She had infiltrated Greenpeace, which was involved in protests against nuclear tests in the Pacific, and passed on information which was used to place mines on the ship’s hull. At the time France was one among many nations which saw nuclear weapons as an essential part of a state’s military scheme, and nuclear testing by many countries had been ongoing since the Second World War.

In New Zealand, Labour had come to power the previous year and one of its key policies was to make New Zealand nuclear free. Against a backdrop of agitation around the globe for nuclear disarmament, Labour leader David Lange took up an invitation to appear at the famous Oxford Union in March 1985 to argue for the moot, “Nuclear weapons are morally indefensible”. His speech, available online, is a rousing argument against the inherent inhumanity of nuclear weaponry and showcases his formidable intellect and wit.

New Zealand musician Tiki Taane took audio of Lange’s speech, and other audio samples, and used them in his track David Lange, You Da Bomb from his 2009 remix album Flux. The song is a slyly powerful indictment of nuclear weapons and of technological advance at the expense of peace and a celebration of wit, wordplay and oratory.

I normally like to hear a song before seeing its accompanying video so someone else’s visual representation of the music won’t cloud my own response, but in this case I’d recommend going straight to a fan-made video Taane has uploaded to his YouTube account and enjoy sound and image together.

The clip begins with the voice of the commander of a US warship which was in the Marshall Islands in 1952 to observe the first ever test of a hydrogen bomb. “Welcome aboard . . . we’ll soon see the largest explosion ever set off on the face of the earth . . . one of the most momentous events in the history of science. . . . We’re in the Thermonuclear Era.”

Taane’s careful selection of these extracts, over an edgy and driving drum and bass beat, points to an unhealthy lust for progress unmoored by ethics that has all too often been an aspect of the scientific endeavour. “I know you’ll join me in wishing this expedition well,” says the commander, but his voice segues into Lange saying forcefully, “Rejecting the logic of nuclear weapons does not mean surrendering to evil.” Lange is black and white in his view: the use of nuclear weapons is evil — no two ways about it — and he and his nation wanted no part of them. “Rejecting nuclear weapons is to assert what is human over the evil nature of the weapon.”

A bomb falls from an aeroplane (the massive bomb was in fact set up on land) and a countdown leads to still-shocking images of mushroom clouds: the atoll was obliterated in a three-mile wide fireball.

Footage and audio from anti-nuclear video and public service announcements is also included, along with a Vice Admiral’s assertion, “I am not an atomic playboy”, which Taane repeats several times to suggest that perhaps for some military leaders warfare like this might in fact be something of a game.

The extracts of Lange’s speech go on to assert that the rejection of nuclear weapons — the rejection of being guilt-tripped into being a part of a nuclear alliance — is not
cowardice on the part of the New Zealand people, but is in fact a reaction against “the moral position of totalitarianism which allows for no self-determination . . . exactly the evil we are supposed to be fighting against”.

The music fades out into noises of bomb blasts and images of explosions at around five and a half minutes before the audio comes back in unaccompanied for Lange’s immortal line to his opponent: “Hold your breath just for a moment — I can smell the uranium on it as you lean towards me.”

Not a mere gimmick or throwaway tune, Taane’s song is an enjoyable and thought-provoking work that remains relevant — for me, particularly in the way Lange addresses ideas of good and evil.

In this election year, as the politicking heats up, let’s pray for politicians who have a clear sense of good and evil, of morality and immorality, of the truth of who the human person is. Let’s go and talk to them in their offices, let them know what’s important to us, hold their feet to the fire.

Let’s do it with the same verve, wit, boldness and courage that Lange displayed in his speech and with the same energy and creativity Tike Taane used in his song.

Stand up, say our bishops in their 2017 Election Statement, “uphold the common good of our nation, choose wisely, and your vote will be a blessing for our nation”.

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In the clarity of its challenge, it expresses the feelings of many: “Jesus, Jesus, there are those that say they love you / But they have treated me so goddamn mean.” That’s refreshing: there are plenty of artists from similar backgrounds who’ve left their faith behind them with scorn and derision and no further thought, but Gundersen is more interested in thinking through it and in asking, “What is it all about? Is there anything here of any value?” He tackles the big questions of life boldly and carefully. Oh Death references the classic country song of the same name and is hymn-like: “From dust and ashes I have called you / And dust you shall become in the end / . . . Oh death / Where is your sting?” Middle of June is deep and rich: “And peace is a ladder up to the clouds / That I’m wishing I could climb but I don’t know how” and “We come and we go / Losing everything just to gain it back again.”

