May 16, 2009

Ray Stevens: "Legends and Lyrics"

SPOILER AHEAD...For those who hadn't seen Ray's appearance on the show and want to catch it yourself and be surprised at what he says and all of that, don't continue reading because the following review I wrote contains specific commentary about the program's contents.

Here's the review/re-cap of the show in general...

"Legends and Lyrics" aired it's premiere episode tonight on one of the local PBS stations and by luck I caught it...the channel's web-site didn't list the series air-dates or anything...so by luck I decided to check my cable guide and looked up the PBS stations in my area and found the show airing at 10pm Saturday night. I clicked "more info" on my remote and read the scheduled guests and sure enough it was the episode with Ray Stevens. I watched the whole show...the first half of the program was devoted to Randy Owen, Kris Kristofferson, and Patti Griffin. Each of the three sang a couple of songs and told stories about the songs. Randy tells a funny story about RCA's president at the time questioning him about some lyrics in "Mountain Music".

In between and after this audience in-the-round segment, each artist was profiled separately as they spoke to the camera.

The second half of the show kicked off with a segment called "Did You Know?" which featured a 5 minute essay on the late songwriter Harlan Howard and his philosophy on songwriting. After this segment was over with they went back to Randy, Kris, and Patti for a few more commentaries and then they all took a bow amidst applause and then the scene shifted to the "legend" segment...with Ray...at last!

Ray's segment appeared nearly 45 minutes into the show and he spoke a lot about writing songs and his association with Bill Lowery. He went on to explain how easy songwriting is for him and how easy it can be for everyone. At one point in the segment he said that "even an idiot can write a song". He compared songwriting to a musical crossword puzzle and said that in a lot of the songs he wrote he never felt the pressure to come up with lines that rhymed. He said that he'd think about everything he wanted to say in a song and then once he figured that out then the words/melody came easily and without realizing it his lyrics would end up rhyming because it fit a melody he was writing to in his head. The camera then edited to a scene of him in his recording studio, I assume. He was sitting at the piano singing the second half of "Mr. Businessman". It shown the performance just on piano...and then once the song ended the scene faded out to another segment.

I enjoyed the appearance but it was brief and the show didn't spend as much time on him in the context of an hour's program as I would have liked.

Perhaps one day Ray will be among the artist's "in the round" and appear discussing his songs and performing them to the intimate audience like Randy, Kris, and Patti did in the show's debut episode...here's hoping.

1 comment:

  1. He's an interesting guy with an equally interesting family. Enjoyed your review.

    ReplyDelete

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