In This World
Liner Notes |
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You can think about the Burns Sisters in terms of style, influences, harmonic choices... all the everyday ways of categorizing music, but the essence of the sisters Burns is a matter of spirit. Soul, if you will. Otis Redding, Miles Davis, Joan Baez and Mercedes Sosa have little in common stylistically, yet each of them emits a palpable spirit that appears as natural and sturdy as the notes themselves.
Annie, Marie and Jeannie Burns make a music that is disarming not because it is pretty, which it often is, but because they are traveling along an inner path they know by heart. Every song is tied to the center of things, to the everyday hunt for warmth on a cold planet, to family and history and blood. Spirit. The sisters swear that there were no Irish records in their childhood, growing up with their family of 14 near Binghamton, NY. And yet there seems a Celtic component to their sound. "An audience member recently told us: 'I love all that Celtic stuff, it's inspiring,' And I thought: What Celtic stuff?" said Marie recently, sitting with her sisters in a cafe after a gig at Cambridge's Club Passim. The Irish influence must be a matter of heredity. Yet a lovely transformation has taken place. The Burns girls grab hold of the Irish instinct for plumbing the depths, yet while Celtic folk is all mournful and plaintive, the sisters turn their soulfulness toward philosophic hope. Is it an essentially American spirit, born from a new world belief in the future? More likely the light in their sound comes from happy childhoods and a rambunctious yet loving home. The image of folk/pop sister groups has been twisted by several popular acts of the eighties that have made quirkiness and eccentricity the norm for singing siblings. The Burns girls aren't strangers to looney logic and ditsy wiles in their private lives, but their music is more straight-ahead. True, they're often daffy between songs onstage, yet the compositions themselves concentrate more on an open heart than on an ironic intellect. "Our songs are sometimes light-hearted or good humored, but not funny in an overt way," explains Marie. "I just like normal chords and direct emotions." "We're suckers for sad, emotional, desperate songs," says Jeannie with a delighted grin. "Not really," retorts Annie. "I consciously try not to write straight love songs, to not fall into the female as victim of love routine. I like a sad song that doesn't wallow, that has an empowering side. We're political and emotional: the idea is to feel the music, to have it come from the heart, not the head." "We are, essentially, positive people," Marie concurs. "Yeah," says Jeannie. "After all, we grew up on 'the hills are alive with the sound of music!'" Marie, Annie and Jeannie Burns arrived numbers 7,8, and 9 in a brood of 12. (On eof their first gigs was singing briefly in the Louie Malle film Atlantic City. Several of the Burns brothers work in Hollywood as technicians, and they arranged the contacts.) All five of the sisters sang together for most of the '80s (though only three are featured in Atlantic City). After a Columbia Records contract ended one week before their second album was to be released, the sisters lost the will to go on as a family band. Yet the split wasn't due entirely to recording woes. "Most young people grow up, leave their homes, and establish their own identities," explains Annie. "But since we worked together for years and years, we never went through that process of separating." "We have the same history and a lot of the same memories," says Marie. "I needed to get away from my sisters to find out who I really was. I needed to explore my own approach with other bands, to find out what music I really wanted to make. And then I could appreciate my sisters even more." "We like our band now. So if we had to go through all those struggles to get where we are now, it's OK," Jeannie sums up. After pursuing other projects, all five sisters produced a CD on their own, Songs of the Heart, before vocally restructuring the band as a trio. Their Rounder album Close to Home was released in 1995. It's easy to think of the Burns approach as very simple music, but how simple really is a tuneful search for meaning in a baffling world? One part of the Burns appeal is the way they combine youthful energy with the hard-won knowledge of adults. They have been singing professionally for 15 years, and yet their careers are in a second wind, and they seem as frisky as kids about it. All three have children. Juggling motherhood, touring and recording is a tough row to hoe, but so far they've kept sane, travelling mostly on weekends, building a fan base steadily. The Burns