The music is sparse — guitars and violin — and sits somewhere amidst the genres of country, rock and folk. Not folksy though — Gundersen’s voice is strong and direct and the guitars have grunt.

Saints and Liars was followed by another mini-album and two full-length records, and the exploration of life and its purpose has continued across all of them. Although at times the lyrics veer a little close to what poet Dana Gioia has called “the vague and sentimental spiritual pretensions of so much contemporary art”, they are more often quite clear and direct.

From 2011’s Family, the song David: “I don’t wanna be a proud man, just wanna be a man / . . . I wanna hunt like David, I wanna kill me a giant man / I wanna slay my demons, but I got lots of them.” The title track from 2014’s Ledges: “I want to learn how to love / Not just the feeling / Bear all the consequences / . . . And give it all back / And be forgiven for all I’ve done.” Carry the Ghost, from 2015, has the song Empty From the Start which again critiques Christianity but yet comes close to the heart of the Gospel: “Cause I’ve been finding / . . . To truly love someone is the closest I have come to truth.”

There’s a yearning in Gundersen’s music — see the repetition of “I want” in the lyrics above — that appears in a lot of contemporary music. “Am I giving all that I can give / Am I earning the right to live?” he asks. I like this kind of restless art, these searching lyrics, as they help me think through  my own restlessness — but only to a point. Then I remember St John Paul II’s words: “It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness, he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness . . . . It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal.” Here’s the challenge for Gundersen, and for us: to go beyond the self-reflection and the questioning and the yearning, forwards to repentance and conversion in humility and faith.

This year we celebrate 100 years since the appearance of Mary to three children at Fatima, Portugal. Her message in a nutshell was that same challenge: to repent and convert.

The answer to Gundersen’s difficulties with Christ and his Church, and the way to discover the full picture of the truth that he has glimpsed in “truly loving someone”, is to have the faith and love of Mary in the midst of doubt, hurt and disillusionment. Following her as the model disciple walking in radical love, faith and hope to the heart of Christ is surely the path to the answers to every question.

“Dear young people,” said Pope Benedict in 2005, “the happiness you are seeking . . . has a name and a face: it is Jesus of Nazareth. . . . With Mary, say your own ‘yes’ to God, for he wishes to give himself to you.”

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There’s nothing like a live concert. You can’t replicate the experience on a stereo or screen, no matter the quality of the footage or of the technology. There’s something special about being in a room full of fans who have all come ready to enjoy the music together. If the music is good and true, and the audience is not merely seeking escapism or some kind of unthinking submersion into noise and light at the expense of engagement with the real world, then there’s something good happening: a bunch of diverse humans getting together to listen to stories, and to engage in a conversation with the artists.

Dave Dobbyn (Photo Credit: Spid Pye)

Dave Dobbyn’s recent gig in Putaruru as part of his “Slice of Heaven: 40 Years of Hits” tour, in support of his latest greatest hits collection, ticked the boxes for me. A full house in a not-too-big venue, great acoustics, and a comfy seat — and gingerbread loaf from the ladies in the foyer at half-time.

A word on that greatest hits album, his third best-of. Apart from three songs from last year’s Harmony House, there’s nothing on the recent collection that’s not on Beside You from 2009. That earlier album has thirty-nine songs from thirty years thoughtfully divided into two “sets”, and is a better buy: pair it with Harmony House and you’re all set.

An icon like Dobbyn is in an unenviable position when playing live. A sizeable chunk of the audience will know the hits but not much else, and have come to hear those favourite songs. They greet them with hoots and hollers, slapping the backs of the people next to them, fists and beer bottles in the air, and “Yes! Yes! Yes!” from the guy behind me. But a performer might want to be playing a lot of newer stuff or older stuff that is less well known: they have to find a balance between being true to their own artistic aims while delivering a set that won’t leave hit-hungry fans disappointed.

