Pete Berwick's Just Another Day In Hell

It was yer typical music biz deal – down & dirty and without witnesses. I rendezvoused with Petey the Clown in the alley behind Chewy's Waffles-n-Fish, third garbage can from the passed-out drunk, as per our usual agreement. The deal was for ten-large, small bills with no consec numbers, for which I'd pen guaranteed award-winning liner notes that would bring his music the attention that it so sorely deserved.

I don't rightly remember where I first met Pete Berwick…might have been at the car wash, in the rows of one of Nashville's many pawn shops, or maybe during a barfight in some back-alley Music City dive. You know what they say about the '80s…if you can remember the decade, well….

What I do remember is that Berwick was the real deal, singing the truth to a mud-crusted, foggy-thinking Music Row establishment too deaf to hear the honesty in the guy's rough-hewn vocals, too rabbit-scared to face the reality portrayed by Pete's lyrics. Hell, they all but crucified Steve Earle back in the day – there's no way that they'd embrace Berwick's heresies. The country music biz might have preached "traditionalism" back in the day, but when faced with an artist too proud and talented to genuflect at the altar of Garth, they ran like Little Bo Peep and her sheep in the opposite direction.

Fast-forward to 2009 and Just Another Day In Hell. Nashville's star-making machinery routinely crushes the souls and dashes the hopes of country music hopefuls, but in Pete Berwick's case, they couldn't stomp out the man's dreams. Here he is with a new album, his best yet, bringing blood, sweat, and balls back to a country music genre sorely lacking in all three.

In Nashville, conventional wisdom says, it "all begins with a song." Problem is, too many Music Row tunesmiths are pets kept on a short leash by the artists they hope will record their songs. Berwick pens his own reality and, much like Hank, Waylon, Townes or Steve, his songs are inhabited by heartbreak, humor, insight, and emotion.

For instance, consider the Dylanesque remembrance that is "I Fought With Angels." Fraught with regret, the song's bone-chilling weariness is reinforced by searing guitar and a high lonesome harp. Berwick's protagonist has seemingly all but surrendered, waving the white flag of regret to the world. Gruff vocals slurring sad lyrics, Berwick's brilliant wordplay describes a lifetime of Quixotic tilting at windmills. As the guitar screams out its tortured, steely notes one realizes that this is a song of defiance, not defeat, and no matter how many ass-kicking's the song's protagonist endures, he's going to get up, time after time, to wade back into the fray.

The Western gunslinger flavor of "While I Die" is supported by tremolo-soaked fretwork, a martial rhythm, and Berwick's best Marty Robbins-styled vocals. The lyrics are brilliantly constructed, and the wiry, raga-flavored six-string riff in the background soaks the entire song in delightful pathos. Like much of John Prine's best material, "Cold Wind (Baby Come Home)" provides a perfect balance between the simplicity of song and the complexity of emotion. Berwick's vivid imagery is matched by a fine, heartbroken vocal turn and accompanied by Rick Devries' inspired slide-guitarwork.

The ribald "Hello Hand" is scatologically funny in its embrace of Onanism, Berwick's clever double-and-triple-entendre wordplay barely concealing the heartache and loneliness beneath the song's bravado. Some might find it offensive but, in truth, it's as honest a country song as has ever been written, and better than 99.999% of the dreck that has been spit up by Music Row's feeble scribes over the past couple decades. "Roadkill Blues" evokes a similarly-skewed sense of humor, Ma Nature versus modern industrial society in a song that is neither preachy nor strident, just poetically observational.

Revisiting the hilariously dark-hued comedy of "Standing At The Gates" from his 2002 album Only Bleeding, Berwick revs up the tune with a locomotive rockabilly fever, his vocals less punkish than the original, with more twang but with no less energy or attitude. The song is still a Dangerfieldian treatise on the loser's life, with a bleak tongue-in-cheek humor that only partially conceals the truth, appealing to the misanthrope in all of us with driving drumbeats and scorched-earth guitar.

The title track, "Just Another Day In Hell," is a wry jail song in the mold of Johnny Cash or Merle Haggard, crossing the swaggering twang-ridden riffs of James Burton with the cowpunk fervor of Jason & the Scorchers. Berwick deftly illustrates that there's more than one kind of prison cell, and that the bars that keep us in are sometimes those of our own making. "Busted In Kentucky" walks the hallowed classic country-rock ground between the Flying Burrito Brothers and David Allen Coe, a true-to-life story-song that exhibits Berwick's fine eye for detail and biting wit, his talking blues-styled vocals delivered above a shit-kicking beat.

That's just about half the songs from Just Another Day In Hell – the rest are every bit as good, each and every one delivered with a reckless country spirit that is equal parts juke-joint soul and honky-tonk energy. Berwick still rocks too hard for Nashville, but isn't that why God and Gram Parsons created alt-country music?

No, I don't remember where I met Pete Berwick, but I'm glad that I did. Pete and his music keep getting better with age, and Just Another Day In Hell sounds like a cold beer at the end of 500 miles of broken road…it's just that damn good!

Portions of this review were used to create the liner notes for Just Another Day In Hell…so sue me!

(Click on the CD cover to buy Just Another Day In Hell from Amazon.com)

"Standing At The Gates"