Steve Young - 5 albums

Steve Young (All Music Guide)

A singer, tunesmith, and purveyor of what he dubbed "Southern music" -- a brew of country, folk, rock, blues, gospel, and Celtic styles -- Steve Young was a songwriter's songwriter, an acclaimed performer whose work found its greatest commercial success in the hands of other artists and earned him praise from the likes of Waylon Jennings, Townes Van Zandt, and Lucinda Williams. Born in Georgia and raised throughout the South, by his teens Young was already playing guitar and writing his own songs. In the early '60s, he moved to New York City and became affiliated with the burgeoning Greenwich Village folk music scene. After a brief return to Alabama, where he'd spent time growing up, he settled in California in 1964.

On the West Coast, Young found work as a postal carrier while striking up friendships with the likes of Stephen Stills and Van Dyke Parks. A tenure with the psychedelic folk unit Stone Country yielded an eponymous 1968 LP, and a year later, Young issued his solo debut Rock Salt & Nails, a country-rock excursion featuring cameos by Gram Parsons, Chris Hillman, and Gene Clark. He moved to Reprise in 1971, and with the title track of that year's Seven Bridges Road, he offered perhaps his best-known composition, popularized through a series of covers by artists like the Eagles, Joan Baez, Rita Coolidge, and Ian Matthews. He had another tremendous success when Waylon Jennings covered "Lonesome, On'ry and Mean" in 1973, turning it into a signature anthem of the outlaw country movement; later on, Hank Williams, Jr. notched a hit with "Montgomery in the Rain." As for his recording career, Young released 1975's Honky Tonk Man on the tiny Mountain Railroad label before his songwriting success earned him a shot with RCA. The result was two excellent albums, 1976's Renegade Picker and 1978's No Place to Fall.

Despite his success as a songwriter, Young flirted with the charts but never rose beyond a devoted cult following. He spent the majority of the 1980s touring the world, garnering a reputation as a standout live performer, and released occasional records like 1982's To Satisfy You, 1987's Look Homeward Angel, and 1990's Long Time Rider, the latter two of which were recorded in the Netherlands. The trend continued into the next decade, and in 1991 he issued his first concert recording, Solo/Live, an acoustic collection summarizing his career to date along with pop and soul covers like "You Don't Miss Your Water" and "Drift Away." A second LP on Watermelon, Switchblades of Love, followed two years later and continued his creative renaissance, but he fell silent for much of the rest of the '90s. In early 2000, he finally returned with Primal Young on the Appleseed label. Songlines Revisited, Vol. 1 appeared in 2006.





Rock, Salt & Nails is a highly regarded cult country-rock-folk record, in part because some of the supporting musicians are highly regarded pioneers of the form; Gram Parsons, Chris Hillman, and Gene Clark all appear on the album. While it is not among the very best of such late-1960s hybrids, it is pretty good, though too low-key to command the kind of wide interest (by cult standards, anyway) that someone like Clark or Parsons did. Young has an unusually convincing reedy voice, never overdoing the melodramatics, yet establishing a dramatic atmosphere that admits hints of blues, soul, and swamp pop. When distant, mournful strings are added to his more anguished and somber songs, like "7 Bridges Road," "Holler in the Swamp," and "Kenny's Song," there's an effective multi-dimensionality rare in early country-rock. Other songs, particularly the covers of old country tunes, are less striking. It's an interesting release, though, that's quite rewarding for fans of more adventurous country-rock fusions.


http://rapidshare.com/files/1137220/Steven_Young_Rock_Salt.zip


Lonesome On'ry & Mean

This collects the highlights from Young's first six albums, including the original versions of his three most famous songs: "Seven Bridges Road," "Lonesome On'ry and Mean," and "Montgomery in the Rain." Although Young's earliest work is a curious (but enjoyable) mix of Steppenwolf and the Moody Blues, beginning about the time of his third album Seven Bridges Road, Young's original voice establishes itself, and from that point the writing, as well as the performances, are compelling. Young never enjoyed any commercial success himself, but this shows why he was considered with such high regard among his peers.

http://rapidshare.com/files/1014628/Steve_Young_Lonesome_Onry___Mean.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/1016410/Steve_Young_Lonesome_Onry___Mean.part2.rar




Along with Look Homeward Angel, Long Time Rider is Steve Young's most obscure and difficult-to-come-by recording. It is also one of the most lyrically adventurous, intimate, and musically minimal and moving albums he's ever committed to tape. Issued in 1990, this is a eight-cut, 45-minute album that deals with acceptance, willingness, and determination to forgive others and yourself, and ultimately to find compassion. While this may seem unlikely territory for one of American music's true outlaws, it is at least as "real" as the inner landscape of the man who wrote "Lonesome, On'ry and Mean" decades ago. A new age cowboy Young is not. "Behold the Stars" is a gorgeous acoustic guitar ballad that looks deeply into eternity as an expression of the moment: "Behold the stars/See how they haunt/The dreams we have behind these bars...." And then there's the devastatingly beautiful "War of Ancient Days," where the song's protagonist goes back to his former wife and adversary and commits to throwing down his sword: "I didn't come here to see who gets the best deal/You can have the stuff I will survive/But I came here to wage war on the poverty/That I see in our eyes/And I'm here to pay the tallest price/For now I'm willing to change my ways/And I'm here to lay the wreath of peace at your feet/And end this war of ancient days." "Have a Laugh" and "My Love" were later recut for the album Switchblades of Love, and these versions are significantly different. Virtually every cut here is an exhortation to inferiority, self-examination, letting go, and expressing the release of that baggage as a real life, hard-won kindness. "Only You" is a song Bruce Springsteen wishes he could have written. It has a loping rock & roll melody directness and an arrangement that makes Young's words come off as love for another accepted as a truth reborn everyday. The album ends with the title track, a blues disguised as a gospel song. Young offers recounts of his alcoholism, his surrender, and his new beginning full of weariness and gratitude. He expresses his willingness to sing for the others who "can't get no lower and they can't get no higher," and a vow to be a "Long Time Rider" if that is what his heart in response to the universe so requests. There are too few recordings that get to this depth, with this kind of attention to detail and honesty. It's simply a masterpiece of ravage and rebirth.

