Author: tommytomlinson

Jason Isbell played in Charlotte last night. It was a fantastic show, but I’ve written about Isbell a couple of times already, so for now I’ll just mention two things:

— Bruce Springsteen gave some love to Isbell in an NPR interview the other day … and Isbell closed the show last night with “Atlantic City.”

— Having been on the road by myself the past few days, “Traveling Alone” cuts pretty deep for me right now. It’s good to be back home with the one I love.

But the moment that moved me the most happened before Isbell took the stage. His opening act was Holly Williams. She’s the daughter of Hank Williams Jr., which of course makes her the granddaughter of Hank Williams Sr.

She doesn’t have to trade on the Williams name — she’s good on her own. But toward the end of the show, she played one of her grandfather’s songs, “I Saw the Light.”

“I Saw the Light” is the first song I remember knowing. I can see my mama and my brother singing it in the kitchen of our little house on St. Simons Island, Ga. I don’t remember if I sang — my brother had a nice singing voice, and I did not — but I remember “Amazing Grace” and “I’ll Fly Away” and all those old Baptist hymns. We never sang “I Saw the Light” in church — the churches I grew up in would never acknowledge an alcoholic country singer. But in the kitchen, a hymn was a hymn no matter who wrote it. So we sang “I Saw the Light.”

Those old hymns have their hooks in me deeper than anything else. When we watched the movie “Junebug” a few years ago and there was a scene with “Softly and Tenderly,” it about knocked me off the couch. When the Avett Brothers did “The Old Rugged Cross” on New Year’s Eve, the big arena felt like a church. And when Holly Williams did “I Saw the Light,” I was 8 years old again, and our family was singing.

I dipped my head so nobody could see my eyes filling up.

Here’s Holly Williams from last night:

 

 

 

The writer Catherine Marshall, via Dean Smith’s memoir, “A Coach’s Life“:

Crisis brings us face to face with our inadequacy, and our inadequacy in turn leads us to the inexhaustible sufficiency of God. This is the power of helplessness, a principle written into the fabric of life.

Tomorrow I turn 50. I’m fairly sure at this point that my dream of playing in the NBA will not be realized. I think the rock-star dream might be gone, too — I never advanced beyond the blistering guitar solos I played on the tennis racket in my bedroom. (Van Halen, if you can rig a Wilson T2000, I can fill in for Eddie as needed.)

It’s natural, I guess, that I’m drawn more lately to people who built careers that last. Tim Duncan is my favorite athlete because he has been so good for so long with so little drama. Bruce Springsteen gives everything he’s got for three hours a night until his black shirt (and it is always a black shirt) is soaked with sweat. The great magician Ricky Jay spends hours alone, shuffling cards, until it seems as if he can move them with his mind. This is the trick of all great artists. Work and work and work until it no longer looks like working.

The one thing I’ve learned in half a century is that it’s ALL work, even the fun things. Getting in shape is work. Marriage is work. Being a good son and brother and friend is work. Having a dog is work. Owning a house is work. I have a bad habit of getting mad when easy things don’t turn out to be easy — one of the few things that makes me really angry is when a simple tool won’t work right. But everything worthwhile involves effort and failure and frustration and mistakes. The payoff comes in those moments when you’ve done the work and the joy you get out of it feels effortless.

This past year, work-wise, was a lot of failure and frustration. I had a great job doing stories I love and then I got let go. I’ve scrambled around trying to make a living and find a stable spot to land, even if I have to build it myself. Lots of other people are in the same situation or worse. I’ve been lucky in countless ways. But now I start to feel the creep of time. Turning 50 means you’re clearly on the back nine of life’s golf course. The mystery is, you never know which hole you’re playing.

Over the years, there’s been one deep philosophical pothead question that I keep chewing on. Can God allow himself to be surprised? Most of the time I think of it in terms of sports. If the Super Bowl is tied after the third quarter, can God will himself to NOT know how the game turns out so he can enjoy the ending like everybody else?

Uncertainty can eat at you. But I think knowing the future is worse. What good is life if you’re never surprised? As a writer, it always helps if you know the ending of a story — that way, everything else you write can lead up to it. But sometimes you don’t know the ending. Sometimes you get way deep into the middle, and it feels like you’ve been working on the thing, oh, I don’t know, 50 years. You panic, you sweat, you struggle. But eventually you find a way through. Those are the most satisfying stories of all.

