Judee Sill

One thing that's amazing about her live is that the records have a lot of enhancements and overdubs, yet she manages to get the same level of intensity with just her voice and a guitar or piano.

ya'll like mary mccaslin?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnEXe2gGU94

I really, really like that LP ("Way Out West") but haven't heard or got around to hearing any others. Where next with Mary?

I just heard Heart Food for the first time. What an Incredible record.

Really wishing that it wasn't expensive to get a copy on vinyl right now. Even the reissue is really hard to get.

Tim, I love the Old Friends album as much as I do Way Out West. Sunny California is her major-label debut and also quite good.

https://www.discogs.com/Judee-Sill-Abracadabra-The-Asylum-Years/release/1720277

That's a really good compilation that has a lot of really worthwhile bonus material and the price is right.

Thanks for the link. I might have to get that for now. Feels like I'm discovering my next big musical obsession.

judee looks like an aunt who incidentally also grew up in california in the 70s and was obsessed with religion and was a bit of a hippy

must've been something in the air at that time

You got it, also a bit of a junkie, as she forthrightly confessed/professed. What do yall think of that Laura Veirs song about her on the album w Neko Case and kd lang? So far (only heard a few times, on the stream, which can filter sound), seems like music & lyrics sail in candid, vivid and undersold, but maybe a little too much of that last--?
I also really like xpost Mary McCaslin & semi-reformed ramblin' hubbie Jim Ringer's duet album, The Bramble and the Rose.

I do like the Way Veirs simulates Sill's aw-I'm-gonna California accent throughout, but the song is a bit slight. I do think it would've been far swankier if it had tried to emulate Sill's compositional method, which was really sophisticated and mathematical--voice leading and stuff, real structural stuff that hung together and all that. This doesn't do that, but it's not bad at all, just vague musically. Judee Sill really was a composer. I don't know anyone who does that kind of thing now--does Rufus Wainwright count? I've had moments where I rate her up there with Joni Mitchell, she's the classical writer and Joni's the one who breaks the rules.

Yeah, xgau didn't and doesn't get into most folkie singer-songwriters, or *anything* to do with religion, as a matter of course---but back in the 70s, her music and even her visions or what she made of them got to him, as much as possible:

Judee Sill [Asylum, 1971]
It's her devout hope that we'll "savor each word like a raspberry," and I do mean devout--Sill yearns for the day when Christ the Bridegroom will "take all the gentle away." Thank god her music is spiritually unpresumptuous--pythagorean melodies and spare, delicate chamber-folk arrangements that set off her homespun drawl (the lyric sheet favors spellings like "cuz" and "gunna"). Wish I could also say her lyrics were tart as raspberries, but they remind me more of peaches--fuzzy. B

Heart Food [Asylum, 1973]
Beneath a lusher surface, her voice enriched with overdubs and less idiosyncratically accented, Sill has become a real militant. Christ is a "Soldier of the Heart," a "Vigilante": although "the chosen are few" we're supposed to "see how His mercy shines," presumably because he saves any of us sinners at all. Last shall be first or not, this is pretty repulsive as ideology, yet until the kyrie eleisons at the climax I find it paradoxically seductive. Say she's a mad saint instead of a sainted madwoman and make room for another rock crazy. B+

Rufus Wainwright does write well at least some of the time, and can see how he attracted Van Dyke Parks as arranger, but his literal long-windedness tends to distract me: he can hold a note forever, so he does---not always; I love some of his tracks---but often.
In a less polished but surefooted way, the 20-year-old Julien Baker---from a Southern fundamentalist family, out lesbian, still Christian---sounds like one of Sill's pilgrims, seems like; the live stream from Newport got and held my attention even while I was puttering around in a lot of mental clutter. Here's a post of the whole set, and yeah some Judee appeal:
http://www.npr.org/event/music/488354526/julien-baker-live-in-concert-newport-folk-2016

Andy Partridge is a huge Judee fan, and once I got into her stuff, it made total sense.

Heart Food is indeed an incredible record, and yeah, it's totally not hard to see why Partridge is a fan!

I don't take her Christianity at face value fwiw, although I haven't like thoroughly analyzed it to see if I can back that up.

Striking read

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/judee-sill-songwriter-profile-1130869/

she had such a crazy life. she would be a good subject for a biopic.