sisters have been mainstays of the Ithaca, NY music scene for many years. They'd stuck pretty close to home for a spell, and so in early 1995, when they played the Boston area at the Somerville Theater and Club Passim, they sang before audiences who knew nothing of them. It is not a misuse of the word to say that Marie, Annie and Jeannie SEDUCED the audience members, male and female alike. To women they were strong role-models, to men, spirited cuties. Part of that seduction had to do with the thrill of discovering artists whose vision was fully matured, yet whose elan was essentially youthful. The glorious harmonies and Jeannie's bountiful soul shouting persuaded us. What did they persuade us of? To believe in their hope, to feel their idealism as our own. No mean trick for a crowd not born yesterday. When folk fans heard that the Burns Sisters were going to Nashville with the noted producer Garry Tallent (former Springsteen bassist), there were some raised eyebrows. Would the sisters' simple charms be gussied up and overwhelmed? No need to worry. The new album is a graceful progression. There is no radical switch in direction here. If these girls from the north country have added a tinge of C&W, it is exceedingly subtle. The three sisters had a hand in writing all the songs except for Hazel Dickens' "Working Girl Blues," which sounds like an up-to-date complaint (and contains an additional verse by Dickens recorded here for the first time). Though a tone of yearning infuses many of Annie's songs, it is not a self-destructive languishing. Annie's right when she says her songs don't wallow in sadness. "Can I Walk Away" is like a good talking to oneself, a self-directed therapy session. In "Far From Home," the longing is acute, but the song is also buoyed up by memories of a gift-laden past. It has clarity of vision. It's like one of those effulgent moments when you suddenly see a sad episode of your past bathed in melancholy grandeur. In classic country & western, married men cause obsession and grief for the poor single girl. Compare that sad tale to Marie's "Stay Away From Me." Against a merry, frivolous tone, Marie tells the swain in question to beat it down the line if he's not fully available. The forthright lyric is cheerfully sane. Marie's light, saucy voice and bubbly melodies nicely counter her sisters' serious moods. One may wish the Burns Sisters had more variation in their approach, yet there is a virtue to knowing one's path well: They never take a misstep. "Dance Upon The Earth," co-written by Marie and her sister Sheila, rollicks along, and it works as an essential statement of the sisters' quest. "I'm gonna dance upon this earth / I'm gonna find joy in all this madness" is a clear document of spirit, a call to faith. There is so much joy that breaks open here, I am reminded of a simile of John Cheever's: It is like "a window opening onto some dazzling summer of the emotions." The album's only higher emotional refrain is "No More Silence," especially at that moment when Jeannie's big, multi-textured voice rips skyward and becomes transcendent. Two songs evoke some shadows and mystery. There's Marie's metaphoric ode to the ills of society, "Johnny's Got A Gun," and Annie's foreboding "The Owl," where the offering of love does not seem enough to stave off a dark fate. She got the central image from a Native American myth encountered in a book belonging to her daughter. "It means someone will die. When I look at other families, fathers and sons who don't talk to each other, brothers and sisters who have no contact, I always think: That's never gonna be me! I am not going to be one of those people who have all these relationships that don't work out. Life is too short!" When I last saw the Burns Sisters Band, I overheard one young woman in the crowd exclaim how impossible it would be for her own sisters to get along smoothly enough to sing together as a life work. And then she struck a tone of wonder and melancholy that seemed to mirror the emotions of a Burns' song. "Wouldn't it be a blessing if I had what the Burns Sisters have!" she said. The complex task of keeping a band together and creating a new repertoire depends on flexible egos and firm-footed relationships. The three sisters live near each other in and around Ithaca. They take care of each other's kids. And they are able to be each other's editors, critics and fans. "We are able to say what we think," says Annie. "We choose our own material, but we all have veto powers. We talk it through," says Jeannie. "We are able to put away some ego and discuss things without going into ancient history. People always ask us: 'Do you guys really hang out together?' We do. We're a clan."
Daniel Gewertz, Boston Herald |