Spotlight Album Review: Roger Street Friedman "Love Hope Trust"
Roger Street Friedman took a 25-year hiatus from music to work in the family business. When he returned in 2014 with his debut album, The Waiting Sky, it was clear that he was a solid songwriter. In the time since, the Long Island resident has released three increasingly strong albums. With the latest, Love Hope Trust, he seems to have hit his stride.
A big part of his artistic progression has been his collaboration with in-demand producer and master of all stringed instruments, Larry Campbell. Best known for his work with Bob Dylan and Levon Helm, Campbell heard Friedman at a Brooklyn session and instantly liked what he heard. He went on to produce Roger’s third album, Rise. By the time they began work on Love Hope Trust at Roger’s state-of-the-art home studio, their teamwork had really gelled, with Larry contributing to the writing, playing at least eight different instruments, bringing out the best in Roger’s vocals, and using his unerring judgment to get the best takes.
Culled from songs written during the pandemic, Love Hope Trust, says Roger “encompasses a myriad of concerns, fears, joys and sorrows inherent in everyday life in this crazy world from the perspective of age—dare I say maturity—and gratitude.” The album gets right to the point with the title track, a rocker with Larry’s electric guitar and Jason Crosby’s Hammond organ: “Don’t know where we’re going,” Roger sings, but “we gotta live with each other/Live like sisters and brothers/We need love hope and trust.”
One of the stronger songs, “Ghosts of Sugarland,” delves into American history, using the full range of Larry’s talents (guitar, banjo, mandolin, and fiddle) to recount the post-Civil War practice of convict leasing in the South. “Annabelle” goes farther South to tell the story of a young Mexican girl tricked into sex trafficking; with a Jackson Browne feel, the swelling refrain of “eyes as deep as the pool of the wishing well,” with background harmonies by Teresa Williams and Lucy Kaplansky, makes her tragedy palpable. Like Jackson a political creature, Roger takes issue with the Republican party on “Cut Your Losses” and deals with “the battle raging down under my skin” in “Walls Close In.”
On “About You,” a minor key tune with harmonics worthy of David Crosby, Roger shares his deep loss of Felix McTeague, the son of Maggie Roche and co-producer of his early albums, whose death was also mourned by Anais Mitchell on her self-titled album last year. “Vapor in the Air,” uses a Jimmy Buffett-esque rhythm to describe vivid memories of a time gone by: “a few misty reveries/and small sad epiphanies.” That relationship has been tested by time on the yearning love song, “I Want Her to Know”: “She thinks that I can forget her/As if the soul and the heart can divorce/Ships may sail, and words may fail/But no distance is too far to reach from here to my shore.”
Ultimately, family is at the center of Love Hope Trust. “Mother and Son,” accented by Larry’s pedal steel guitar, describes his strong relationship with his mother, while acknowledging the same bond his son has with his mother. When one of his kids asks him who he loves more, him or his sister, the answer is in “Multiply by Two”: “If there is infinity/Well, that is my love for you/And if you want to understand/Multiply that love by two.” Roger even gets vocal help from his family (his daughter Allie and brother Lev), along with Teresa and Lucy on the chorus of “Thankful for the Day,” an anthem of gratitude which sums up Roger’s values:
I am thankful for this day
For the love that fills my heart
For two feet to make a start
I am thankful for this day
I am thankful for this day
For the blue that fills the skies
For all I’ve yet to see
For every hope and every dream
I am thankful for this day
I am thankful that Roger has found the way to express in words and music, with the aid of superb musicians, sentiments that are both timeless and necessary for right now.