“A Little Sand Box” of Howe Gelb

One of Tucson’s landmark songwriters – guitarist and pianist Howe Gelb – has had an astoundingly strong and quirky musical career with a prolific output that is near impossible to categorize.

Howe Gelb
photo courtesy Fire Records

Gelb is a musical sound creator with a hand in crafting over fifty albums. “Little Sand Box” only covers eight of his solo releases that span the stylistic gamut from eerie desolation to soul lifting hope to piano jazzy.

Through most of his work, Gelb has a steady, wry song–talkin’ lyrical approach, and a passion to collaborate with varied musicians of the first water, with whom, in his words, “I would get sparked when we’d jam.”

Much of Howe’s prodigious productivity has been as a solo act. His solo material, like the acclaimed 2006 release, “Sno Angel like You,” puts Howe’s Americana in juxtaposition with a gospel choir; years later finds Gelb collaborating with Spanish flamenco virtuosos on 2011’s “Alegrias” release. And then it’s his burning passion for piano instrumentals that lulls listeners into a reverie with the disk “Some Piano.”

This month, British music label Fire Records releases a massive eight volume box-set, appropriately named “Little Sand Box,” containing previously released albums, re-mastered by Tucson’s Jim Blackwood and augmented with bonus tracks that may have been overlooked in the sheer volume of Gelb’s career output.

Howe’s intimate, elucidating and in-depth liner notes/booklet guides the listener and reader through two decades, 1991 through 2011, with styles ranging from indie rock, Western weird and slow-core to European blues, soul, and flamenco played and produced in Denmark and Spain; and many, many life changes.

Herein, described in song, are moments of the songwriter’s life, from wooing a wife – in 1991’s release “Dreaded Brown Recluse,” Actually Faxing Sophia, to his child’s voice, about to be told in Blue Marble Girl, on 2001’s release “Confluence” and the break-up of Giant Sand and its aftermath on two versions of the song Vex on that same release.

For Gelb, music comes from life. The “Listener,” a 2003 release, is full of tremendous work with talented Danes, began from pre-life – as he writes in the liner notes: “It started out by going to Denmark to have our third child… about fourteen musicians showed up when I went in to record… by the time we finished the album, three were left standing when the dust settled … and these three would accompany me on the road to support the album…I would soon realize that this was becoming Giant Sand again.”

Or taking a chance late in the evening to chat up a choir in Ottawa, Canada, to see if a collaboration could be at hand.“I was so tormented that I didn’t make a connection with any of the choir people.”

Gelb had been invited to the Ottawa Blues Festival, as Gelb puts it, “for some reason.

“I just had to do something, so I went out into the beautiful July rain. I went in and sat down and caught the last couple songs and got dizzy again… transfixed… stunned with joy. I finally worked up the guts to find the director of that specific church… and approached him with my idea.”

The resulting 2006 release “Sno Angel Like You,” re-released on this box set with two bonus tracks and accompanied by the 2009 formerly limited release of the live Ottawa show “Sno Angel Wingin It,” are, for this listener, the most powerful materials in the set.

The collaborating choir – Voices of Praise Gospel Choir – soar and growl in perfect contra punt to the songwriters’ sung and spoken words. This album feels good like gospel should, and the live release, with five cuts not on “Sno Angel” proper, is by itself, worth the price of admission.

As Gelb says, “the result is a fine audio postcard of the excitement that a gospel choir can radiate on stage and on the road… a real blessing.”

Howe Gelb’s box set spans over two decades of his music.
photo courtesy Fire Records, FireRecords.com

In order, the box set is comprised of “Deadly Brown Recluse,” “Hisser,” “Confluence,” “The Listener,” “Sno Angel Like You,” “Sno Angel Wingin’ It,” “Allegrias” and “Some Piano.”

“Some Piano” especially caught my ear. Gelb spent mucho time as an evolving pre-adult listening to quality piano blues and jazz, and it is – despite Howe’s self-deprecation in his liner notes, “the black notes had me stumped,” and “my ear was tin” – performances shining gorgeously in these evolved tracks, culled from Howe’s previous piano releases “Lull,” “Ogle,” “Spun” and “Snarl.”

All in all, the mostly re-mastered eight disc box set is a feast for either a dedicated Howe Gelb fan or one perhaps not yet in the fold. Music made in Canada, Spain, Denmark, but most of all, in Tucson, from a Tucsonan.

The box-set is set for release on Jan. 14, at local record stores or from Fire Records. More information is available at FireRecords.com or HoweGelb.com.

Category: MUSIC