Dobbyn cannily laid his cards on the table, giving a rundown on the night — a first set that would be “a bit subdued” followed by an intermission after which the band would “come back rocking”. There was still a kind of restlessness in the room during that first bracket — “Is this a rock and roll show or what?” I heard someone say at half-time — and a fair amount of chatter audible over the quieter parts of the music, but giving the audience a heads up likely meant that this was less than it might have been.

Some highlights: the gorgeous Belltower, with loping bassline to the fore and lovely backing vocals, the poignancy of It Just Dawned on Me and I Can’t Change My Name from the mid-90s album Twist, and the expansive recent love song Tell the World in the first set. Dobbyn sat at the keyboard while his band played their parts next to him: Jesse Sheehan on guitar, Jo Barus on bass and Ross Burge, surely one of New Zealand’s best drummers, on risers and in sunglasses at the back.

In the second half, Language, Waiting For A Voice, and Just Add Water. Songs exploring love and loss, humane and heartfelt. It’s interesting to see motifs across Dobbyn’s body of work, inclu ding the recurring Christian imagery and references.

Dobbyn’s anecdotes and jokes between songs were well-received and there was some wisdom and insight amongst them, including this short sermon: “Take care. Love your families. Stop mucking around. God bless you.” (“There’s no God here, mate,” said the guy behind me with a sneer.) Dobbyn also paid heartfelt tribute to two Kiwi legends who’ve recently left us, Murray Ball and John Clarke.

I’d be happy to see a whole show like the first set — it’s not that I don’t like the well known songs, just that Dobbyn has a raft of good tunes and I’ve heard the hits a million times. I’d love to see another tour like the one Dobbyn did with Don McGlashan a few years back (I missed it), where they played each other’s songs in acoustic arrangements. Having said that, the Putaruru gig was a great night — laughs, stories, great tunes. A celebration of the best of contemporary pop music and of the live music experience.

Grab a mate and get out and see a gig: here are a few tips for upcoming tours and one-offs in the next month or so.

Paul Ubana Jones, The Lemonheads’ Evan Dando, Ben Ottewell of Gomez, Sigur Ros, Ryan Adams, DJ Shadow, Shayne Carter and Don McGlashan together, Tami Neilsen’s “Songs of Sinners” tour, Flying Nun legends The Chills and jazz festivals in Wellington and Christchurch.

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Dobbyn describes the album as a “record of hope“, and on it he indeed comes across as a man who is content, optimistic and hopeful. While there’s exploration of the “hunger and hatred” of much of the human experience — Tell The World suggests “it’s too late to tell the world; its heart has hardened”, and other tracks have the lines, “You get so lonesome sometimes / . . . The lie of disconnection” and “Infidelity darkens my way” — the songs ultimately are declarations of so much hope and joy.

In that, the album’s a fitting secular soundtrack (if that’s your thing) to this Easter season (or half-secular really: Dobbyn is certainly not in the “contemporary Christian music” category, but he isn’t shy about being openly Christian in his lyrics). Motifs of fire and water pop up throughout the album, Easter imagery familiar to any Christian and certainly to a cradle Catholic and believer like Dobbyn. (He seems to have little time for the Church now, but talks of meeting God in 1998, after a fairly typical rock and roll lifestyle. In Ric Salizzo’s book I Know This To Be True, he said: “[After that] I figured I could set my clock to eternity . . . . His peace — not my peace, his. That’s the only peace there is.”)

Waiting For A Voice opens the album and could be a song for Easter Saturday. Through edgy instrumentation and Dobbyn’s urgent vocals, it describes a kind of vision: “I saw a stranger on the opposite shore / Cooking up a meal for me . . . / I heard Elijah . . . / Get into the water man, and lose your sin . . . / Heaven is waiting for a choice”. Catechumens around the world this Easter Saturday responded to the risen Christ on the shore, that one-time stranger, now friend, and to his offer to dine with him, to “come and see”. They took the challenge to get into the water, and in that are a challenge to all of us in the pews to continue making those little daily choices to follow Christ.

