Running On Empty

The road and sky collide, with drums

A songwriter comes up with a brilliant idea, comes up with half a dozen striking new ways to capture the sounds. And yet the most haunting parts of "Running on Empty" turn out to be the ones that contain no music at all.

I keep thinking about the first 30 seconds before the start of the opening (title) track. Bear in mind that "Running" is a fantastic song, certainly the best rocker JB ever wrote, both thoughtful and fiery, captured in a performance that is both stripped down and simply blazing. Holy shit. But it's that silence that sticks with me.

Actually, it's not silent at all. The band is onstage, gearing up to play a new tune. You can sense that the lights are low, you can hear the crowd get restless. Voices bellow song titles. "The Road and the Sky!" a woman shouts. "Ready or Not!" a guy honks. Other voices form a kind of wordless chorus - the sound of expectancy, of demand. Finally another guy finds the bridge between impatience and resignation. "Play what you want!" It's like a signal. A foot stomps, a hand chunks a rhythm on tamped guitar strings.  Then.......Boom.

A two-chord riff for piano and guitars, a simple bass line, David Lindley's jet-engine slide guitar. The drums pounding a hard stutter rhythm. Blazing and roaring.

"Lookin'' out at the road rushing under my wheels. . . .I don't know how to tell you all just how crazy this life feels..."

Remember the place where the road and the sky collide? This is it. And the point of "Running on Empty," the album, is to find a way to tell everyone else how it feels to be the man on the road. The poet as object of desire. The troubadour on the run. JB came up with a brillliant way to do just that: by recording an entire album of new songs on the road - onstage; offstage; in the hotel; on the bus. The whole experience, from the good (the glow of the stage) to the bad (cooped in the bus on an all-night ride) to the hideous (wired so tight on coke that even the stupidest ideas seem brilliant).

Brilliant in concept, less so in execution, "Running on Empty" is both a huge step forward and a lurch toward self-destruction. Funny how those two things can happen at the same time.

 Remember last week when I said that I'd be gone for a week and would post more Jackson Browne retrofit pieces when I returned? Turned out to be all true, except for the part where I get back to posting the second I got back. . . Give me a day or so, and we'll have "Running on Empty" re-digested, de-constructed and posted for your blog-reading pleasure. In the meantime. . . a series of fun facts:

1. Jackson Browne's real first name? Clyde. Which makes me wonder: If he'd stuck with that (which is in some ways far cooler and rock-y than the archaic/literary/formal Jackson) would he have turned into a different kind of writer/musician? I'm thinking a heavier backbeat and grungier guitars and far fewer acoustic musings on sleep's dark and silent whatever. Clyde Browne rocks.

2. When hiking through a dense Hawaiian jungle everything seems slightly surreal and full of meaning: Thank you, "Lost"!