ground, while clearly keeping its banner raised high above
the thorns, streaming if frayed. It is a flag that flies on behalf of no
clear territory, though, as much as it waves to commemorate some missed
opportunity; as if a particular time itself had been the foolÃs destination,
fading immediately upon arrivalÖleaving sand in the shoe, love in the
rearview, and a hand bereft of the hammer that had almost forged something
(God save us) permanent.
Their individual aspirations aside ñJoeyÃs or KennethÃsó I should say I donÃt
wish for it to be different, donÃt wish for my confusions between them to be
abated. I prefer disorientation when it comes to music. I live to be deceived,
and would far rather be seduced than have anything explained.
As for this unnamed fella, then, who weaves hurt-but-hopeful through these
songsÖheÃs got something he needs to tell me, I think. And only because he
speaks to me from the moving shadows, his face half hidden, will I truly be
able to recognize his story as my own.
Joe Henry
24 June, 2011
The Foreword to Prologue by Joe Henry
Many years ago, in a moment of professional crisis, I took up for a spell
with The Jayhawks, an earnest band from Minnesota with whom I shared a tour,
a dog-eared sensibility, and the lack of sufficient patronage that mightÃve
kept us from sleeping triple in the double beds of hard-lit motel rooms
scattered throughout the land of the Great Lakes. Before meeting them,
I had been given their most recent album by way of introduction; and I
will confess here that upon first listen I became so seduced by the
singular character that emerged from the songs, that I failed to register
that there were actually two very different singers giving rise to him.
Honest: I heard it all as if coming from one central figure who had a
voice all his own, and that neither lead singer in the band could wholly
claim or account for.
I was embarrassed when this mishearing was initially pointed out to me;
but had I been on the other end of that inadvertent deception I would have
thrilled to it: the notion that a nameless Other might have been rendered
so persuasively in song that the artists themselves disappeared fully
into its arc and service.
So now has proved the case with Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan, The Milk
Carton Kids: I listen and, try as I might, forget to hear them as distinct
collaborators in song and story. Instead, they move to become a single,
shadowy persona within the frame of Prologue ñlike young twins cast to tag-team
one demanding role in a terse-but-tender film by Elia Kazan, haunted and
hounded across a lonely landscape in search of the love that might provide
their collective character a fleeting taste of both redemption and self-recognition.
And it isnÃt only their singing voices that build this hall of mirrors for me:
their songwriting and string work wind around each other like coarse briar
at the base of a flag pole, confusing the mind as to how exactly it is
fixed to the ground, while clearly keeping its banner raised high above
the thorns, streaming if frayed. It is a flag that flies on behalf of no
clear territory, though, as much as it waves to commemorate some missed
opportunity; as if a particular time itself had been the foolÃs destination,
fading immediately upon arrivalÖleaving sand in the shoe, love in the
rearview, and a hand bereft of the hammer that had almost forged something
(God save us) permanent.
Their individual aspirations aside ñJoeyÃs or KennethÃsó I should say I donÃt
wish for it to be different, donÃt wish for my confusions between them to be
abated. I prefer disorientation when it comes to music. I live to be deceived,
and would far rather be seduced than have anything explained.
As for this unnamed fella, then, who weaves hurt-but-hopeful through these
songsÖheÃs got something he needs to tell me, I think. And only because he
speaks to me from the moving shadows, his face half hidden, will I truly be
able to recognize his story as my own.
Joe Henry
24 June, 2011
Sources
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Created At
Tue Sep 17 2013 11:20:04 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
Updated At
Tue Sep 17 2013 11:20:04 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
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