Country-tinged Singing Through The Storm picks up on this: “You’re half way to heaven my friend / You’ve got to have a change of heart / Singing through the storm / Walking through the fire / Just to let love be your one desire / And no brighter flame / Than living in the name of love”. What encrusted habits in my heart need to change so that love — for my wife, for my kids, for the people in my small daily circles — is my one desire? “In the twilight of life,” said St John Chrysostom, “we’ll be judged on how well we have loved.”

Fire again, solar this time, in Ball Of Light — and commitment: “I gotta keep my face to the Son / My hands are to the plough / I’m taking my piece to town”, and also in Burning Love, one of a number of love songs on the record. Dobbyn and his wife Anneliesje have been married for more than 30 years: “What a ride / how many songs you’ve given me to write / . . . The many years will fall from up above / ‘Round the fire of our burning love.”

The 37 short minutes of Harmony House, with exultation, poetry and beauty in both lyric and music, are a triumph.

Dave Dobbyn did a nationwide tour on April 2017.

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Funny how the same piece of music can produce different responses in different people. I was head waiter in an awful little restaurant in Brisbane and playing my own choice of music as we got ready for service was one of the things that kept me going as I worked out my time there. Eva Cassidy’s Live at Blues Alley was on the stereo that evening: I’m not sure what track was playing when the chef made that request, but each tune fair drips with heart and soul and for me are anything but sad.

Cassidy throws herself into each song wholeheartedly, making it her own as her soprano voice soars and swoops while her backing band groove effortlessly behind her. I think this is what I like so much about this disc — it’s full of heart and soul and rings so true amongst the landscape of 21st century contemporary music that too often resembles a desert wasteland.

I’m reminded of St Paul’s words in his letter to the Colossians: “Whatsoever you do, do it from the heart, as to the Lord, and not to men” or as another translation has it: “And do all that you do with all your soul.” There’s a purity and strength in Cassidy’s music that perhaps points out the creative work of the Spirit in the background as Cassidy offers these songs to her listeners.

People Get Ready is a gospel-tinged belter that starts slow and builds to a full head of steam like the train referenced in its lyrics: “People get ready / There’s a train a-coming / You don’t need no baggage / You just get on board / All you need is faith”. Honeysuckle Rose, one of my favourite jazz tunes and a sassy love song, is delivered with a similar swing. “Every honey bee fills with jealousy / When they see you out with me / I don’t blame them, goodness knows / My honeysuckle rose.” Al Green’s Take Me to the River and Irving Berlin’s Cheek to Cheek are also toe-tappers. “Heaven, I’m in heaven / And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak / And I seem to find the happiness I seek / When we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek.”

She doesn’t just stop at faith and love and happiness though, of course: what chanteuse worth her salt would? Tall Trees in Georgia is a tale of love lost: “Sadly walking through the thicket I go / The sweetest love I ever had I left aside / Because I did not want to be any man’s bride.” The band sits this one out, leaving just Cassidy’s keening voice and acoustic guitar.

An American song from the 90s – Sting’s Fields of Gold — and a French one from 1945 — Autumn Leaves — follow in a bracket of slower tracks. (These might have been the songs that stirred the young chef’s heart so.) “The falling leaves drift by my window / The falling leaves of red and gold. / . . . I miss you most of all my darling / When autumn leaves start to fall.”

Folk singer Pete Seeger’s Oh Had I A Golden Thread closes the album. This song’s lyrics teeter on the edge of sentimentality, but Cassidy’s voice, over a warm bed of bass and Hammond organ, imbues them with vigour and truth. “Oh, had I a golden thread and a needle so fine / I’d weave a magic spell of rainbow design / Bind up this sorry world with hand and heart and mind.”

The lyrics speak of courage and innocence and Cassidy delivers them unapologetically and with force. This commitment is apparent throughout the album. She’s not afraid of the occasional vocal mis-step or of appearing vulnerable or passionate as she pursues her work.

I look forward to seeing some of this same truth and beauty, this heart and soul, at the upcoming 55th National Jazz Festival in Tauranga at Easter: the line-up looks good. Soulman Paul Ubana Jones will be there; Julia Deans and friends will present jazz versions of Kiwi pop classics; young people from around the country will compete in big bands and combos. Performers and audiences will swim in the same stream that Cassidy did: jazz at its best is a torrent of fun and ferocity in equal measure and can help us “bind up this sorry world” as we get stuck into life “together, dancing cheek to cheek” fuelled by the good music we love.

