Twisted Tales
Chops Not Chaps
Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek finished his third collaboration with slide guitarist Roy Rogers shortly before he died. He and Rogers had just signed off on cover art when Manzarek left for Germany, where he succumbed to bile duct cancer May 20 at the RoMed Clinic in Rosenheim.
The two began their collaboration at the behest of their mutual booking agent. “It was the agent that suggested we play together at one of Ray’s solo shows,” Rogers told Good New Music by e-mail. “So, Ray invited me to sit in on his gig — I think it was in Healdsburg (near San Francisco). It was just one of those special situations that some real ‘magic’ happened between us playing together onstage for the first time. We were ‘sympatico’ from the beginning! That is when we became friends and started performing a lot as a duet after that.”
“Twisted Tales” follows 2008’s instrumental acoustic duet album “Ballads Before the Rain” and 2011’s full-band “Translucent Blues.”
“It was a natural transition from duet to band,” Rogers explained, “because both Ray and I wished to expand the sound and rock it up. The new material we were working on at the time (‘Translucent Blues’) called for a rhythm section. … ‘Twisted Tales’ is really a continuation of that, but musically — it is very different.”
“Twisted” is more jazzy and less swampy than its predecessor but still rooted in blues-rock. Like “Translucent,” it features lyrics by San Francisco beat poet Michael McClure and late poet/songwriter Jim Carroll, with Carroll contributing to four songs and McClure to three. Of those seven, “Just Like Sherlock Holmes,” “Eagle in a Whirlpool,” “Cops Talk” and “Street of Crocodiles” were performed live in 2003 by the Doors of the 21st Century (Manzarek, former Doors guitarist Robbie Krieger and vocalist Ian Astbury of the Cult). At least some of those appear to be newer versions here, with Rogers credited as writing or co-writing music for two of them.
Rogers brought two new compositions to the table (“The Will to Survive” and “State of the World”) as well as one he wrote with Donna Johnston (“Shoulder Ghosts”), a lyricist with whom he has worked in the past.
“I first met Roy back in the ’80s, when he was touring with John Lee Hooker,” Johnston, a retired school teacher in Connecticut, told GNM. “As I watched the band, I was completely blown away by this slide guitar player whose dexterity put him into the mutant zone as far as I was concerned. … In the ’90s, after another friend suggested I combine my love of music with the writing skills everyone always said I had, I tentatively began writing lyrics and shared them with Roy, looking for a thumbs up/thumbs down on whether or not he thought my efforts were worth pursuing. He gave me a thumbs up, and when I later gave him ‘My Lost Home in Your Arms’ (from 1998’s ‘Pleasure and Pain’), he read it and concluded on the spot that he would do something with it. And that was the official beginning of our collaboration.”
Excellent lyrics aside, “Twisted” is nothing but high adventure musically. “Holmes” is heavy on “L.A. Woman”-style barrelhouse piano and spiced up with organ. Manzarek takes the lead vocal, but Rogers lets his slippery slide do the talking.
“Eagle,” included in spoken-word format on last year’s live Manzarek-McClure collaboration “The Piano Poems,” is done boogie-woogie style here, with Rogers handling lead vocals.
On “Cops Talk,” Manzarek and Rogers trade off singing Carroll’s verses (about conversations between dirty police officers) but join in unison for the chorus. The guitar mosty sits this one out, deferring to a jazzy solo by saxophonist George Brooks.
“Street of Crocodiles” boasts an appropriately Cuban beat, with Manzarek and Rogers again trading off on vocals. But hearing a slide guitar on a tropical arrangement makes the song even more of an unexpected pleasure.
As Johnston, who went on the road to sell merchandise for the two “Translucent” East Coast tours, said in her e-mail: “These two intelligent, well-read world travelers shared so much — a love of film, an appreciation of classical music, common roots in the blues, and, above all, a mutual sense of respect and trust. … I think a big part of their willingness and ability to be so courageous in pushing back boundaries was precisely because their extraordinary friendship created a safe and comfortable environment for that exploration.”
Tracks
1. Just Like Sherlock Holmes
2. Eagle In A Whirlpool
3. Cops Talk
4. Street Of Crocodiles
5. American Woman
6. Shoulder Ghosts
7. The Will To Survive
8. Black Wine/Spank Me with a Rose
9. State of the World
10. Numbers
Total time: 44:42
External links
artist’s website
amazon.com
iTunes Store
