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| Practical Miracles |
| band: Ashley & Arlos |
| Album: More Than Faith Alone |
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We should say unto all and I'll say it again
It's not just to win, shake a hand, make a friend
We who are pure at heart somehow might see
There's still light in the world, come rejoice with me
It's a new day
A new world order, a brand new day
A change of mind for the human race
~ Curtis Mayfield (1942 ~ 1999) from New World Order (1996)
(Curtis Mayfield song New World Order from a hospital bed paralyzed by a stroke.)
Curtis hopes that his music inspired people and he wanted his songs to be uplifting. He wanted people to think about themselves and the world around them, making this a better place for everyone to live.
~ Marv Heiman after the death of Curtis Mayfield in 1999
I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be ever'-where - wherever you can look. Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise, and livin' in the houses they build I'll be there, too.
~ Tom Joad from Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath
When is the last time you heard a pop song infused with that prophetic gospel born of pain? I felt this way listening to Curtis Mayfield's 1996 album New World Order and I feel it in More Than Faith Alone. There are lots of clever cynical voices out on the radio, and a few hopeful messages worth hearing. There's something special here. It's rare. This album is a cry for help, for change, for love written and sung by consummate songwriters. There's a heart beating behind these chords, modulations, bridges and sing-along choruses. There's soulful craft on this album approaching the skill and connected presence of St. Mayfield. These songs come from personal pain and a longing for a new world order. I haven't had a steady diet of hope these past few years.
When I started to see the scope of this album, I asked Terry Ashley to tell me what frame of mind they were in writing this music. The quoted paragraphs below are from his email in response.
We witnessed our beloved country, not only seemingly losing heart but heading more and more into chaos day by day. Most of the great writers that we have been inspired by write about the world they live in and how they are moved by its forces.
This album has nine songs written from Texas starting two years ago. It was a dark cloudy 2006, when the seeds of a world collapse were sewn and growing, war had become the preemptive policy, and a brittle nationalism had replaced the hope America could lead by example. Ashley & Arlos are asking for something tangible, active and meaningful. This album asks for more than hope with the challenge to find a way. We can't be paralyzed by the circumstances of our lives. The time for excuses is over. It's time to live by More Than Faith Alone.>/i>
Arlos and I have always tried to reflect our lives, others and our environment in our songs and lyrics so "Miracle," "Where in the World" and "Calling on the Angels," all seem to come out of that. "Where Did We Go Wrong," though it was written as a fallen love song seemed to have more to do with the times than a relationship gone bad.
Hey Curtis! You listening, man? We got a black President now. Ain't that cool? There's lots of hope on TV and people talking to each other at the United Dairy Farmer's like we are all Americans and proud to be so free. I want to introduce you to a couple of white boys from Texas: Terry Ashley and John Arlos. I just listened to their album and thought of you. Okay, it's just a demo with nine songs, but these guys are so good at pop and rock music they sound like soul to me. I think they got it right. Hope won't feed anybody. Hope won't end the war. Mr. Mayfield, they are asking for action. These impatient Longhorns are asking the world to change. They write love songs that make it clear they have lost as much as I have, and that makes me feel more and a little better. I think we are going to be alright, Curtis. We're sure gonna try. We talk about change every day now. It's gonna take a miracle to change the world.
My brother Bob, even helped on a couple of the songs adding to the clarity of the lyrics and I am glad that when I listen to the songs, I still feel a central point of Positive energy. Hopefully others will as well. Though the songs are not polished by top producers yet groomed and cleaned up for top forty placement, the songs were blessings to us. A great number of friends, turned out for the sessions. I remember meeting Eric Daub, our keyboardist at the Church across the street from my apartment that I moved into when I came to Austin and Eric, is a crazy talented keyboardist, music professor, and friend. Bobby Zinner, our California guitarist is a pure soul, who has traveled many music highways, starting years ago as a staff writer for Pat Boone. Shelly Silverman, our drummer was a prodigy at the early age working with everyone from Jefferson Airplane, to Prince.
There's more to this album than meets the ear. Ashley & Arlos have written a lot of songs, and they know all the tricks, intervals and techniques. They've got some powerful musicians supporting them. But the real news is this one is from the heart. I feel good about life listening to this album. These songs aren't sweeping the bad news under the rug. There's plenty of darkness on this album, but they are reaching for the stars. When I'm in a dry place, this album gives me hope for the world, and makes me want to stay. This is a desert island album you might want to take with you if you had to choose. I like what I feel when I listen to this album. It's hope.
This ol' world
Really has it's moments
Every star has it's share of fame
Things won't change, till we're beyond obsession
The latest buzz
And the headlines of the day
Gonna take a miracle to change this world we live in
Takes more than faith alone to turn this world around
Gotta get back to right, we can make it happen
Gonna take a miracle.
~ From Miracle by Ashley & Arlos
THE SONGS:
1. MIRACLE might be a damn fine theme song for post-election America. "Takes more than faith to turn this world around" is such a prescient truth I have to wonder if there is a touch of prophecy at work here. "Gonna take a miracle to change the world we live in." All the hope and faith in the world won't change anything while we sit back watching our TVs. Ashley & Arlos nail this one. "Takes more than faith to change the world." Whatcha gonna do about it? What are we going to DO? "Truth is the light / Love is the way / To set us free / Do you believe in miracles? / I believe in miracles." The miracle prayed for in this song is for understanding and action. "Things won't change, till we're beyond obsession / The latest buzz / And the headlines of the day."