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Go and look it up online now, have a listen, and then come back to this. “Hello Dan, it’s Joe here, I hope you’re keeping well,” sings the narrator in the first line. “It’s the twenty-first of December, and they’re ringing the last bells.” It’s not immediately apparent who Joe is, or who “they” are, but the next lines put us in the picture. “If I get good behaviour, I’ll be out of here by July.”

He’s in jail, separated from home during one of the year’s main family celebrations. The music is sparse, a simple strummed acoustic guitar riff with plaintive electric guitar lines over the top. Music and vocals build in intensity as the narrator’s emotions spill over.
It’s a moving song. Pathos comes in early: “Won’t you kiss my kids on Christmas Day, don’t let ‘em cry for me”, and continues: “It’s just my mind it plays up / . . . Tell ‘em all I’m sorry, I screwed up this time”. There’s regret for what led him here, a longing for home — “I’m really gonna miss it” — and a yearning for something better: “You know one of  these days . . . I’m gonna pay them all back.”

The gravy recipe for the Christmas roast is for Joe a symbol of the love and joy of the season, and of his absence this year: “Who’s gonna make the gravy now?”

Around 10,000 men and women are in prison in New Zealand. Like Joe, many will be “thinking of [home] early Christmas morning / When . . . standing in line” up and down the country. Many of our fellow New Zealanders think these prisoners are where they deserve to be, and that prison should indeed be a place of sadness, but thinking people surely have a different view.

Victoria University’s Dr Chris Marshall, an advocate of restorative justice, says an “‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude is not an option for Christians” when it comes to  our obligations towards the needs of prisoners.

New Prime Minister Bill English has  called the current prison system “a moral failure”. His Government’s challenge will be to address that failure, and there’s  also a challenge for each of us this Christmas.

Amongst all the “treasure and trash”, the rampant consumerism and love of family and over-indulgence and laughter and stress and prayer, we need to find something, somehow, to gift to the needy and vulnerable, and maybe something for prisoners could be part of that.

[Note: This review appeared in our last print edition of 2016, hence the Christmas theme.]

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One extract on the calendar caught my eye a couple of weeks ago: “Today, the word
‘love’ is so spoiled, worn out and abused that one almost fears to pronounce it,” he
said in 2006, picking up on themes from his first encyclical.

“And yet, it is a fundamental word . . . We cannot simply abandon it, but we must take it up again, purify it and bring it to its original splendour, so that it can illumine our life and guide it on the right path.”

I set out to write a piece for this issue about a song from the current New Zealand singles chart. Dipping into the music listed there was to see Benedict’s point written in flashing neon.

The tunes I sampled from the top of the chart were “love songs”: sickly and sleazy by turns, the music thin and processed, the lyrics threadbare and clunky. “Don’t you give up, nah-nah-nah / I won’t give up, nah-nah-nah / Let me love you / Let me love you / Oh baby, baby”, goes DJ Snake’s Let Me Love You.

Surely this is  one of the most banal love lyrics — spoiled, worn out and abused — ever written. Some of the others were slightly better, but only in the way a sewerage pond smells slightly better than a public toilet.

Here’s Major Lazer’s Cold Water, featuring, like DJ Snake’s tune, the wispy vocals of Justin Bieber: “I won’t let go / I’ll be your lifeline tonight / . . . I will jump right over / Into cold, cold water for you”. Cold water? Woah. That’s commitment.

But commitment at least: Ariana Grande and Nikki Minaj have no need for that concept on their Side to Side. “Feeling like I wanna rock with your body / And we
don’t gotta think ’bout nothin’,” it sneers, all swagger, strangled vocals and tinny beats.

All that matters to these two is that they “let them hoes know” that “a bad reputation / Doesn’t matter, ’cause you give me temptation” to which they will gleefully submit.

And so on and on they go, these songs whose slivers of honesty and truth are buried by pop-by-numbers trashiness.

Further down the chart, the real music begins to appear, but I still wanted to write about a high-charting song so I went in search of other lists and ended up on the website of radio station RDU.