 

I made a list of the best stuff I read, heard and saw in 2013 — it’s down at the bottom of this post — but in the end I kept wanting to write about one thing, and one idea. Jason Isbell’s “Southeastern” cut deep to my soul — I wrote about it once, then rewrote that a little bit. It’s the finest piece of art I experienced all year. But I think it’s more than that. It’s a Perfect Album. And there aren’t many of those.

I’m not saying “Southeastern” is one of the greatest records of all time. That requires some distance. The greatest records are more about the height of the peaks, and how they land in the culture. A Perfect Album is a little different. To me, a Perfect Album has three requirements:

1) I love every song on it.

2) At one point or another, just about every song has been my favorite song on the record.

3) It never gets old.

A lot of fantastic records — some of my absolute favorites — aren’t quite Perfect Albums. “Abbey Road” is amazing, but “Octupus’s Garden” loses me every time. I really wanted to put Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Second Helping” on here, but I just don’t love “Swamp Music” enough. I have deep feelings for Zero 7’s “Simple Things,” but it starts to fade near the end. R&B from the ’70s is my favorite music, but even Stevie Wonder in his “Talking Book”/”Innervisions”/”Fulfillingness’ First Finale” prime didn’t bat 1.000. (Greatest-hits records don’t count, in the same way you don’t pick a ballplayer’s best season by looking at the highlight reel.)

I spent a lot of time — probably too much time — going through my collection and thinking about this. My hardest cut was the first Boston album; my 14-year-old self argued for it long and hard, but I just don’t love it like I used to. Although I turn up the radio every time the deep-cuts station plays “Something About You.”

In the end, I come up with exactly 10 Perfect Albums. I can’t even begin to put one of these over another, so they’re in alphabetical order.

1) “Ben Folds Five” (debut album, 1995)

2) Isbell, “Southeastern” (2013)

3) Los Lobos, “How Will the Wolf Survive?” (1984)

4) “Lyle Lovett and His Large Band” (1989)

5) Prince, “Purple Rain” (1984)

6) R.E.M., “Reckoning” (1984)

7) Kim Richey, “Bitter Sweet” (1997)

8) Tom Waits, “Closing Time” (1973)

9) “Who’s Next” (1971)

10) Lucinda Williams, “Essence” (2001)

The Kim Richey record is the one you probably don’t know. She might make more of a living as a songwriter — “Every River Runs Dry” was a hit for Brooks & Dunn, and they used “Why Can’t I Say Goodnight” on the TV show “Nashville.” But her versions are better. Every time I play this record once, I want to play it twice.

But that’s how I feel about all of these. And that’s why “Southeastern” hit me so hard this year. At first “Cover Me Up” was my favorite song, and then for a couple months it was “Live Oak,” and then it was “Songs That She Sang in the Shower.” Lately “Elephant” has been working on me. The narrator drinks and smokes with his good friend, and thinks about screwing her, too … but she’s got cancer, and the only thing they can do is joke about it:

We drink these drinks and laugh out loud

Bitch about the weekend crowd

And try to ignore the elephant somehow

Somehow

It hurts my heart to hear it. But I always want to hear it again.

The whole point of a list like this is the debate, so of course I want you to shred my choices and nominate yours. I reserve the right to change my mind multiple times about this.

In the meantime, check out the rest of the best of 2013:

Read Michael Kruse on the Bounty, and David Shoemaker on pro wrestling, and “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” by Ben Fountain, and Wright Thompson on Dan Gable. (I could have picked half a dozen other Wright stories — the fly-rod couple or Johnny Football or Bushwacker the bull or Michael Jordan. Wright’s 2013 was an all-timer.)

Stream the last half-season of “Breaking Bad” (especially “Ozymandias“) and season 4 of “Justified” (especially “Decoy“). I can’t recommend “Justified” enough. The new season starts Jan. 7. Good bandwagon seats available.

Listen to Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” and Kacey Musgraves’ “Merry Go Round” and anything by St. Paul and the Broken Bones, who put on the best show I’ve seen in a long, long time.

Watch Andy Murray finally win Wimbledon, and David Ortiz’s grand slam (with cameos by Torii Hunter and a Boston cop) and, one more time, the end of the Iron Bowl.