No Filler Music Podcast - Sidetrack: Beck's Early Influences

Episode Date: March 2, 2019

​On this week's Sidetrack we focus on the vibes and styles from Beck's 1994 release, "One Foot In The Grave", by taking a look at some of his early influences. Starting out as a "folk teenage hobo", Beck would take his guitar with him on city buses, covering Mississippi John Hurt and other standard folktales made famous by acts such as The Carter Family. For more info, check out the show notes: https://www.nofillerpodcast.com/episode/episode-30-beck-sea-change#sidetrack Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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experimenting with it lyrically and changing things around or maybe I'll play it a little harder I had this whole idea that I could just be my own band you know I could play punk rock and acoustic guitar Put those sunglasses on your hips Mayanase on your lips pass me a bag of potato chips when I want to put my money on the monkey Give it to me. Don't give it to me. The music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Quentin, with me as always as my bro-brough, Travis. This is our sidetrack for the week.

Last week we covered Beck's 2002 album C-Change. and we're going to kind of talk about some of his early influences today. So, Travis, did you know that Beck was, he started out doing just folk music? And now I'm talking like early on when he first started playing music in front of people. In a way, you could almost call him a folk artist, you know? Like you can almost refer to him that way with all of his music. Yeah. he pretty much did nothing but, you know, just the really traditional folk standards.

Apparently, he began performing on city buses and like he mentioned in that clip. So that was a clip from 97 for some Dutch public broadcaster. He mentions Mississippi John Hurt and he would just kind of mimic his finger-picking stylings. and then just kind of improv lines, you know, kind of observationally, you know, like he would just sing about people on the bus or sing about something that just happened. So the song that I had in that intro clip was a song from One Foot in the Grave, which we talked about a little bit last week. That was an album that he did in between mellow gold and O'Dale, so that one came on 94. And kind of like David Frick had said about back.

He was this, what did he call him, a folk teenage hobo or whatever, just guitar and strum, you know? Right. You can really hear those early influences on One Foot in the Grave. So Mississippi John Hurt. I had never heard of the guy. I'm guessing you probably haven't either. So his first recordings go back as far as, uh, 1928. And apparently he, it didn't really go so well. Like no one really paid attention to him.

And then he did some recordings in the 60s that kind of helped like further along the American folk music revival. I mean, you think about the 60s and 70s, you know, so many good, folk singers around that time, you know, Bob Dylan, fucking Crosby Stills and Nash. I mean, all those guys. the band America you know and with Mississippi John Hurt so he was self-taught

and I feel like we've talked about this a few times on this podcast being self-taught you know allowed him to kind of do his own thing and make this create this really unique style of finger-picking and that's what I think

influenced people the most was his guitar styling, his finger-picking. So, man, I've listened to so much of his music in the last two days, dude. It was really kind of hard. It was hard to pick a song to play. But I landed on one called Monday Morning Blues. This is the Monday morning blues, something with all we're waking class, people wake up. This is the morning.

You know how. You stay up so late and you get up that morning. When you get out of bed, when you get out of bed, fixing and go to work, you can't hardly find your Monday morning shoes. You woke up this morning, woke up this morning, with the Monday morning. I couldn't hardly find, I couldn't hardly find,

I couldn't hardly find my Monday morning shoes. Monday morning blue, Monday morning blue, Monday morning blue, say stars through my phone. So he was a major influence on the way that Beck plays guitar. I mean, it seems like more so than anyone else. I feel like Mississippi John Hare was probably one of the biggest influences. Beck mentions him specifically in that interview.

And, you know, back when he was starting out as a teenager, he pretty much did nothing but Mrs. John Hurt guitar pickings, you know, like he would play a Mississippi John Hurt song, but then just improv his own lyrics on top of it, you know, because it's, it's your standard blues, you know, you can sing whatever you want on top of that kind of stuff. Yeah, there's so many songs on One Foot in the Grave that sound so much like that style of guitar picking. So I wasn't planning on doing another song from One Foot in the Grave, except for just kind of as for the outro, but I kind of want to find another one to play real quick.

Actually, you know what? Let's just do the first song. So this is, again, a song from Beck's album One Foot in the Grave, which came out in 94. Here's the first track on the album. It's called He's a Mighty Good Leader. So there you go, man. straight up raw gritty blues yeah i mean so so that was who's the singer there that was back bro that was back singing that was back singing oh man yeah so who was the guy that did the that he collaborated

with on that album you're talking about that really good looking dude on the left yeah what was his role in the album um he sings along with him sometimes okay i figured that was him singing No, that's back, dude. And there's a few other people that pop up on that and sing along with him. But I believe the main other collaborator with him is his name's Calvin Johnson. So Mississippi John Hurt. I'm trying to think, man, there's so many great songs from him. I kind of want to play another one before I play the next artist.

There's a song of his called, well, they're all standard, so I don't think he wrote most of these. There's one called Shorten Bread. Shortening Bread. Yeah, dude. It's only two minutes. Let's just play the whole thing. It's so good, man. Let's do it.