Their Te Ahi Top 10 is a chart chosen by listeners from a playlist of exclusively Kiwi tunes. Sitting at number one was Stef Animal with a song called Be My Baby, the title of which sounded familiar.

I clicked through to the video and of course it was familiar — Stef Animal’s song was a cover of the Ronettes’ classic from 1963. You know it: the distinctive drumbeat in the opening bars, the upbeat vocals, the danceable melody. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys has called this song “the greatest record ever produced”.

It was one of the tunes on which legendary producer Phil Spector developed his famed “wall of sound”: a range of instrumentation, including a full orchestra, built up track by track and blended into a lush and layered final sound.

It’s also a love song, sure, but one in which the love seems transactional rather than reciprocal: “So won’t you say you love me, / I’ll make you so proud of me / . . . For every kiss you give me I’ll give you three”.

It’s also more than a little obsessive and in its refrain it even seems to seek to infantilise the object of affection: “Be my little baby”.

Stef Animal’s version is lush and elaborate too, but has none of the joy and energy of the original. The tone of the song and its accompanying video is one of weariness, even despair. It is slowed right down, and instead of that wide range of instruments, Stef Animal has used just voice and synthesiser, looped and layered.

In the video a screen glows behind the performer with lyrics flicking past in cold green digital capitals. An insert shows people falling, objects breaking, and the whole looks worn and washed out.

In this version Stef Animal subverts the original and captures something of what many people seem to be experiencing today when it comes to love: a weariness and pessimism, but still a longing for intimacy.

In that unquenched longing lie the seeds of hope that modern humanity can recover a truly human view and experience of romantic love — love as a gift, both given and received, and as “the icon of the relationship between God and his people”, as Benedict describes it — and live a life lit up by its splendour.

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One of the albums I listened to more than once on that drive was a soundtrack.
The Band were a Canadian-American act in the 60s and 70s and are a big part of the story of American music, and an influence on the genre known today as Americana: the fusion of folk, roots, country, rock and blues that draws on the stories and traditions of America’s past. In November 1976 they played a concert billed as their farewell outing. It was a lavish and star-studded affair which was immortalised by filmmaker Martin Scorsese in his seminal music documentary The Last Waltz.

When it comes to music, I’m a sucker for a good story — both in the songs themselves and in the life of the band or individual who writes and performs them. The story of The Last Waltz show is a good one — intra-band tensions, criticism of Scorsese’s focus on one member of the band to the exclusion of others, lack of rehearsal time, guest Bob Dylan’s last-minute refusal to perform — and at the heart of it is the music and the tales in the songs.

“We’re not dealing with people at the top of the ladder,” main songwriter and guitarist  Robbie Robertson said once. “We’re saying what about that house out there in the middle of that field? What does this guy think, with that one light on upstairs, and that truck parked out there? What is going on in there? And just following the story of this person.”

This is the guts of Americana; like a good short story the songs capture a moment,
a character, an event, distil it to its essence and say something about what it is to be human. The story may be grotesque – think a Johnny Cash murder ballad or a Flannery O’Connor short story — but in that darkness the artist highlights glimpses of light. “Art is not what you see but what you make others see,” said painter Edgar Degas. Seeing a person, especially a person not “at the top of the ladder”, and telling their story: we need artists to do this today to help us see someone and something new.

The Band used to play with rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins and he was one of the first guests to join them on the stage, singing the Bo Diddley tune Who Do You Love. It’s a swaggering belter of a song, telling the story of a man talking himself up to woo a woman, with some of the best opening lines in the history of music: “I walked forty-seven miles of barbed wire, use a cobra snake for a necktie.” Hawkins yelps his way through the narrator’s braggadocio as The Band lays down an intense groove behind him.

Neil Young joins them for his song Helpless. “If swamps and lagoons could hum, they’d probably hum Neil Young songs,” says magazine The Paris Review, pointing out the way Young’s music and lyrics conjure up the American South. “Baby can you hear me now? / The chains are locked across my door / Helpless,” he croons in his distinctive voice.

Joni Mitchell comes on for her ballad Coyote which evokes restlessness and transition.  “Either he’s going to have to stand and fight or take off out of here / . . . A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway.”

