Songs:Illinois

http://www.songsillinois.net/2011/02/nathan-bell-black-crow-blue-riyl-james-mcmurtry-greg-brown-john-prine/

an (indie) folk, alt-country, americana, singer/songwriter music blog

Nathan Bell – “Black Crow Blue” (riyl James McMurtry, Greg Brown, John Prine)

I’m a little intimidated by Nathan Bell. He’s had a long musical history (records released by Flying Fish – where I worked briefly years ago), his a father is a renowned poet, he writes seriously deep songs, and just exudes many of the elements of the artist’s life. It’s these elements or facets of character that I am missing most in my daily grind writing about music that touches me. But this is the only way I know how to at least capture a bit of that spirit.

Nathan Bell has been gone from the music world for a few decades. He’s back resoundingly with a new record called Black Crow Blue. The songs I’ve heard are powerful in their simplicity and their barren sound. Nathan has an Iowa City connection in his bio and I have to begin to wonder what it is about that town that produces such great songwriters (if it was only Greg Brown that alone would be impressive). I’m linking to the song “Rust”. It’s a song about aging, about the rust that starts to cling to all of us as we stay in one place literally and figuratively. As an aside one of the few artists I’d feel confident in mentioning in comparison to Nathan Bell would be James McMurtry.