“Come on, moon! Help me find my way …” John Németh is singing, imploring, not quite shouting, on the new album by the Love Light Orchestra. It’s the edge of desperation in his voice, sung over a bare landscape populated with only a walking bass, that grabs your attention. “You know the darkest hour is just before day.” As the horns, piano, and guitar swell, the sound echoes off the walls in an earthy, evocative way. Add a few pops and scratches, and you’d think you had just scored an old ’45 on Duke Records, the 1950s Memphis label, eventually gobbled up by Houston’s Don Robey, that released Bobby “Blue” Bland’s first decade of albums.
Like Bland, Németh’s dynamic range and timbre can go from a silky purr to a growl in a heartbeat. Yet it’s always marked by his own unique personality. And the echoes of classic vinyl sides aren’t just coming from his singing; the nine players backing him up have also zeroed in on a way of playing that, for many, has been lost to time. There’s something undeniably satisfying about musicians who stubbornly hold on to sounds that the music industry has deemed obsolete. In 1964, Nashville producer Owen Bradley compared musical styles to ice cream, where no one insists that, say, chocolate be abandoned. “Today, there are many, many flavors of music. I suppose you call them ‘trends’ but they go down in history and frequently are revived.”
Recently, I spoke with trumpeter and arranger Marc Franklin about how the Love Light Orchestra gets its flavors just right, with an aesthetic that’s more revival than retro.
Memphis Flyer: The orchestra captures the sound of a particular era. Is it a challenge to write in the style of another time?
Marc Franklin: It’s not an issue for any of us. The reason we started the band was because we’re fans of that kind of music, and we didn’t feel like anybody was playing it.
There are lots of Albert King-based and B.B. King-based blues bands, with a ’60s and ’70s sound, but everything from before Stax happened, like the stuff on Duke Records and the blues stuff on Sun Records, which could be kind of jazzy, doesn’t get played much. Like post-swing blues music. And John’s heroes all come from that era and before.
People don’t really think of musicians as being music fans, but John’s got a huge record collection and he’s always listening to good stuff. That shows in the way he sings, his styling.
How was the new album recorded? Was it akin to how records were made in the ’50s?
Yes. We cut it all live at Memphis Magnetic Recording. Everybody was in the same room, no headphones, with John singing in the room with us. The room is so great in there. Adam Hill and Scott McEwen engineered it and did a great job. And Matt Ross-Spang mixed it at Sam Phillips.
That great vintage echo chamber at Sam Phillips kind of put the cherry on top of everything. When Matt pulled up the first song, just getting the levels, it immediately fit the direction we were going. He turned it on and I was like, “Oh my god! That sounds like an old record!” I mean, Phillips was built in 1958 or so. That’s right in the ballpark of where we’re at, stylistically.
It must be bittersweet hearing the album now, after original bass player Tim Goodwin’s death last year.
Yeah. He was really adept at music that’s blues-but-not-just-blues, with a bit of a jazz element to it. He played with Mose Allison a lot, so he was perfect. Now, Matthew Wilson’s replaced Tim, and we have Paul McKinney on trumpet.
Paul and Matthew actually played on the last day of sessions, so they’re on the record, too.
You know, except for John, Tim taught everybody in the band at one point or another [at the University of Memphis]. I mean, imagine: Every total pro musician in Memphis since the early ’80s was mentored by Tim in some way. That’s a huge community of people that were touched by him.
So it is bittersweet. I wish he was around to see it.
The Love Light Orchestra celebrates the release of their new album, Leave the Light On, at the Germantown Performing Arts Center on Friday, February 18th, at 8 p.m. Visit gpacweb.com for details.
Lisa Mac 