Put on Skilly, put on to me. Tomorrow going to cook some shortening bread. Whole band I love short and bread. The whole family love shortening bread. Two little boys laying in the bed. One time, no one another one said, My mama gonna cook some shortening bread. Put on the skillet, put on the lead.

Mama gonna cook some shodding bread. Find the love shodden bread. That chicken off that lead. Oh, he's shooting that shodding bread. Brat have a lot of shodding bread. Man, that just puts a smile on my face. Every time I'm listening to that one. I mean, I just want to, I want to try some shortening bread now.

Some shortening bread. Do you know what shortening bread is, dude? Isn't it like a really, like, simple, like way to make bread? Like an easy way to make bread or something like that? So there is an article on shortening bread on Wikipedia because it's a folk. song dates back to the 1890s um shortening bread he didn't write that song no uh shortening bread refers to a fried batter bread made of cornmeal flour hot water eggs baking powder milk and shortening so yeah anyways uh moving on so um in that interview he also mentions a song called

John Hardy, which is another traditional American folk song. And he kind of strums along and sings like the first line or something from the song. And man, there are so many really awesome versions of this song recorded that go way back. As far back as 1924. and I found out that the Carter family covered this song. So this is another one of those American folk music groups. It's actually as a family. So they are considered the first country music stars, basically,

with the success of their recordings. They recorded between 1927 and 1956, a guy named AP and then Maybell and Sarah and they're the Carter family. So it's AP, his wife, Sarah, and then his sister-in-law, Maybel. So Sarah and Maybel are sisters. AP's the guy that married in. She, the way, dude, the way Maybel plays guitar, man, it's so fucking cool. Her finger picking is really fucking dope.

Yeah. You remember the episode, our Kings of Leon episode. Who was that female blues singer, guitar player that we talked about? Oh, man. Because she was, her guitar playing just blew me away. Sister Rosetta Tharp. Yeah. That is her name.

That song was up above my head. Yeah, dude. All right, so let's play. So this is Carter Family's version of John Hardy. So the full name is John Hardy was a desperate little man. He shot in mind. That's just how the song goes. There's no change up.

you know, it's just, here's a verse. I'm going to strum a little bit, and then here's another verse. There's no, like, there's no chorus or anything, but. That's blues, man. Blues are just simple and, you know, that's what made it so accessible to everybody, you know. Yeah, they're just, they're just telling the story. So, yeah. So, you know, these are, if these are Beck's influences, I don't think in a million years,

if you, if you listen to mellow gold or O'Delae, Would you ever think that, you know, if you had to guess, hey, who do you think Beck was influenced by? I would never have come up with stuff like. And, you know, that's what makes, you know, that's one of the things I'm always interested in. Like, you know, my favorite artists, who were they influenced by? Like, who are some of their favorite bands when they were starting out? And, you know, it's interesting to think that Beck started out doing this sort of of fulky guitar stuff like that and where he ended up, you know?

Well, it seems, it seems to me that, that more than anything, it was, it was the, the guitar stylings that he fell in love with, you know. And then his own kind of style. You think of the very, the very opening line that you hear on, on loser, is that slide acoustic guitar. Yep. Yeah, dude. So what I want to know is what, what electronic influences.

did backcap, you know, because he had to have been influenced by somebody. Well, next time we cover a Beck album, we'll have to dive into that, dude. Yeah. So, yeah, that's it. That's what I got for us. That's our sidetrack.

That's it for this week. And, dude, you know what next week is, right? Next week is going to be an awesome episode, man. I'm so excited. Legitimate guest. our first track-by-track episode, and we're going to talk about radioheads in rainbows. Perhaps we're going to go deeper than we've ever gone with any album.

So I am stoked. I think it's going to be a doozy for sure. And that's how we're going to wrap up our radioheadathon or Radiohead Paloosa. So that'll be the last radioheadhead. album we cover for a while. But yeah, man, it's going to be great. It's going to be a blast. I am stoked. So as always, hop over to our website, no filler podcast.com. There you can find our show notes and we'll throw in some videos, clips from concerts and other stuff. Anything else that we think you might enjoy that pertains to the episode.

And yeah, subscribe to us on iTunes. Anywhere else that you listen to your podcasts, we should be up on there. And so I'm going to fade us out with another song from One Foot in the Grave. So as I mentioned during our C-Change episode, there's a song that he wrote for One Foot in the Grave called It's All In Your Mind. it actually pops up on the Japanese there's a few bonus tracks on the Japanese release of One Foot in the Grave.

And this is a song that he ended up re-recording and he put it on Sea Change. So I'm going to fade us out with just a little bit of the version of that song that you hear on One Foot in the Grave. So thank you as always for listening. We will talk to you next week. week. My name is Quentin. My name is Travis. Take care now. Well, it's all in your mind. Well, it's all in your mind. It's all in your mind. It's all in your mind.

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