As a somewhat belated birthday shout out to one of my all time favourite singers - this edition of 6 Degrees of Kevin Shields is for Natalie Merchant (her birthday was 26 October, by the way).
Natalie Merchant made her name as a songwriter and a singer with the most beautiful voice, in 10,000 Maniacs, which she was in from somewhere close to the start in 1980, as a fresh faced seventeen year old, through to her departure from the band in 1993. From there, she has pursued a successful, if more intermittent in latter years, solo career. Her debut solo record, Tigerlilly, came out in 1995, followed three years later by the lusher Ophelia (1998). Before the third record (Motherland) came out, Merchant did a folk tour of the US in 2000, where she was supported by Wilco.
Wilco had formed following the demise of alt-country legends Uncle Tupelo. With Jay Farrar going off to form Son Volt, the other main songwriter, Jeff Tweedy, took Ken Coomer and John Stirratt with him on his next adventure. Their first album A.M. took a similar country-ish path to Tupelo, before subsequent releases took them in a more experimental pop direction. 1996's Being There (Reprise Records), included guest musician Bob Egan on several tracks, playing pedal steel and national steel guitars.
Bob Egan had previously been a member of Freakwater - a greatly under-appreciated country band, centred on the dual vocals of Janet Beveridge Bean and Catherine Irwin.
In 2013, 2017 and again in 2021, Bean and Irwin joined up with Jon Langford and Sally Timms of The Mekons. They played originals and cover versions of songs about coal mining in Appalachia, England and Wales, under the name The Freakons!
The Mekons had originated at the University of Leeds in 1976 - Jon Langford, Kevin Lycett, Mark White, Andy Corrigan and Tom Greenhalgh were from the same group of students that also brought us Gang of Four and Delta 5. The band got their name from the villainous Venusian from the Dan Dare comics of the 1950s and 60s and were described as a more chaotic version of Gang of Four. They did enough to get themselves a record deal though, with debut album The Quality of Mercy is not Strnen coming out in 1979. The title is an allusion to Infinite Monkey Theorem, where the thinking goes, that if you give a monkey a typewriter, they will eventually types something Shakespearean. The album was recorded using instruments borrowed from Gang of Four and owing to some sort of art department cock up at Virgin Records, a picture of Gang of Four can be seen on the back cover of the record!
Gang of Four - Andy Gill, Jon King, Hugo Burnham and Dave Allen - produced what is generally regarded as one of the best albums of the late 1970s, with Entertainment! Their brand of post punk-funk was a huge influence on a number of bands is clear, including REM, Nirvana and most clearly, Red Hot Chili Peppers. Single, I Love A Man In Uniform, from third studio album Songs Of The Free, could have been a breakout hit for them, but was released around the time of the Falklands war, and so was banned from airplay because of its subversive look at joining the military - "the girls they love to see you shoot."
The song Shipbuilding was written during the Falklands war, by Elvis Costello and Clive Langer and done so specifically with Robert Wyatt's voice in mind. It was written from the perspective of a worker at a shipyard who knows that the only thing that guarantees him work, is war! https://youtu.be/Res3-YX4X8g
Robert Wyatt had been a core part of the 'Canterbury scene' in bands like Soft Machine and Matching Mole, before starting a forty year long solo career. A serious fall in 197, which left him a paraplegic, also propelled him into more experimental work. His 1975 album, Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard, saw a guest appearance by Brian Eno, on guitar synthesiser and 'direct inject anti-jazz ray gun!"
Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno found fame as a co-founder of Roxy Music, who he was with from 1971-73 and two albums. He went on to a varied solo career and sought after producer, working with the likes of Talking Heads, Devo, U2 and Ultravox. But in April 2018, for Record Store Day, he put out double a-side The Weight Of History / Only Once Away My Son - an ambient collaborative work with KEVIN SHIELDS.