Search - Marvin Etzioni :: Marvin Country!

There's country, there's alt. country, and there's Marvin Country. It's a magical place, way off the map, populated by back-porch philosophers, hobos, brokenhearted lovers and spacemen, and presided over by the man the L.A. Times called ''one heck of a songwriter,'' and Billboard compared to John Lennon.Grammy award winner Marvin Etzioni has been known over the years as producer (Toad the Wet Sprocket, Counting Crows, Peter Case), sideman (T Bone Burnett, Dixie Chicks, Grey Delisle), and songwriter (Cheap Trick, Victoria Williams). Even before there was No Depression, Marvin was the co-founder of Lone Justice. It's safe to say Marvin is revered in Americana circles worldwide.Says Marvin Etzioni, ''For me the real country writers are Leonard Cohen and Dylan, or Sly Stone and Stevie Wonder, or Charles Aznavour and Jacques Brel. To quote Merle Haggard, 'I wear my own kinda hat.'''Marvin Country is his ambitious fourth album. The 18 songs on his new double CD are variously original, traditional, tender, quirky, emotional and wise. There's back-porch country, barroom weepers, clapboard-church gospel, haunting folk, dusty blues and songs for which a genre's not yet been named. On some of them Marvin goes it alone; a multi-instrumentalist, he plays mandolin, mandocello, guitar, bass, piano, Mellotron, porchboard and keyboards. Others feature a distinguished cast of guests - including duets with Lucinda Williams (a heart-wrenching Lay It On The Table), Steve Earle (Ain't No Work In Mississippi), Richard Thompson (It Don't Cost Much), Buddy Miller (Living Like A Hobo), John Doe (The Grapes Of Wrath), Maria McKee (You Possess Me) and The Dixie Hummingbirds, who add their uplifting harmonies to You Are The Light, a reprise of the Americana classic Etzioni wrote for Lone Justice's acclaimed 1985 debut.Some are born to country. Some, like Marvin, have country thrust upon them - in the form of the mandolin his grandfather, a country music-loving Polish Jew, gave him when he was eight years old. More than four decades later, the Mandolin Man, as he became known, had Keith Richards autograph it when they played together in the Sin City All Stars band at a tribute to Gram Parsons.In the '90s Marvin released three solo albums, The Mandolin Man (1991), Bone (1992) and Weapons Of The Spirit (1994), which were lavished with praise by the press. And now at last he's back, with Marvin Country, an album full of ghosts and full of life, and with songs inspired by faith, love, hope, depression, Dylan, Kurt Vonnegut and Harry Teitelbaum, Marvin's grandfather, to whom the album's dedicated.