Lighting the Way: Laura Nyro/Season of Lights

At this darkest time of the year, between the winter solstice and the New Year, we feather the nest and we light the lights. We burn candles, we string bulbs, we set off fireworks, we light the winter log. We also sleep and dream, bathing in familiar songs and sounds, the smell of baking cookies, the windows steamy with condensation that freezes in the dark of night.

Season of Lights: Laura Nyro in Concert is one of my favorite records to listen to at this time of year. It isn't explicitly a holiday record, in fact it isn't a holiday record at all. And yet it captures my feelings at this time of year like few other records ever have. Of course there is the title. Season of Lights: Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Solstice, Diwali. All are marked by the use of light to signify the presence of life in the darkness of winter.

The music on Season of Lights is the sound of an artist reclaiming herself. Gone are the more eccentric, theatrical aspects of her younger performances, replaced by a more relaxed style that feels far more comfortable for the artist. Nyro had been gone from the scene for five years, and her reemergence in 1975 with the album Smile had introduced listeners to this new laid back style. Next Laura toured for the first time with a backing band, a feat also undertaken by Joni Mitchell two years previous, and captured on her Miles of Aisles album.

On Smile Nyro worked with a who's who of studio aces of the time: John Tropea, Joe Beck, Hugh McKracken, Will Lee, Richard Davis, Rick Marotta, Joe Farrell, the Brecker Brothers. Her touring group was comprised of Tropea on guitar, Davis on bass, drummer Andy Newmark, Jean Fineberg on flute, Jeff King on sax, Ellen Seely on trumpet, conga player Nydia Mata, and percussionist Carter "C.C." Collins. To this another important element was added: Mike Mainiari on vibraphone, marimba, and clavinet. Mainiari adds a sparkling element, offering timbres that might otherwise have been supplied by an Fender Rhodes electric piano.

These are not merely a bunch of slick musicians, they are some top notch jazz players in many cases and they play together like a band and they support Nyro in ways that horns and backup musicians had never done on her earlier albums. On Eli and the Thirteenth Confession there was always the feeling that Nyro would be more comfortable singing the songs alone, without having to hit her marks with the band, being the sole arbiter of tempo and lingering where necessary on a word or a phrase. And while it seemed pretty clear to many other performers like the Fifth Dimension and Three Dog Night that Nyro was essentially a soul/R&B songwriter who happened to be white, that fact seemed to elude her record company.

On Season of Lights, she has joined a group of musical comrades in arms and she is comfortable trusting them and they do not let her down. There is a sense of brotherhood/sisterhood to these performances that add warmth to the experience of listening and that is one reason I love listening to it this time of year.

It's important to recognize that the Season of Lights that we can listen to today is quite different from the original vinyl Columbia Records release. The label originally planned to release a 2LP set featuring sixteen songs but it was winnowed down to a single album of ten songs prior to release. The truncated album doesn't have the pace that the longer version, finally released by Sony Japan in 1993, achieves. It also edits out some of the improvisational passages featuring the band, and might have accounted for some of the weird criticism of the record, such as Melody Maker's assertion that the horn section and band was somewhat stiff or that there was something wrong with Newmark's drumming, which is not borne out by listening.

There is also the fact that the record is stacked with older songs from before Nyro's hiatus. The sixteen track version has five songs from Smile, and the only new, unrecorded song, "The Morning News" was also cut from the original Columbia release. So a lot of criticism was leveled at the older material that had been retrofitted with new arrangements in the style of her post-hiatus material. The only songs from Smile included on the original single LP release are "Money" and "The Cat Song." So it's no surprise that the record barely registered on the record buying public in 1977. Maybe it wouldn't have anyway; Nyro's style was definitely aimed at a different audience than her earilier pop hits. In fact it was much more in line with the Quiet Storm radio format that emerged at Howard University’s WHUR Radio in 1976 and became popular at stations across the country. Not surprisingly, Season of Lights makes a pretty good make out album.

Before she performs "Smile," Nyro takes the stage to thunderous applause. Someone calls out 'Welcome home.' Someone else yells "You're beautiful" to which Laura responds "So are you." 'Smile' is at the heart of the record's solstice season vibe, opening with the lines "Winter turn on the night/turn on your love light.' The new Laura Nyro is sexy, enthralled with elements of domesticity and with a life closer to nature than her New York City days. But she's clear about one thing: in the darkness there is the need for light, be it electric or psychic or spiritual or an erotic spark that burns up the night.

There is a lot that we can do to combat the darkness, both natural and unnatural, of our times. Nyro sings "the world's insane/paper's gone mad/but our love is a peace vibe, yeah..." It presents the personal as the political--our love, our lives, our values, our vibe can influence the course of events. She talks about the news as newspapers, a signpost both to the rise of newer media since then as well as the more intrusive nature of the news cycle into our daily lives.

It matters what we take in. It matters what we put out there. Smile and Season of Lights were a new beginning for Nyro, who had tired of the music industry and its record-tour-repeat cycle. From this point on her career came on her terms. She recorded when she wanted, took breaks when she wanted and knew that her core audience, the ones who had followed her from her return to active performing and recording in 1975, would be there.

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