The Band’s own The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down captures the mood of the beaten South after the civil war. It puts aside the reasons for the war and just aims to highlight the human suffering: “Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train / . . . My brother was just eighteen, proud and brave / but a Yankee laid him in his grave / . . . they should never have taken the very best,” sings drummer Levon Helm over a swinging rhythm.

My old tape leaves out Van Morrison and Bob Dylan (who eventually relented and performed as planned) but legendary pianist Dr John, who’s still going strong today, is there, along with bluesman Muddy Waters.

Although the audio was tidied up after the concert for release as an album, the vocals and music are rough around the edges throughout, emphasising the grit at the heart of The Band’s music.

I sold my old van not long after I got to Tauranga, but I’ll be jumping in our silver
Caldina — nicknamed the Wabash Cannonball — to head up to Auckland in November for The Last Waltz Tour. This anniversary concert features original keyboard player Garth Hudson and music director John Simon along with today’s inheritors of the Americana tradition: musicians Delaney Davidson, Tami Neilson, Kevin Borich, Barry Saunders and the Bads. It’ll be a cracker.

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Phillips’ relocation was a move from Los Angeles, where he’d lived for some years, to Nashville. He wanted to leave the city and “live with [his] ear a little closer to the ground” and he found in Nashville a studio that suited him, some “haunted” vintage instruments that made sounds he liked and some fellow musicians with whom he clicked. The result is a suite of songs that are gentle but steely, measured, honest and true.

Phillips has Cherokee and Creek ancestors in his lineage and the first single Cry Cry tells the story of the Trail of Tears, where, in 1838, Native Americans were forced from their land and sent on a death march. “In the winter when the birds don’t sing / That’s when I lost my home / When I lost everything / Kept a-walkin’ till my feet were bloody / Left everything we knew”, he sings over a shuffling drumbeat, sparse guitar and a wistful marimba line. “One thousand lies won’t make it right / . . . Cry, cry, cry.” The narrator’s sadness, carried in Phillips’ keening baritone, comes down to us through the years. It’s a deeply moving song — and a New Zealand listener can’t help but hear echoes of the lies and the theft in our own history.

Death and suffering too in Holy Irons, a story of America’s civil war. “Little soldiers all in blue and grey / Every one of us ableedin’ red /  . . . Lay down your guns and  shining bayonets / Lay down your holy irons / It’s gonna be a job to raise the dead / . . . The broken hearted Lord can only wring his hands.” Again, Phillips’ voice fair drips with sadness at the waste of life, the blood spilt “in a rich man’s war”. If only every sabre rattler in our supposedly civilised Western societies could take this song to heart.

Smoke and Sparks is a reflection on how his father approached his death peacefully and with grace and acceptance. “Come one day / When these bones give way / Gonna call my name / And I will depart / . . . I won’t be afraid / I’ll rise from the flames / Like smoke and sparks.” A member of my extended family died recently, after a difficult life, and at the graveside another cousin remarked to me, “This is a victory, eh?” It took me a moment to get what he was saying, but he was right. “No more tears,” sings Phillips. “The weight of years / Will disappear / On the day I embark / It’s not goodbye / This urge to fly / When I take to the sky / With a song in my heart.” Smoke and Sparks is for me one more reminder to live a generous and big-hearted life that will mean that when death comes it will have no sting, but rather be a victory embraced with a song in my heart.

Phillips has been with his wife Denise Siegel for more than 25 years and has a young daughter; The Narrows includes many intimations of love which surely spring from their marriage and family life. I like the crisp imagery in opening track Tennessee Rain, a big rolling swoop of a tune, which has these lines: “Long as I got as your hand / I’m stronger than a mule / I’ll take whatever’s bound to come my way / Stay by me and I won’t wander like a fool / Or vanish on the trail without a trace / You are my compass, aren’t ya babe”. Hands up those men for whom their wife has at times been a compass,
showing them the path of grace and virtue.

Rolling Pin, with its banjo and guitar riffs, is a bit of a foot-stomper. It draws a metaphor of the difficulties of love and of how a relationship has to be worked at with trust and hope that it is worth fighting for. “Heart don’t fail me now / Don’t gimme more than I can take / . . . But every night I get to come back home’s / Another that I’m truly blessed.”

