which was performed for the Pope on his visit in 1998. Vitier,
whose parents are noted Cuban poets, responded to Neuwirth's
lyrics, and likewise, Neuwirth found a kinship with Cuba's
nueva trova movement: a folk-style, politically aware form
of music that swept Latin America in the '60s. Vitier proposed
that they work together, and the Institute of Music invited
Neuwirth to Havana on a " fully-hosted" cultural
visit.Bob Neuwirth in Cuba: the combination may not have been predictable, but it was probably inevitable. Over the past 40 years, after all, this singer, songwriter, producer, performer, painter, poet, improviser, collaborator, and instigator has proven himself to be an artist unconcerned with any barriers of style or medium. He has found himself at the epicenter of one artistic upheaval after another.
From Paris to Berkeley and Cambridge in the '60s, from the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock to the Rolling Thunder Revue, from SoHo to Nashville, Neuwirth has quietly plied his trade, made his mark and assembled a bewildering array of colleagues and creative partners. Now Havana Midnight, his new album, has taken him to Cuba and it should come as no surprise that before the imprimatur of hip was recently bestowed upon the island by record buyers and concertgoers around the world, Neuwirth had already been there, making music.
Still, the nature of the work documented by Havana Midnight is wholly unpredictable. In a way, the album is a continuation of Bob's on-the-road series, and a follow-up to 1996's Look Up, which consisted of live recordings done in various spots around the world: Patti Smith's bedroom in Detroit, Elliott Murphy's living room in Paris, Bernie Leadon's cabin in Tennessee... But Havana Midnight isn't an audio verité snapshot of the trip Neuwirth made to Cuba, or a collection on which Neuwirth tries to sing Cuban music, or an album of Cuban musicians trying to play American blues-folk songs. It's a true picture of artists from two very different traditions finding a common ground, or creating one.
Bob went to Havana wondering if he was musically adept enough to hold his own with conservatory-trained Cuban musicians accustomed to playing carefully worked-out arrangements. They in turn wondered if they could fit in with a songwriter known for improvising songs, shows, even entire albums. "It was a dangerous project on a number of levels," says Neuwirth. "I had to trust in the creative benevolence of the situation."
Vitier had arranged one song, "The First Time," before Neuwirth's arrival; some of the others were written in Havana, some brought down and revised with Vitier and his musicians. The work was all done in the space of a week: nine completed songs that reflect the journey and the country, including the lovely lament "Havana Midnight" (recorded in two different versions), the stark ballad "The Call" and Neuwirth's tangled ode to the changes Cuba is undergoing, "Don Quixote."
"After all these years, I still believe that the kernel of art, the heart of it, lies in its immediacy and its innocence," he says. "My idea is always to hang in there until the artifice melts away and you can find the heartbeat of something. That's what we did here, and it was one of the most intense and harmonious experiences I've ever had."
That's saying a lot, because Neuwirth's entire career has been spent creating and harmonizing with a wide spectrum of people in a variety of places. To skim the surface of Neuwirth's life and career is to take a trip through four decades of pop-cultural signposts; he may have deliberately stayed out of the headlines, but he was always in the thick of it.
Neuwirth went to art school in Boston and was part of the burgeoning Cambridge blues-folk scene, where he learned firsthand from such urban blues legends as Lightnin' Hopkins, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Mississippi John Hurt and the Rev. Gary Davis. The other end of the transcontinental hitchhiking axis lay in California's Bay area, where Neuwirth divided his time between folk clubs in Berkeley and bohemian bars across the bay in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood.
Some of Neuwirth's mid-'60s years were spent working and traveling with Bob Dylan, including the chaotic tours documented in the movies Don't Look Back and Eat the Document. As part of the New York underground film scene of the time, he filmed the Monterey Pop Festival, went to Woodstock and traveled to Nashville with a then-struggling songwriter named Kris Kristofferson. He would later teach Kristofferson's song "Me and Bobby McGee" to his old friend Janis Joplin, with whom Neuwirth had co-written the song "Mercedes Benz."
In the 70s, Neuwirth put together the band for Dylan's acclaimed Rolling Thunder Revue, which helped launch the careers of T Bone Burnett, J.S. Soles and David Mansfield, among others. During this period he was also featured in the film Renaldo and Clara.
In the 80s, he recorded two solo albums Back to the Front
and 99 Monkeys; produced such artists as Burnett and Vince Bell;
and saw his songs recorded by the likes of Concrete Blonde,
k.d. lang, Peter Case, Robert Earl Keen Jr., Kris Kristofferson,
Tom Russell and others. In 1994 he partnered with John Cale on
the album Last Day on Earth, and two years later released Look Up,
which contained Patti Smith's first recording in more than a decade.
During this period he toured Europe often, sometimes alone and
other times with artists such as Cale, Warren Zevon, Howe Gelb
and Sid Griffin.More recently he has produced Down from the Mountain, a documentary film by D.A. Pennebaker that documents a Nashville concert by the artists from the current Oh Brother Where Art Thou? movie soundtrack. Last year he also participated in the much-lauded Harry Smith concerts with famed producer Hal Wilner, appearing at Royal Festival Hall in London and at St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn, New York.
Through it all, Neuwirth has remained purposefully elusive. He's an artist in search of art, not fame, one whose travels never cease because his artistic restlessness never lets up. "You have to let the art take you," he says, reporting from the road once more. "The minute you try to control the art, you've lost it." Such is the impetus that drives Bob Neuwirth; such is the spirit that brought him to Havana, and to Havana Midnight.
For more information, please contact Carla Sacks or Mary Moyer at Sacks & Co. at 212.741.1000 or email Carla@sacksco.com or Mary@sacksco.com