http://rapidshare.com/files/1140484/Steven_Young_-_Long_Time_Rider.rar




Steve Young's records are always exercises in paradox and Switchblades of Love is no exception; perhaps it creates the rule. This album -- with a stellar cast that includes Benmont Tench, Katy Moffatt, Steven Soles, Van Dyke Parks, David Miner, and David Kemper, as well as Young's guitar-slinging son, Jubal -- is the most realized and perfectly executed record of his career. Its songs are about confrontation with the falsehood of self; mortality and how it cycles into the eternal; and responsibility, love, and violence -- oftentimes these themes collide within the same song, poetically, spiritually, and above all, humanly. There are few albums that kick into gear with the intensity that this one does. "Have a Laugh" is a mariachi-tinged folk song with an irresistible melody that philosophically spells out the importance of loving/exhibiting kindness toward ourselves by watching our minds and keeping a sense of humor about us at all times. Immediately after, he launches into the title track, a confrontation with the horrors and blessings we commit and give freely in the name of love. Young sends the song out to both victims and perpetrators as well as lovers, and ultimately turns the responsibility for change upon himself: "Me I think I'm gonna go out and put my switchblades down/Way on down in the ground/No applause, there won't be a sound/Just a rusty spade down in that honest earth/I will bow down to the stars/And ask forgiveness for the scars/That I have made/In the name of love." With Jubal's razor-wire soloing (this kid smokes) scorching the body of the tune, this isn't merely a hymn of atonement, it is a prophetic anthem of the human condition. Other standouts include "Angel of Lyon," a song about a man who gives up everything to follow a vision and regrets nothing, despite the fact that he gives up his life in order to find it. There's also a fine cover of Dave Olney's "If My Eyes Were Blind" and "Midnight Rail," where Young makes his most autobiographical statement, yet tells the story of many more, "Well I am a midnight rider/I ride a midnight rail/And I've seen a glimpse of heaven/And at least half of hell," yet transforms this into a stunning paean to hope and goodwill. Soles' guitars and Crowley's keyboards (mimicking bagpipes) entwine with Young's baritone to create a textural grace. It needs to be said that like his other albums, Switchblades isn't an easy listen. As the critic and promoter Dave Brogren said: "Those looking for release here will be disappointed; they'll only be confronted with questions." That's about as fine an endorsement there is.


http://rapidshare.com/files/1144068/Steve_Young_Switchblades.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/1142102/Steve_Young_Switchblades.part2.rar




Steve Young has a big voice. It is the type of voice most shower dreamers wish they had, comprised of volume, sustain, range, and emotion. Young, however, is also an accomplished songwriter, though, typically, his albums tend to be half covers and half originals. This album, released 30 years into his career, finds Young's vocal pipes as strong as ever and his songwriting just as sharp as when he penned such classics as "Seven Bridges Road" and "Montgomery in the Rain." And, true to form, there are six originals to five covers. The opening cut, "Jig," is a Young song about the dance (jig) of life. The "jig" is universal and individual: "If you wanna get it on with me/you gotta listen to my tune/If you want me to get it on with you/you gotta play your tune, too." It is a subtle, solid beginning by a sure, old hand. Cut two, "Scotland Is a Land," is a Young-penned song anthemic enough to become Scotland's national song (or some such). Young's powerful baritone, accompanied by the erstwhile Van Dyke Parks on accordion, is hypnotic as he proclaims, "Scotland is a land/where I might want to die." For a cracker from North Georgia, Young sings of Scotland with the conviction of a native. And that is Young's strength as a songwriter -- he is instantly, and naturally, believable. Of course, it doesn't hurt that his booming voice nails the listener to a wall. Young's take of "East Virginia" evidences another of his strong points -- he can play an acoustic guitar as fast and deft as if playing a banjo. In fact, on up-tempo burners, Young frequently plays banjo lines on the guitar, pumping like some crazed-though-on-the-one piston. The tempo of his vocal on "East Virginia" is only half the tempo of his breakneck picking, creating a unique tension and emphasis on what he is singing. It is as attention grabbing as a steady gaze across a bustling room. Young has successfully plied this technique in the past on such songs as "Travelin' Kind" and "The White Trash Song." Nothing misses on Primal Young. Other originals, such as "Heartbreak Girl," "Little Birdie," and "No Longer Will My Heart Be Truly Breaking," are so distinguished in composition and performance, one once again wonders why Steve Young has never been placed on an equal pedestal with the likes of Merle Haggard or Waylon Jennings. The covers, including a devil-may-care, shirttails-out rendition of Tom T. Hall's "The Year That Clayton Delaney Died" and a warbling, soul-drenched take of Lloyd Price's "Lawdy Miss Clawdy," are so splendidly bent to Young's style, he could easily be their composer. Thirty years in and Steve Young is still "primal."

http://rapidshare.com/files/1101751/Steven_Young_Primal_Young.zip

You'll find more of Gram Parsons here:
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