“Troubadour Blues” (Tom Weber Films)

It would be hard to make any statement to the effect that the singer-songwriter, offering original song material to the accompaniment of an acoustic guitar, has gone completely unnoticed by the commercial music industry. One need only drop such names as Bob Dylan, James Taylor, and Leonard Cohen, to name but a few who have risen from the ranks of the so-called “folkie” singer-songwriters to great mainstream success. But those few names that are known by the public at large are a vast minority. In a world dominated by rock, pop, hop-hop, and now dubstep, the modern-day singer-songwriter has become akin to a prophet crying out in the wilderness.

That’s what makes Tom Weber’s film, “Troubadour Blues” a much-needed corrective to mass media’s constant exaltation of the same old insubstantial, uninspiring commercial banalities constantly being exposed on radio and on t.v. competition programs. There are dozens of creative, highly skilled singer-songwriters who have something interesting to say and the ability to say it in a manner that has a great deal of meaning among those listeners open to receiving the message. These performers may be heard on the radio, true, but only if you know when and where to turn, to the “right” station. A few may occasionally pop up on television, but don’t hold your breath waiting to see them, because it doesn’t happen often.

“Troubadour Blues” is a documentary look at the singer-songwriter scene of the past decade. It is by no means an exhaustive study of the phenomenon. Many of the artists seen here in performance and/or in interviews - not everyone interviewed is given a performance spogtlight - have devoted regional followings, some are nationally known. They may be heralded in one area of the country, and completely obscure in others. There are many artists whom I might have expected to turn up here who are not mentioned at all, and a few who ARE here whose names I’ve never encountered.Thus is the nature of the world of the “contemporary-folk” or “Americana” artist, to name two appellations used to lump a diverse assemblage of artists into genres for more efficient marketing. One hears influences from folk, country, rock, blues, and the proverbial “much more”, yet they all share a common attribute, the necessity to make their living by traveling from town to town, playing small venues for nowhere near enough money. Weber’s choice of artists is by nature subjective, but there is not one artist here - borderline-famous or mostly unknown - who doesn’t deserve far more exposure than they have received in the past.

Weber devotes a considerable amount of space to his major “case study” (yes, it’s a pun), Peter Case. Case, who grew up in Hamburg, NY (not all that far from GenEc’s “offices” here in Fredonia), was at one time a rock star, with the Nerves and the Plimsouls. But he chose to “downsize” his career into becoming a solo artist, with or without additional musicians. Early in the film, there is a striking collage of Case singing the same song in many places over a period of time, making it seem fresh for every new audience, despite the rigors of the road. (Case suffered serious heart problems during the time was being made, but is back on the road. Indeed, as I write this, there’s a report of a Nerves “reunion” making the rounds, albeit not the entire band.) The other “rock star” name here is Dave Alvin, who achieved cult status with the Blasters and X before turning toward a more folk/Americana direction. We also hear from Slaid Cleaves, Gurf Morlix, Amy Speace, to name a few of the more widely-known artists. Tracy Grammer is here, with a short memorial tribute to her old partner, Dave Carter, another victim of the hard life independent musicians must endure.

There is a lot to enjoy musically. There is much to learn from the interviews, so that fans of this particular sub-class of music will find this an essential addition to their DVD collections. But with any luck, this disc will reach far beyond the already-committed singer-songwriter audience, to let even those people who may be unfamiliar with ANY of the artists in this film know that there is something very worthwhile, very aesthetically satisfying going on in an underground of sorts that has difficulty attracting large numbers of new listeners. I certainly hope “Troubadour Blues” manages to reach that larger audience, and that the artists in the film can open many new doors as a result.

There are no extra bonus features on this disc. But the DVD case lists this as a 91-minute film. Actually, if you count the credits at the end - which most films do - it’s more like 95 minutes. In an era when some commercial DVD companies have taken to adding the total time including bonus features, trailers, photo galleries, and whatnot into the running time of the disc, I find Weber’s under-statement refreshing.

The film has its own website - http://www.troubadour-blues.com/

“Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune” (First Run Features)

I’m always a bit confounded whenever music fans of my own (baby-boomer) generation, including many whom I feel should know better, fail to recognize the name “Phil Ochs” when I mention it. Certainly, I’ve given up expecting anyone under the age of 40 to have heard of him. But baby boomers? Come on, this man was (in my opinion, to be sure, but I’m far from alone) the greatest singer-songwriter to come out of the 1960’s following the emergence of Bob Dylan. It seems the enormous shadow of Dylan has long since dwarfed such once-vaunted figures as Bob Lind (whose new DVD will be reviewed soon), Eric Anderson, David Blue, Fred Neil, David Ackles, Patrick Sky, and the various Tims (Hardin, Rose, and Buckley), to such an overwhelming extent that even Tom Paxton and, yes, Phil Ochs do not have anywhere near the name recognition value that they deserve.

