Good Tar - Double Live

Good Tar - Double Live "Watching LaMotte's performance will make you forget every problem on your mind for a while. Listening to Good Tar is the next best thing." - Jennifer Layton, Spectator Magazine This two-CD release contains twenty songs captured from live performances in the summer of 2001, unadorned by other instrumentation except for the addition of Joe Ebel's electric guitar on one song. It's the next best thing to being there.

Good Tar: Review by Jennifer Layton, for indie-music.com
Grade: A+

"You have to see this guy," the owner of the Six String Cafe in North Carolina kept telling me. "You just have to see him play. He's amazing."

The Six String was rapidly becoming my favorite place to hang out anyway, so I was there for LaMotte's next show. After seeing this folk singer/songwriter/storyteller do just one set, I went home, called his manager, and asked for a press kit.

I wrote a review of his new CD, Good Tar, for Spectator Magazine, but I had a 150-word limit, which was like trying to cram War and Peace onto a business card. It was quite the frustrating writing exercise.

LaMotte spends most of his life on the road, playing his music, working with at-risk high school students, teaching creativity classes, and promoting a message of peace in workshops for university students in places like Northern Ireland. If he doesn't make it to a certain town, the residents come to him. Good Tar begins with an introduction by KZSC radio deejay Jeff Emery, who flew all the way from Santa Cruz, California, to North Carolina to see LaMotte play. Having been in the audience myself, I can confirm that, yes, LaMotte is that good.

Good Tar is the proof. LaMotte's 7th CD, a double-live effort, was recorded at eight shows over the summer of 2001. Even with my short
attention span, I was captivated through all twenty songs and various stories. The CD put me right back in the Six String Cafe, casting the same spell, making me laugh in the same places, turning me into a peacenik all over again. Watching LaMotte's performance will make you forget every problem on your mind for a while. Listening to Good Tar is the next best thing.

LaMotte never preaches. His messages of peace and reaching out are delivered with a hint of an understanding smile, completely nonjudgmental. "There's no time like the present, no present like time," he sings in "Deadline," a song about making time for the things that really matter, like loved ones. In "Lens Cap," he is mesmerizing, half-breathing the lines and making his acoustic guitar chime like a bell at key moments. Spellbinding.

Several times on this CD, the audience is silent when the song ends. They want to hear that last echo of magic as the final notes fade away before breaking the spell with applause.I had to laugh at myself when I recognized certain tracks from his Six String performance and got all excited about hearing them again. "Spin," the first track on the second CD, was one of them. The music feels like an old Western, with guest Joe Ebel doing great, growling, mean electric guitar work on this perfect showdown between us and what we're told to believe on the news:

Give me the update, tell me again
Give me the difference between us and them
Give it a number between one and ten
Show me the headline, give me the spin

He can't stay serious for long, though. He includes the funny songs like "Stupid in Love." And what makes "Levi Blues" so brilliantly funny is the way he works a song about botched laundry like BB King on his guitar.

He leaves them laughing at the end, too. The folk tribute to Charlie's Angels, which has the crowd roaring, is reason enough to check this CD out. ("Now Drew Barrymore's an angel - wasn't she in E.T.?")

I love the songs. I love the stories. I'd love to see the used boots he bought for $17.50 in Wyoming that came with real Wyoming ranch dust. ("I did pass up on the chaps," he assures the audience.) I will be there when he does one more show at the Six String this weekend before he heads off to Australia in the spring.