A&A wrote about hope and faith when a boatload of bad news was coming due. After the pageantry and power of this last election, let's work together. "We are the miracle."
2. WHERE DID WE GO WRONG is a soul song straight up. "Bad news travels fast" begins this sweet sounding hard look at despair. It's that time when you know something is so lost you might wonder if it ever existed. "Someday I'll find the answers / To the questions of my heart." This song embraces the loss of self in separation. If two were one then what's left now? Who am I now? Everything we see and do is different in the presence of a loss. This song is accurate to the problem of pain in a failed relationship, but these feelings seem to fit a larger context. "There's no need to tell me / It's a crying shame / I can feel it in each tear filled sky / and with every drop of rain." This sweet song of longing might apply to that larger loss of meaning in a world gone wrong. There's something missing, I dare say. Maybe it's just me.
3. CALLING ON THE ANGELS may be a page from the agnostic hymnal of the way things are now. "Life that I'm living / Always keeps me guessing / If I had the answer / Would I even know?" There's a desert on the cover of this album, and a couple of linked rock climbers on the back. There's not a lot of falderal in the production of this song. There's a clear voice and a host of instruments supporting quietly. Even the keyboard mutes it's organ to provide a little wind beneath the singer. "Promises of yesterday / Echoes that might have been / What do they mean to me? Can I let 'em go?" This quiet confusion is a state of grace. Perhaps we listen better when we have questions. A drowning man will take anything that floats. This song is calling on the angels. "So many questions / Will I ever know?"
4. HOLD ONTO THIS FEELING begins when "morning rises above the darkest night." The subject of the song is hope and a smile from above and beyond. That back story is pretty dark. "Outside the road leads somewhere / You give me a reason to stay." The light in this song shines brighter in a dark place. "Lived my life never lookin' back / But you give me a reason to stay." Perhaps love is that thread keeps us from falling off the world. "If I could stay forever / I'd stay here, feeling this way / If all we have is forever / I'll hold onto this feeling." Maybe I have a dark spot that responds to this song, but I'm moved by the statement: "My place is here." I'll do my best to "hold onto this feeling."
5. WHERE IN THE WORLD has some of that ubiquitous inspiration of Tom Joad's speech at the end of Grapes of Wrath. The song says, "Where there's love then I'm about it / Wouldn't want to live without it / Need you both night and day." That's transcendent. "Where in the world / There's a star that's shining / A ray of hope, through this troubled land / I'll be there, standing right beside you / Shining, like a diamond in your hand." That may not be a viable policy or even a plan, but I'll take that inspiration any day of god. Once again, Ashley & Arlos have taken a love song and stretched it so far it embraces the world. "A ray of hope through this troubled land / Shining like a diamond in your hand."
6. HARD TO WALK AWAY FROM THE MOON might benefit from the proverb: "Love is like the moon, when it does not increase, it decreases." Shakespeare warned about this in Romeo & Juliet: "O swear not by the moon, thí inconstant moon, / That monthly changes in her circled orb, / Lest that thy love prove likewise variable." The observation this song makes is starkly accurate: "No matter how far up I climb / It's never far enough I find / To escape these thoughts of you / Hard to walk away from the Moon." The song slips into a blues for a line or two: "We're all trying to get over / Make it through another day." This song is true to my own experience after there's no point in looking back. There's no justification, and the pain is constant. "Hard to walk away from the Moon." Keep climbing. The sun is just over the hill.
7. I'LL SEARCH THE WORLD slips from blues to elegy in a soulful song of separation. There's a sense of longing in this song beyond some common wishing-you-were-here ballad. I've missed a few people this way, but they are long gone. This is longing writ large. "Oh, I tried to let you go / But it's too late / I feel you inside / With all of my hear and my soul." There is a loss here I've felt for the dear departed. "I've never known anything like this restless feeling / Hard to breathe, there's no escape in sight." I'm reminded of Theodore Roethke's prescient line: "What falls away is always and is near."
8. I'M ONLY HERE TO BE WITH YOU has some of the optimistic feel and some of the melody of the Polyphonic Spree in a song of dedication. Longing is beautiful in this song. The melody drifts through changing thoughts to a elegiac pronouncement of love. "Hold me, hold me / Always knowing, all of those feelings are true / Slowly growing, always knowing / Whenever hidden from view/ Only here to be with you."
9. FADING is a bluesy number written from empathy and understanding. As Terry Ashley revealed to me in an email: Fading was kind of a tribute to John Lennon, and about the many kind of addictions that we as human easily fall prey to. "Feel I'm fading, fading like a ghost." There's a touch of Lennon in the chord progression. Life is worth living through the pain. "In the middle of darkness / There's a beam of truth / Waiting there for you, there to see you through / There's a hop, there's an answer / There's a way." A little bit of Lennon's famous echo expands the voice to an appropriate place. Skip the anesthetic for a day or two, and feel something. If you feel, you are healed.
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