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Bill Frisell: Good Dog, Happy Man

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Elektra Nonesuch
Released: 1999.05.18
Time:
 61:51
Category: Folk jazz, New Acoustic, Americana
Producer(s): Lee Townsend
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.billfrisell.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2016
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Rain, Rain (B.Frisell) - 2:45
[2] Roscoe (B.Frisell) - 3:43
[3] Big Shoe (B.Frisell) - 3:49
[4] My Buffalo Girl (B.Frisell) - 8:50
[5] Shenandoah for Johnny Smith (Traditional) - 6:09
[6] Cadillac 1959 (B.Frisell) - 6:16
[7] The Pioneers (B.Frisell) - 5:16
[8] Cold, Cold Ground (B.Frisell) - 9:01
[9] That Was Then (B.Frisell) - 5:29
[10] Monroe (B.Frisell) - 4:19
[11] Good Dog, Happy Man (B.Frisell) - 2:33
[12] Poem For Eva (B.Frisell) - 3:41

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Bill Frisell - Electric & Acoustic Guitars, Loops & Music Boxes
Greg Leisz - Pedal Steel, Dobro, Lap Steel, Weissenborn, National Steel Guitar & Mandolin
Wayne Horvitz - Organ, Piano, Samples
Viktor Krauss - Bass
Jim Keltner - Drums & Percussion
Ry Cooder - Guitar

Lee Townsend - Producer
Noel Grey - Production Assistant
Louisa Spier - Production Assistant
Judy Clapp - Engineer, Mixing Engineer
Jeffrey Shannon - Assistant Engineer
Adam Muñoz - Assistant Engineer
Greg Calbi - Mastering
Barbara de Wilde - Design
Michael Wilson - Photography

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Recorded at O’Henry Sound Studios, Burbank. Mixed at Different Fur Recording, San Francisco. Mastered by Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound, NYC.



Bill Frisell's release Good Dog, Happy Man further explores the musical ideas expressed in two previous recordings for Nonesuch, Nashville (1997) and Gone, Just Like a Train (1998). Good Dog, Happy Man reunites guitarist/composer Frisell with the rhythm section featured on Gone, Just Like a Train, bassist Viktor Krauss and drummer Jim Keltner, as well as multi-instrumentalist Greg Leisz (Joni Mitchell, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, k.d. lang) on dobro, mandolin, Weissenborn, National steel guitar, and lap and pedal steel guitars, and Wayne Horvitz (Zony Mash, Naked City, The President) on Hammond B-3 organ.

With the addition of Greg Leisz and Wayne Horvitz and fuller orchestrations than on other recent recordings, Good Dog, Happy Man breaks new ground, blending Frisell’s warmly refined sound with such indigenous musical elements as country, blues, bluegrass, and rock. L.A. Weekly, in reviewing Gone, Just Like a Train, said, “What Frisell has begun to fashion on his latest releases is a sensibility as unmistakably American as that of Charles Ives or Duke Ellington, with the harmonic and tonal complexity of both and a seductive melancholy all his own.” The New York Times called Gone, Just Like a Train Frisell’s “simplest and best recording in years.”

The 11 original tunes on Good Dog, Happy Man celebrate Frisell's emergence as a composer who has created a genre unto himself. As with his preceding two albums, he continues in pursuit of a music that reveals a wide emotional range and that ultimately defies categorization. The one non-original composition on the album, a rendition of the traditional folk song "Shenandoah," is performed here with special guest Ry Cooder and dedicated to the guitarist Johnny Smith.

© 2016 Nonesuch Records



Mild mannered guitar icon Bill Frisell's drift toward the country end of the spectrum could be viewed as a departure from his jazz/new music persona, but it's all of an evolutionary piece. He's merely lifting certain strands out of the fabric of a voice dating at least as far back as his early '80s debut, In Line (ECM). Like Chet Atkins, Hank Garland and other plectrists, Frisell dismisses lines of genre demarcation between jazz and rootsier forms with a sly grin.

