Weekly Neil: Revolution Blues, With Real Estate's Martin Courtney

A chat about "going country," social killers, dudes named Daniel, and the band's great new album (also named "Daniel")

This is Weekly Neil, a newsletter about Neil Young. This week, I bring you a lovely and entertaining conversation with Martin Courtney from Real Estate about “Revolution Blues.” It’s a song inspired by Charles Manson, but Martin is really into the groove. This is fitting as his band’s new album, Daniel, is quite grooving. (This one in particular.) We also get into the beloved Nickelodeon cult live-action series The Adventures Of Pete & Pete, and I even almost changed the title of this edition to Weekly Pete. For now, though, we’ll keep the focus on Neil, and Daniel, and, for a brief moment, the fact that the rhythm section of The Band plays on this particular cut from On The Beach. It’s a freewheeling one. Enjoy.

Years ago, a friend told me he skipped work once to go day drink at the Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden in Astoria, Queens and happened upon an impromptu concert from Real Estate. (It seems many others stumbled into this show, their release party for 2011’s album Days, as well.) It’s one of my favorite live-music tales because it speaks to the spontaneous nature of discovery that can endear a song to us permanently. Typically, recorded songs are not spontaneous but painstakingly crafted to sound more or less perfect. In the words of a poetry professor I had in college, “If you get it right, it’ll be good forever.”

But Neil’s whole deal, as we’ve discussed before, is to capture the moment and move on instead of fretting over perfection. When I spoke to Real Estate’s Martin Courtney recently, he, too, professed admiration for this approach. His band’s latest album, Daniel, doesn’t sound fussed-over but also is clearly the work of craftsmen who cared to get it right. They reached the sweet spot. You can hear it especially on a song like “Say No More,” where crisp guitars and precise drumming create a tight, memorable energy. It’s a far cry from the youthful sprawl of “Suburban Beverage.” But it totally shimmers.

As Martin explains, Daniel is not a country album, though it sometimes feels like one. Neil knows something about that. And Martin knows a thing or too about Neil as well.

Photo credit: Sinna Nasseri

Weekly Neil: I was listening to the new album, and obviously there’s a Harvest Moon reference right at the beginning of “Say No More.” I’ve gotta follow up on that, you know. I’ve gotta chase that thread. You’re kind of setting this cozy scene with those lyrics. Did you mean the song “Harvest Moon”? Or are you talking about the album?

Martin Courtney: I guess I was probably talking about the album. I haven’t listened to it in a long time, but yeah, that's probably — I don't know. Honestly, it could have been the song or the album. Probably the album, though.

WN: “Revolution Blues” is very, very different from the songs on Harvest Moon. What made you want to talk about “Revolution Blues”? What’s your relationship with that song?

Martin: That’s one of my favorite songs of his, but you know, there’s so many that you kind of almost have to just pick one. Even on that record, it sticks out because it’s sort of got this cool, funky groove. I've always really liked it. And then actually, I looked it up in preparation for this conversation yesterday, and then I realized that it's Levon Helm playing the drums on that track, which is cool. It was a cool surprise and it makes sense that the drums stick out in that way.

WN: I remember learning that, too. It really blew my mind.

Martin: Super cool. We were actually just listening to that song just now. It just grooves in a really cool way. And then the guitar solos are just awesome, and weird, creepy Charlie Manson lyrics. Just a cool song.

WN: People talk a lot about the mythology of the mid-’70s Neil eras, the Ditch Trilogy, and him being in this post-Harvest place where he's maybe drinking too much, a little depressed about the world. And so it's an extremely dark song lyrically, but it’s got this almost funky rhythm, which I do think makes it pretty irresistible.

Martin: It’s even dark musically, all minor chords and stuff, harsh sounding in a way, but also very pleasing to the ear. That whole record’s so great. Definitely up there for me among my favorites. What is it, like eight songs on that record? They kind of stretch out. Even “Revolution Blues” could probably be, like, three or four minutes longer.

WN: I read a little bit about Neil having met Charles Manson and being kind of captivated by him, but then also spooked. It's totally transportive to this late-’60s, early-’70s time where people were in and out of each other's circles. And then all of a sudden, horrendous things happened out of nowhere.

Martin: You hear a lot about that, like, people who crossed paths with Manson. I feel like he he must have been quite a social guy. He really seemed to get around, Charlie Manson. All these famous people were like, oh, yeah, I met him one time. He must have really inserted himself into… [pause] Yeah, I'm getting made fun of by the band for saying he was a social guy. But you know what I mean? Like, how did he like cross paths with so many famous people? He got in the mix somehow.

WN: Everybody comes to Neil Young differently. A lot of musicians I've talked to started with Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, playing along to those long, jammy songs. Is that where you started? Did you start somewhere else, maybe Harvest?

Martin: I would have to imagine the first record was I heard was Harvest, those first couple, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Those first records were kind of the ones that I really, really obsessed over for — I guess I probably came to him a little bit in high school, but then definitely college was when I really delved into it. I guess like most musicians, you find it, and his music is so simple, but so powerful. It makes you feel like you could you could write a song like him because you can kind of see how he does it. But then there's a magic to it. Nobody can do it quite like he can.

