I'd put you in the movies, if movies were mine to make

All the articles I read before/during this last tour made mention of some secretive movie project. Well...this made its way onto YouTube, which led to some Googling, which led to Mike Viola's site, specifically the news section on March 14, 2007:

I’ve been back and forth from LA writing songs for a new movie called Walk Hard: the Dewey Cox story. It’s being shot now so I hesitate to give too many details, but…basically it’s a spoof bio pic. It pokes fun at movies like Ray, Walk The Line, Great Balls Of Fire, The Buddy Holly Story. Not poking fun at the music, but how the movies all follow the same storyline tragectory. So… they needed lots of songs for this thing. Marshall Crenshaw wrote the title track and there were a few other writers involved too like Van Dyke Parks. Most of the songs I co-wrote with Dan Bern, one of the best writers I’ve ever worked with.

Here's the IMDB page for the movie, which was written by Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan.

I have it on good authority that DB and Paul Kuhn were recording some music this week for Jonathan Demme's (Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia) upcoming Jimmy Carter documentary as well.

(thanks to mix me a molotov for the link in today's post!)

Maxwell's

Dan Bern at Maxwell's on May 25, 2007: Best night ever? Quite possibly. It was great to be with friends and other fans, and we spent some high quality time with the man himself afterwards. Not to mention the fantastic Paul Kuhn (apparently it takes three people to make a cellocaster, and the one he plays is still the only one there is. I'm pretty impressed by the whole deal).


Set List I'm Not the Guy / Cape Town / Krautmeyer / Baby Bye Bye / Carried Away / President / Gambling with My Love / 73 / Kurt / Alaska Highway / Breathe / Goin' Down to Texas / Blowin' in the Wind
Encore: Alright Kind of a Girl / Tiger Woods / Soul / Jerusalem


(Thanks to M for the pictures, L for the post-concert provisions, K and E for being there too, and J for facilitation)

New (old) Show Online

Someone's posted a short 2003 show from Mariaville, NY on the Internet Archive. Yay for new Dan Bern on a Wednesday.

Here are some more pictures from last week--they're on Facebook, will the link work? I don't know.

(On a non-Dan note: I'm watching the Monica Goodling hearing online at work--what's with these young, blond, republican women? Are they all consciously aspiring to be Anne Coulter? If so...why?)

4 days, 3 shows

So, I managed to make it to three Dan Bern shows last week: Wednesday at the Birchmere, the late show at Puck in Doylestown, PA on Friday, and the East End Cafe in Newark, Delaware on Saturday. Apparently word had gotten out (though not to me) that the Birchmere show was going to be more of an opening set--as it was, it was pretty much a greatest hits set. Which I guess, for people mostly not there just to see him, is the way to do it. And the East End Cafe more than made up for any disappointment (how have I not gone there to see him before?! Oh right, I've spent most of my DB-crazy years in Minnesota. I definitely will go to East End shows from now on).

I recorded the shows straight through, and will post tracks, if I can ever figure out how to break them up into tracks...for now, set lists!:

The Birchmere (May 16)
Jerusalem
Tiger Woods
Black Tornado
God Said No
President
Breathe
Suicide Room
Past Belief
Marilyn
Blue Highway


Puck (May 18, 10 pm show)
Birdhouse in Your Soul (They Might be Giants cover--he really just played the first few lines, then decided, I think, that it was too high. He was sick, poor guy!)
Crosses
I Need You
Baby Bye Bye
Suicide Room
Too Late to Die Young
Carried Away*
Cowboy
Past Belief
Marilyn
Wasteland
Albuquerque Lullaby
Cape Town
Airplane Blues

East End Cafe (May 19)

One Thing Real
I Need You
Joe Van Gogh
Breathe
Jail
Cure for AIDS
New American Language
Baby Bye Bye
Mexican Vacation
Airplane Blues (or, the tune to Airplane Blues, with some words about whiskey and rhyming...)
Trudy
Feel Like a Man
Being Alone (how excited was I to hear this live?, ps)
Things Break Down*
Going Down to Texas*
Carried Away*
The Cold War*
Come Along*
Encore:
Black Tornado
Virginia Tech Song*
Suicide Room
Run Away
Clouds
While Circling Chicago...
House of the Rising Sun
Birdhouse in Your Soul
Marilyn

*new songs, I don't know if these are really the titles

Probably the highlight for me was Mexican Vacation--I'd requested it Friday night, to which he replied "I thought I was the only one who liked that song," and didn't play it. So when he told the story of me requesting it on Friday, and played it, on Saturday, it made my weekend. (Listen to the most beautiful version ever of Mexican Vacation from November at the Attic on the Internet Archive)

I'll make it to one more show on this stint, at Maxwell's in Hoboken. Is it Friday yet?

Pictures from: Puck, Puck and the East End.

Start the Day with Music

Often, while bored beyond belief at my less than glamourous legal assistant job, I think about starting a blog. Today is the day. I saw Bernstein last night at the Birchmere, and figured since the two things I spend most of my time at work doing are reading blogs and searching the internet for Dan Bern recordings, clearly the only thing to do is combine the two. Welcome.

"Let's start the day with music and wake up everybody who's fool enough to try sleeping before its getting light out." -Toledo, New American Language