He pays tribute to family history in Moccasin Creek – “Grandpa is around here” –and explores nostalgia in Yellow Weeds: “Past ain’t a place that’s built to stand / This I know, I feel it slipping through my hands.”

Slowburner Find My Way, steel guitar soaring, closes the album. “I’m beat / But I won’t be broken Hard to always know what road to choose / I’m low / But I keep on hoping / Trying to find my way back home to you.” “Very often my songs,” Phillips told Noisetrade, “are about navigating tough waters while keeping the shore within sight.” This song sums the album up: this world and this life, with all their tears and blood, are yet beautiful and full of hope and grace.

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John Lennon wrote Beautiful Boy for his son Sean: It’s a heartfelt and sweet paternal love song. “Close your eyes, have no fear / The monster’s gone, he’s on the run / And your daddy’s here / Beautiful boy.” Would that I always succeed in chasing away monsters for my kids when they are little, and teach them so they can do it for themselves when they are older. “Before you go to sleep, say a little prayer / Every day, in every way / It’s getting better and better.”

Another love song for a child is Wilco’s My Darling, from their 1999 disc Summerteeth. The song is a slow one, a woozy piano intro leading into muted acoustic guitar. “Grow up now my darlin’ / Please don’t you grow up too fast / And be sure, darlin’ / To make all the good times last,” sings bandleader Jeff Tweedy pleadingly. Finding the balance between teaching kids about the world and protecting them from it is an ongoing challenge.

“Because we made you my darlin’ / With the love in each of our hearts / We were a family, my darlin’ / Right from the start.” Is this a basic catechesis of marriage in a four-minute rock song? The love of a man and woman producing children, building a family, and putting together a society.

I hope my kids choose their vocation deliberately and thoughtfully: If a call to marriage is what they hear and follow, I hope they choose a spouse carefully so they know what the narrator of the Finn Brothers’ Luckiest Man Alive knows: “[A] man finds love in his life / He’s the luckiest man alive / Someone true by his side . . . You saw me and what I could be / Now I know what love is for / It’s the only thing that sets you free.” The instrumentation is both lushly beautiful and full-bodied, and music and words together make for one of the truest love songs committed to record.

Making a big decision such as stepping out into the adventure of marriage (or priesthood, or religious life) is easier when there’s a habit of making little decisions well: of doing what is in front of you thoughtfully, enthusiastically, promptly. Australian troubadour Paul Kelly’s Little Decisions, from 1985’s Post, bluntly puts it this way: “Little decisions are the kind I can make / Big resolutions are so easy to break / I don’t want to hear about your big  decisions.” Over crisp acoustic guitar Kelly sings pithy lines: “Hard times are never over / Trouble always comes / Still I’m looking forward / To tomorrow when it comes.” The song is an encouragement to keep moving forward, to keep focused on the important things, to choose joy.

In much of Kelly’s work he is a storyteller in the folk tradition. The venerable Bob Dylan draws from the same well, and a good example of this is his song Hurricane, released in 1976 on the album Desire. Dylan rattles though 11 verses in the eight-minute ballad, telling the story (perhaps with some poetic licence) of a boxer named Rubin Carter who in 1967 was wrongly convicted of murder. Like the late Muhammad Ali, Carter was no saint, but he was stitched up by lying witnesses and corrupt cops and stayed in jail until his conviction was overturned in 1985.

A violin, high and tense, and driving guitars, drums and percussion carry Dylan’s outraged vocals. “All of Rubin’s cards were marked in advance / The trial was a pigcircus, he never had a chance / . . . The DA said he was the one who did the deed / And the all-white jury agreed.” The song is a cry for truth and for justice, Dylan asking in bewilderment, “How can the life of such a man / Be in the palm of some fool’s hand?” It’s a protest song and like the best of that genre it pricks the conscience.

There’s no doubt that much popular music is disposable trash, offensive, inhumane, a twisting of truth, but songs like these are somewhere on the other end of the musical spectrum, which ranges from garbage on one end to art on the other. Each in its own way attempts to express something of the human story and to point to higher ideals: each is a worthy gift for a father to give a child.

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