The idea that you can hear that it's a band playing in a room. So many bands have been inspired by that, just the fact that it just sounds like a bunch of people recording somewhere live. At least from my understanding, that was kind of his ethos — just get it down and move on. It's inspiring for sure.

WN: There's something pretty liberating, I would imagine, for musicians or other creative types to just do that and stop torturing yourself.

Martin: And you realize, like, that's the thing. That's one of the things that makes it great is hearing all those imperfections and hearing people feeling their way through it and, you know, his shaky voice and all those things. It's what makes it great, you know? Not the fact that it's not perfect.

WN: For Daniel, there’s been a little talk about how you all went down to Nashville, like, “We're not really going to make a country album,” and it's not really a country album. It’s got country touches, which fit really nicely in the Neil universe. Pedal steel on a couple of the songs. A country tune toward the end in “Victoria.” What was the idea that you guys had to go down and make it in Nashville? Was it to make it with [producer Daniel Tashian] and to be in that space?

Martin: The idea of working with Daniel Tashian came first, and he obviously is based there. One thing led to another, and he invited us to come down to Nashville to record with him. And so that's what we did. We could have recorded it probably anywhere. But the idea of working in Nashville appealed to us because we'd never obviously made a record there before. I didn't want it to feel stylized in any particular way. The songs were good enough to kind of carry themselves, and the arrangements could be kind of simple. That was sort of the goal. But then obviously, we're in Nashville. And at a certain point, Daniel was like, “Would you guys want to get some steel on the songs?” And it was like, “Yeah, of course,” and he knew an incredible player. How could we say no?

I think it was it was fun to kind of see how far we could go with it without necessarily dipping into [country]. To me, there's a difference between incorporating elements of country and writing an actual country song. The Nashville thing kind of seeped in, which was more like the pace of work and kind of 9-to-5 aspects — it was more 10 to 6, but still — you clock in and clock out and go have dinner. It felt more professional than we were used to, which was nice.

We definitely ended up moving even faster than we thought we were going to, which was good because also part of the idea for this record was not to think too hard about anything and not to spend too much time on on any one particular song and just try and allow things to flow in a way that hopefully felt natural and just have fun with it — which does feel in the spirit of Neil Young.

Weekly Neil: The Adventures Of Pete & Pete elements of the “Water Underground” video capture the very ordinary, but also completely surrealistic mundanity of being in suburbia. Where did the idea to do that come from?

Martin: For me and for a lot of us in this band, that was one of our favorite shows. I was kind of the perfect age to receive it. It’s kind of speaking to that wonder without talking down to you. The surreal aspects of the show feel like there's a magic in the show that is not really acknowledged by the adults. These weird, surreal things happen that everyone just accepts, which is sort of how you want to believe the world is when you're a kid.

We've talked about it for years before it actually ended up happening because, having grown up in New Jersey, the show always felt kind of close to home for us. Danny Tamberelli actually lived in the next town over from where me and [band members] Alex and Julian grew up. We weren't friends with him or anything, but, you know, we had connections, and these kind of very close degrees of separation from him. Ando Over the years, we ran into him and kind of met him and became sort of friendly with him. Alex got his number and they would text every once in a while. We had the opportunity to make a video for this record, and we were trying to brainstorm ideas, and it was like, what if we just did the Pete thing? So Alex texted Danny and he was down, surprisingly. He actually said that he had been asked many times by other bands and said no, over the years. But I guess for us, it seemed maybe it was the right time, or the fact that we're from New Jersey. He was not only willing to do it, but really, he kind of shepherded the whole process. He made it happen. He got the creators of the show on board and Mike [Maronna].

Our whole thing was like, obviously, we would have been thrilled to do anything, but the dream was to make sure that it was as legit as possible. So as soon as the creators of the show got on board, it was like, holy shit, this is really happening. We pretty much made it as as close to an actual Pete & Pete reunion as we could get without actually getting sued by Viacom.

Weekly Neil: That's good Daniel behavior on Danny Tamberelli’s part, first of all. Second, I was bummed to not be able to go to the Daniels-only show at Union Pool, especially as a Daniel by middle name. I feel like I have to ask: What is the band’s official stance on the directing duo Daniels?

Martin: Our official stance is they should make a music video for us. I’ve seen Everything Everywhere All At Once and I thought it was pretty good. They seem cool. They seem weird and funny, and I'm glad that people that make weird funny stuff got to win Best Picture. I'm happy for them. That's my official stance. And they should make a video for us.

Real Estate’s new album, Daniel, is out now. It’s $10 on Bandcamp.

“Revolution Blues,” written by Neil Young, from On The Beach (1974)

Neil Young: vocals, guitar
Ben Keith: Wurlitzer
David Crosby: rhythm guitar
Rick Danko: bass
Levon Helm: drums