CURATION
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from this page:
by Matrix
Network Node
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Name:
Colin Linden
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City/Place:
Nashville, Tennessee
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Country:
United States
Life & Work
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Bio:
Colin Linden's story reads like a legend out of a Coen brothers film: "O Brother Where Art Thou" or "Inside Llewyn Davis", both of which featured his guitar playing on their soundtracks. His journey began at the tender age of 11, when he met his musical idol, Howlin’ Wolf, at a matinee show in his native Toronto. Accompanied by his mother, who captured a photograph of the two during their nearly two-hour conversation before the gig, Linden witnessed the legendary bluesman leisurely enjoying coffee and cigarettes.
“I’m an old man now, and I won’t be around much longer,” Wolf told him. “It’s up to you to carry it on.”
That photograph, now frayed from time, remains in Linden’s wallet, along with a Sears 5/8” socket wrench he uses for slide guitar. Linden took Wolf’s words to heart, embarking on a musical career at 12 years old. He left home as a teenager to explore the South, thanks to an invitation from Mississippi Sheiks delta blues guitarist Sam Chatmon. This journey took him to Detroit, Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Memphis, and Hollandale, Mississippi, where he visited the haunts and met the legends he admired: Brownie McGhee, Muddy Waters, Sippie Wallace, Tampa Red, Blind John Davis, the Rev. Robert Wilkins, Sleepy John Estes, and Son House. Over his 45-year career, Linden has played in many of these historic venues, producing and performing blues and roots music.
As a singer and guitarist, Linden has collaborated with a diverse array of artists, including Bruce Cockburn (as his producer and touring musician), Bob Dylan, Gregg Allman, Rhiannon Giddens, Pistol Annies, and John Prine. He was also a key contributor to the music of the TV show "Nashville" and its subsequent live tours. Linden’s extensive discography includes over 500 albums, with 140 produced, and he won his first Grammy in 2020 for producing Keb Mo’s "Oklahoma", which earned Best Americana Album. He has received an impressive 25 Juno Award nominations, with nine wins.
Linden's latest solo album, "bLOW", marks his 14th release over 40 years and his first foray into electric blues. Released through longtime friend Lucinda Williams’ Highway 20 label and distributed by Thirty Tigers, the album features a title track inspired by a tense night in a flimsy motel during a tornado in Oklahoma or Texas. Linden’s wife, novelist Janice Powers, contributed not only the opening verse but also played the Hammond B3 organ, left to him by the late Richard Bell, in her unique style.
The album includes six tracks initially conceived as instrumental production music for a TV show set on the Texas-Louisiana border in the late '80s and early '90s. These tracks evolved into full songs, inspiring the lyrics that define "bLOW". The album serves as a blues odyssey, echoing Linden’s youthful journey, with tracks like the Bo Diddley-inspired "4 Cars", the Sun Records homage “Boogie Let Me Be,” and the apocalyptic "Change Don’t Come Without Pain". Songs like "When I Get To Galilee" offer a gospel vibe, while "Honey on My Tongue" reflects on life during and after lockdown.
"Roots music and blues resonate deeply right now", Linden observes. "The healing and release it provides are timeless, touching a raw nerve."
Linden’s passion for music ignited when he heard his older brothers’ records, not realizing that Cream’s "Spoonful" and Jimi Hendrix’s "Killing Floor" were originally recorded by Howlin’ Wolf. Hearing Wolf’s versions for the first time in 1971 profoundly impacted him.
"Those songs had a gravitas unlike any pop music of the era"J, he recalls. "I could hear that even as a kid."
Embracing Wolf’s legacy, Linden has forged a multifaceted career as a singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer, sideman, film/TV music supervisor, and score composer. Meeting T Bone Burnett through artist Sam Phillips, who was opening for Bruce Cockburn, was another pivotal moment, leading to collaborations with the Coen brothers and the "Nashville" TV series.
"I couldn’t have asked for a better mentor in music", Linden reflects on Burnett.
Clips (more may be added)
We use the mathematics of the small world phenomenon to transform the creative universe into a creative village wherein all are connected by short pathways to all... (Wolfram explains how above)
This Integrated Global Creative Economy uncoils from a sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix...
Great culture is great power.
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
Our Matrix was conceived under a Spiritus Mundi ranging from the quilombos and senzalas of Cachoeira and Santo Amaro to Havana and the provinces of Cuba to the wards of New Orleans to the South Side of Chicago to the sidewalks of Harlem to the townships of South Africa to the villages of Ireland to the Roma camps of France and Belgium to the Vienna of Beethoven to the shtetls of Eastern Europe...*
Sodré
*...in conversation with Raymundo Sodré, who summed up the irony in this sequence by opining for the ages: "Where there's misery, there's music!" Hence A Massa, anthem for the trod-upon folk of Brazil, which blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south until...
And hence a platform whereupon all creators tend to accessible proximity to all other creators, irrespective of degree of fame, location, or the censor.
Matrix Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, bewitching and bewitched, contouring the resplendent Bay of All Saints (end of clip below, before credits), absolute center of terrestrial gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings (and for the sublimity these people created), the bay presided over by Brazil's ineffable Black Rome (where Bule Bule is seated below, around the corner from where we built this matrix as an extension of our record shop).
Assis Valente's (of Santo Amaro, Bahia) "Brasil Pandeiro" filmed by Betão Aguiar
Betão Aguiar
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
Replete with Brazilian greatness, but we listened to Miles Davis and Jimmy Cliff in there too; visitors are David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR/WXPN
I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magnificent Brazilian musicians.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar found us (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix, then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Salvador is our base. If you plan to visit Bahia, there are some things you should probably know and you should first visit:
www.salvadorbahiabrazil.comAcross the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
Wolfram MathWorld
Ex Terra Brasilis
Alicia Svigals
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Roberto Mendes
Luciano Calazans
Gustavo Caribé
J Velloso
Lázaro Ramos
Fernando Guerreiro
Maria Marighella
Russell Okung
Bule Bule
Caetano Veloso
RÁDIO MATRIX