Good stuff. Thanks, Ned.

i loved this--

Another afternoon, they were laying on the deck in Sill’s backyard, right below an enormous beehive. Souther was nervous about getting stung, and Sill said, “Oh, for God’s sake,” handing him two Percodans. She welcomed the bees to land on her. “She’d talk to them and call them ‘little poo-poo face,’” Souther remembers. “The whole time she lived in that house, she’s the only one who never got bit.”

and the story about selling a car in mexico for heroin. she really did see it all.

her stepdad sounds like he was a true monster. and alcohol abuse not exactly helping anyone out.

that was really good. the doc will be great, i'm sure. cool anecdote from andy partridge about "the kiss" being his favorite song (and also one he can't listen to).

also, it sent me off on a nice walk down David Blue lane, like a nice parting gift

Hadn't seen that, thanks! I do still remember some lines from her encounter w Grover Lewis, who helped establish and maintain RS Real New Journalism cred very early on (it's also in at least one of his collections):

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/judee-sill-soldier-of-the-heart-233809/

It's always interesting to see the nuances of someone's life when you've only heard the outlines. Like hearing she died "a lonely junkie's death" in liner notes and shorter articles, and then seeing her eating a sandwich at a family wedding or reading about a walk with a friend she took shortly before her death. Different sides of a life that don't fit with the cliches.

Wow, what a great article. But also incredibly sad. I always hear her music as very affirmative and hopeful, but next time I listen it may have more of a bittersweet tinge.

i'll definitely watch the documentary.

definitely a major "this person should have been huge" artist, perhaps the best example of this i can think of. although seems unlikely it might have saved her.

the kiss is an all-timer for me

This is all I want to listen to atm

I'm lookin' so hard for a place to land,
I almost forgot how to fly

It's all so great but here are my very favourites based on having the two albums on rotation these last two days? Anything essential I'm missing?

Dreams Come True is very good. Not better than the two proper albums, but I still highly recommend it if you need more Judee.

co-sign dreams come true. "i'm over" is maybe my favorite song she did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1BGIz92xQ

I found Dreams Come True a bit of a letdown, years passed and I forgotten I'd ever heard it but I should give it another spin.

The disc of demos/home recordings on Dreams Come True is wonderful

"Emerald River Dance" tears my heart in half every time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzs_QXTisyA

Apart from Dreams Come True, there's demos, alternates, and live tracks found on the CD reissues. It can all be found on Abracadabra, The Asylum Years. There's one outtake, "The Desperado," from Heart Food. Vinyl nerds can find these tracks on the Songs of Rapture and Redemption 2lp set. I'm glad I have these different versions but I never find myself reaching for them.

Live In London: The BBC Recordings is pretty good.

Chariot Of Astral Light by Tommy Peltier features Judee on some songs and while it's not bad, it does feel like the bottom of the barrel. There's a nice interview with Tommy where he talks about his relationship with Judee. I should give it another chance.

That judee sill documentary I helped out on (as music supervisor) is nearly done https://t.co/onbJqaaoD4

— Pat Thomas (@PatThomas1964) July 2, 2022

Guardian article on the new Judee Sill documentary, including a teaser trailer

Is it easy to see this doc?

Just saw a young charming singer who grew up a block away from where I live who did a Judee Sill cover- while wearing a picture of Dolly Parton hanging around her neck, who she also covered- and it was great! Actually did two Judee Sill covers along with two Roches covers. Can’t now recall what the first Judee Sill tune she did was, the second was “Enchanted Sky Machines.”

That’s my kinda show

I wish it had been recorded.

One of The Roches covers was “The Hammond Song.”

I had been hoping a Martha Wainwright song would be played but added “or a song by someone related to her” and The Roches sort of count, do u see?

I didn’t even tell you about the sing-a-long encores of “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” and the Tapestry version of “You’ve Got A Friend.”

What's her name?

Ali Dineen. Think she has maybe one album and a few other things out now. They seem pretty good but the live experience was really something extra.

3) The artist behind this song is the phenomenally talented Ali Dineen.
I was her 7th grade English teacher.
So imagínate how proud I am.

— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) February 8, 2017

Yes, apparently she went to Hunter, I guess.

I’m kind of equally if not more impressed that she has the likes of Richie Barshay playing gigs with her.

Also, there's some kind of folksy scene at a place called Jalopy House in Brooklyn that I never heard of that she seems to be associated with, some other people from that place made the journey last night from their borough to ours.