Here, he reunites with bassist Victor Krauss and drummer Jim Keltner, heard on Gone, Just Like a Train, and brings along Greg Liesz (whose slide and pedal steel sounds nicely accent Frisell's own quasi-slide naunces) and Wayne Horvitz, for B-3 texture. Frisell himself is often unplugged,along with his signature, painterly ethereal-toned electric style. The title tune is a mostly acoustic fingerpicking etude, structurally weirder than it sounds, while the sullen boogie tune "Cold, Cold Ground," with its tweaked blue notes and sonic detours, is music for a roadhouse on Mars. His version of "Shenandoah," with fellow guitarist Ry Cooder-a heady softy in his own right-is an instant classic, worth the price of admission. The closing "Poem for Eva" is a beautiful and offbeat melody laid atop that timeless pop chord progression, I-VI minor-IV-V, proving once and for all that context is everything.

The question remains: Is this a jazz album, per se? Do a few well-placed dissonances, angular riffs, or artful rhythmic displacement qualify it as such? No, it's just the latest, logical extension in the saga of Frisell's maturing voice. Triads galore, sweet tunes, organic funkiness, and a general laconic grace keep the music rooted, while also searching. What else could we ask for? Good Dog, Happy Man is a recording full of gentle things, bolstered by innate smarts and rugged musicality.

Josef Woodard - September 1999
© 1999–2015 JazzTimes



Every note Bill Frisell plays - or suggests - offers an impressionistic soundtrack of the American vernacular. It is jazz only in the way improvisation is a reflection of sensibilities. But Frisell's music is really not just jazz. It swings over a wide swath of American musical forms: jazz, rock, grunge, blues, country, folk, bluegrass, even commercial orchestration. Call it a sort of 'sound Americana': peculiar, individual and unusually compelling.

Good Dog Happy Man ideally documents another set of Frisell's colorful, commanding tone poems. It's something of a story in progress, one that took root in 1994's This Land and became clearer on 1997's Nashville and 1998's exquisite Gone, Just Like A Train (bassist Marc Johnson's outstanding Sounds of Summer Running probably counts too).

Frisell, early in his two-decades career, offered a wholly individual sound, buffering a certain dissonance with a poetic melodicism. But, here he shows how he's evolved into one of the most melodic and memorable of stylists — etching out something that is often pastoral, elegiac and, at times, oddly patriotic. These are the moods filmmakers co-opt for onscreen archetypes reaching pivotal moments and branded in all those TV ads for investment firms and prescription medicines. But Frisell keeps it honest. He sets the mood and offers the soundtrack. The listener is free to conceive his or her own impressions.

Here, bassist Viktor Kruass (Allison's brother) and drummer/studio legend Jim Keltner return from last year's Gone trio aided by studio guitarist Greg Leisz on pedal steel, Dobro, steel guitar and mandolin and, in a welcome return, fellow Seattle resident Wayne Horvitz on organ. Frisell sticks mostly to electric or acoustic guitar and his 'meditations' are often buoyed by intriguing counterpoint: Horvitz's spikey organ comments on "My Buffalo Girl" and "Cadillac 1959," the brief primal utterances of "Roscoe" and the dream-team coupling with Ry Cooder on the lovely "Shenandoah."

Frisell's melodies are quite often little more than sustained riffs, at once simple and perfectly structured and at other times, remotely familiar (for example, the Pretenders's "Back on the Chain Gang" is vaguely at the heart of "That Was Then"). Frisell is the only real notable soloist. As if in a Steve Reich construction, Frisell rarely strays far from the melody, or outside of the prevailing mood the unit conspires to create together.

The point is the story - reflections on feelings and meditations on moods. Darkness and light. A sense of honor with a sense of humor. It's hardly America as sketched by Louis L'Amour, Jim Thompson or a score of other American writers. Frisell isn't coming out of irony, bleakness, sarcasm or slight. Good Dog, Happy Man comes out of Frisell's evident love for things American and an encyclopedic grasp on expressing the ways Americans sense things. A triumph indeed.

Douglas Payne - July 1, 1999
© 2016 All About Jazz



No doubt pleased with his countrified direction on Gone, Just Like a Train, Bill Frisell gives us a lot more of basically the same thing here - only with expanded numbers in the ranks. Bassist Viktor Krauss and drummer Jim Keltner return, now accompanied by Wayne Horvitz's understated organ and piano; Greg Leisz on an assortment of fretted instruments, including the Dobro, pedal steel guitar and mandolin; and on "Shenandoah," Ry Cooder's atmospheric guitars. The first tracks of Good Dog, Happy Man pick up right where Gone, Just Like a Train left off - low-key, perhaps too low-key - but tracks like "Big Shoe" and "Cadillac 1959" add a bit of swagger to the lope and "Poem for Eva" sports the best tune. Again, Frisell often captures a loose, evolutionary jamming quality in these sessions, playing the country accents off of his jazz sensibilities. Unlike its predecessor, though, you can't imagine this being recorded on a backwoods front porch, for there are some production tricks and distant-sounding electronic loops that give away its Burbank studio origins. Purists on either side of the jazz/country divide are hereby warned to back off so that the rest of us can enjoy this.