Nevertheless, Phil Ochs still has a considerable following, albeit a specialized one, but large enough that the theatrical release of Kenneth Bowser’s biographical documentary “Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune” in 2010 was hailed as a major event among us old-folkie types. With the film’s release on DVD taking place this week, everyone can now see what all the fuss was about. This is one marvelous piece of work, a loving, skillfully-assembled, no-holds-barred portrait of a man who was misunderstood by so many people, including himself. It’s a tragic story, a tale of disillusionment, mental illness, alcoholism, dashed hopes, unfulfilled dreams, and eventual suicide, but one with a brilliant soundtrack of poetic lyrics, memorable melodies, and a one-of-a-kind voice.

Bowser has Included a wealth of interview clips, including many of the people closest to Phil Ochs - family (Phil’s famous photo archivist brother, Michael Ochs, who was one of this film’s producers; Phil’s well-known folk-music disc jockey sister and keeper of the Phil Ochs flame, Sonny Ochs; Phil’s wife and daughter), close friends (most notably Jim Glover of Jim and Jean, who was responsible for politicizing Ochs), musical associates (including early supporter Pete Seeger, Peter Yarrow, Judy Henske, Van Dyke Parks, Lincoln Mayorga, Joan Baez - who recorded the best-known version of Ochs’ song “There But For Fortune” - and on film, Dave Van Ronk), political associates (Tom Hayden, Fugs members Ed Sanders among them), record industry associates (Elektra’s Jac Holzman, A&M’s Jerry Moss) - an incredible array of people important to Phil Ochs’ life and career. The result is a well-rounded selection of opinions, reminiscences, and emotional responses, chronologically arranged. One might wish that some of the clips had been longer, but that’s because Ochs himself had such an engrossing life.

It would seem Bowser didn’t miss very much. We hear about Ochs’ upbringing by a Jewish father who came back from World War II mentally unstable and a Scottish mother who refused to hide her unhappiness. We see photos of Phil growing up conservatively in small-town 1950’s America - local readers of this blog may not be aware that some of this growing up took place in nearby Perrysburg, NY, and that Ochs played clarinet at a SUNY Fredonia summer music camp; there’s even a vintage still of Gowanda’s Hollywood Theater. We find him dropping out of Ohio State University, discovering his first great political cause in the Civil Rights movement, finding hope in the presidency of John Kennedy, having his illusions shattered by Kennedy’s assassination and America’s increasing involvement in Vietnam. We learn how Ochs was browbeaten by his songwriting role model, Bob Dylan, which did not sidetrack Ochs’ unrealistic but fervent determination to make it big in show-biz through the writing of liberally-oriented (yet hardly doctrinaire) protest songs. As times change, we see him expanding (as did Dylan, of course) into more personal, less purely folk-style songs, moving beyond acoustic guitar backdrops to a more “produced” type of recording. (However, Ochs was not interested in folk-rock, but surrounded his songs with classical and orchestral influences. The results were superb, but decidedly non-commercial.) We follow his increasing involvement with the counter-culture taking unexpected turns, leading street-theater-of-the-absurd demonstrations which celebrated the end of the Vietnam War years before it actual ended. We feel impending disaster as he fatefully becomes involved as a key member of the Yippies and serves as a catalyst in the catastrophic demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. We puzzle at his dressing up like Elvis Presley in gold lame for his career-destroying Carnegie Hall concert, which lost him the support of many of his long-term fans. A journey to third world countries leads to a meeting with nueva cancion icon Victor Jara in Chile, two years before the coup against the Allende government and Jara’s execution. His travels also take him to Africa. where Ochs is attacked and robbed in an incident in Tanzania that ruined his vocal cords. All this while, he is increasingly falling victim to bipolar disease, exacerbated by finding far too much solace for his depression in alcohol dependence. His growing combativeness begins to offend even his friends. Eventually, he falls off the deep end mentally, and announces the demise of Phil Ochs, replacing him with an obnoxious alter-ego named John Train. And then come those sad last days of 1976. To sum it up - it’s all here, it’s all examined in some depth, and it’s all put into comprehensible contexts.

We see short video clips and hear audio excerpts of many songs from every stage of Phil Ochs’ career. I find it particularly revealing to hear live performances from after the Tanzanian incident. Yes, his voice has suffered and has lost its consistency. But the voice and style are still recognizably that of Phil Ochs. I truly believe that, if he had been so inclined, he could have continued his career well past this point. But it wasn’t Phil Ochs the singer who had been mutilated, it was Phil Ochs the man.

“Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune” is, then, both a celebration of and eulogy for this important 20th-century artist. It would be easy to disparage him for what he became in the 1970’s, but I prefer to remember Phil Ochs as he was in the 1960’s. This film allows for both interpretations, and each viewer may take from it the Phil Ochs they wish to recall. Highest recommendation.

The film runs 97 minutes, plus a text bio of the director, and a photo gallery.