Good Dog, Happy Man
1 Rain, Rain 2:45
2 Roscoe 3:43
3 Big Shoe 3:49
4 My Buffalo Girl 8:50
5 Shenandoah (for Jimmy Smith) 6:09
6 Cadillac 1959 6:16
7 The Pioneers 5:16
8 Cold, Cold Ground 9:01
9 That Was Then 5:29
10 Monroe 4:19
11 Good Dog, Happy Man 2:33
12 Poem for Eva 3:41
All compositions by Bill Frisell except Shenandoah
(traditional)
Wow. This album ranks among Frisell's best, up there
with Quartet and Go West. Jim Keltner and Viktor Krauss are
still lending their considerable talents to the sound, but adding to the
rich textures of this album are Greg Leisz on pedal steel and dobro, and
Frisell's old New York City pal Wayne Horvitz on organ. With the addition
of two new members to the trio from Gone, Just Like A Train, the
sound becomes much denser and much less clearly defined. Frisell's use
of loops and music boxes and Horvitz's samples create sounds that float
in and out of the pieces like thoughts that have come and gone.
This album is not at all the guitar vehicle that
Gone, Just Like A Train was, but rather a true melding of five sounds.
It is sometimes hard to pick out who's who on the album 
because
everything is so seemlessly blended together. In the liner notes to Songs
We Know Frisell said that he lives for moments when he is playing the
same note as someone else and he can't pick out his own sound from the
mix. There are plenty of those moments for the listener on this album.
The writing on this album is close to the writing
from Nashville, simple and beautiful melodies that echo American
songwriting in country and rock veins. It also has the wistfullness of
that album, a bittersweet tone of memory. The epic sounding "Rain, Rain"
and "Roscoe" is something to wonder at: it is wistfulness and nostalgia
that has been woven into music.
The album is the furthest progression and exploration
of the ambient themes in Frisell's albums where he explores gentle and
beautiful textures over folk themes. It is Frisell's gift that he
can use unusual techniques to make wholly new music that sound like time
tested standards.
Bill Frisell electric and acoustic guitars, loops and music
boxes
Greg Leisz, pedal stell, Dobro, lap stell, Weissenborn,
National steel guitarn mandolin
Wayne Horvitz organ, piano, samples
Viktor Krauss bass
Jim Keltner drums and percussion
Ry Cooder electric guitar, Ripley guitar (on Shenandoah
only)
Recorded at O'Henry Sound Studios, Burbank, 1998
Home
// Albums
Index // Links
// Liner
Notes