Richard S. Ginell - All Music Guide



The live-simple equation reached in the title of Good Dog, Happy Man might lull the listener into believing that Bill Frisell's continuing vamp on his Nashville band is reaching for the quaintest sounds possible. But in truth, this mellow-opening recording is as reaching and full of yearning as any of the guitar great's other releases. He draws in the full-on bluegrass sound of Nashville with the more rock-hard crunch of that redoubtable effort's successor, Gone, Just Like a Train, which debuted longtime session drummer Jim Keltner as an ideal foil for Frisell's squishy guitar end runs around flashiness. Keltner's back on board, as is bassist Viktor Krauss (who began his Frisellian foray on Nashville), but the band has grown to include Wayne Horvitz on Hammond B-3 for several steamy tracks, Greg Leisz on steel guitar and mandolin, and Billy Cox on second six-string guitar. Frisell marks each tune with a uniquely decentered stamp, giving off a comfortable aura for new listeners and sneaking in gobs of weird twists and phrases. In addition, he samples in layers of squiggles in spots, making Dog sound like an ageless pop gem as well as the boundary-busting bounty that it is.

Andrew Bartlett - Amazon.com



Good Dog, Happy Man is the 11th album by Bill Frisell to be released on the Elektra Nonesuch label. It was released in 1999 and features performances by Frisell, Greg Leisz, Wayne Horvitz, Viktor Krauss and Jim Keltner with a guest appearance by Ry Cooder on guitar. The Allmusic review by Richard S. Ginell awarded the album 4 stars stating "Again, Frisell often captures a loose, evolutionary jamming quality in these sessions, playing the country accents off of his jazz sensibilities. Unlike its predecessor, though, you can't imagine this being recorded on a backwoods front porch, for there are some production tricks and distant-sounding electronic loops that give away its Burbank studio origins. Purists on either side of the jazz/country divide are hereby warned to back off so that the rest of us can enjoy this".

Wikipedia.org



Au ja! Herr Frisell! Schön, was Sie da wieder gemacht haben. Also, "Nashville", diese Platte mit den Musikern aus Nashville, hat mir ja schon sehr, sehr doll gefallen. Hier ist das alles noch viel schöner und schöngeistiger. Schon der Titel, jaja: ist der Hund gesund, freut sich der Mensch. Und greift zur Gitarre, die vorne auf der Veranda steht. Und während der liebe Köter im Garten buddelt, klimpert mensch vor sich hin. Und die Sonne scheint auf seine Füße. Und dabei, Herr Frisell, sind Ihnen doch sicherlich diese "Nebenbeiakkorde" eingefallen. Für diese sanften Bluesschmonzetten, die nur Sie spielen dürfen. Dieses Weinen in Ihrem Ton, das leichte Schwanken, die ehrliche Unfertigkeit. Nun gut, früher war alles noch weniger perfekt, da wurde mal so richtig zur Jazzharke und ordentlich in die freie Kiste gegriffen, aber mensch wird ja nicht jünger. Herr Baron hat auch schon mal doller aufs Fell gebraten - ich will jetzt nicht zu plakativ werden, aber langsam glaube ich, Sie sitzen viel lieber auf der Veranda als in irgendwelchen verqualmten Clubs. Stücke mit so viel Raum wie in der offenen Prärie sind wohl eher Ihr Ding im Moment. Da ist auf einmal so viel Platz, daß eine Bläsergruppe ihn nur zumanschen würde. Also gerade mal Band plus Hammond. Verstehe ich. Es ist wie in der Whiskey-Werbung: alles braucht viel Zeit, und das wird sich zum Glück nie ändern. Klingt auch so. Einfach, einfach schön. Vielen Dank für diese Konstante, Bill. Ich hab's lieb.

Carsten Sandkämper - © Intro - Musik & so
 

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