Many of country music’s greatest talents have considered him their favorite tunesmith, and his songs have been recorded by everybody from Bobby Bare and Kris Kristofferson to Elvis Presley. Chance are that you’re probably familiar with Billy Joe Shaver’s songs, even if you have no idea of who the man is himself. Suffice it to say that what makes Shaver a great songwriter is that, for good or for bad, he puts a large part of himself into each of his autobiographical songs. As such, listening to Billy Joe Shaver’s Greatest Hits is like opening a book and looking at a cracked and faded old portrait of the artist.
Shaver is a Texas storyteller in the vein of Guy Clark or Townes Van Zandt. He’s grizzled and gruff, humbled by too many miles and sobered by too much alcohol, and he pours his life into every song. Greatest Hits includes some of Shaver’s best known material, like “Georgia On A Fast Train” and “Old Chunk of Coal,” as well as some of his best songs in “Old Five and Dimers” and “I Couldn’t Be Me Without You.”
The album also offers up two previously-unreleased songs, but it’s the recent remake of the high-flying “Live Forever,” recorded with Big & Rich, that best showcases Shaver’s warm voice above his songwriting skills. Billy Joe Shaver’s Greatest Hits offers up old-school honky-tonk country with a bit of Lone Star spirit for both new and old listeners alike. (Compadre Records, released April 3rd, 2007)
Review originally published by Country Standard Time...
There’s often a fine line between sin and salvation and, like most outlaws, Billy Joe Shaver has one foot in the honky-tonk and one in the church pew. Shaver has long expressed the desire to record a “gospel” album and it’s fitting…the same weathered voice that speaks convincingly of barrooms and broken hearts is also perfectly suited for singing the praises of Jesus. And it’s not like religion is a little-traveled path for Shaver; he has typically included a spiritual song on each album through the years.
With Everybody’s Brother, however, Shaver focuses more on salvation, bringing friends like Kris Kristofferson, John Anderson, Marty Stuart, Bill Miller, and Tanya Tucker along for the joyous ride. Listeners expecting a collection of staid church hymns will be disappointed; although Everybody’s Brother has its loftier moments, much of the material approaches God from the sinner’s side of the fence, and songs like the rollicking duet with Stuart, “Winning Again,” wouldn’t feel out of place in a beer-soaked honky-tonk.
Shaver’s performances, captured by producer John Carter Cash, are heartfelt and passionate while the album’s closer, a late ‘70s duet with Johnny Cash and a 15-year-old Eddy Shaver burning up the guitar, will put a smile on the face of any listener. (Compadre Records, released 2007)
Review originally published by Country Standard Time...
With A Blessing and A Curse, America’s favorite cult band takes a shot at the mainstream with a musically and lyrically expansive effort. Working again with producer David Barbe (Sugar, Son Volt), who further sharpens the band’s sonic edge, tunes such as “Feb. 14” and “Aftermath USA” are replete with Barbe’s trademark soundwork of snaggletooth guitar and dense instrumentation. In terms of pure wordplay, the Truckers eschew the conceptual Southern provincialism of their previous work, pursuing a universal vibe that encompasses classic romanticism and working class blues. The songs are like eleven short stories rather than chapters in a single lengthy novel.
Old-line fans need not fear, however, ‘cause Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell are triple-threat songwriters and songs like “A World of Hurt” prove that there’s more than enough twang and tears here to satisfy even the most diehard listener. With an embarrassing wealth of talent and musical chemistry, the Drive-By Truckers roll out a bigger, broader sound without sacrificing their endearing charm. A Blessing and A Curse is more of a lateral move than a great leap forward, the band satisfying its core audience even while trying to elevate its vision to the next level. (New West Records, released April 18th, 2006)
Review originally published by Country Standard Time...
Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Dave Alvin is an American music icon. During a career that has now spanned five decades, Alvin was a founding member (with brother Phil) of roots-rock legends the Blasters, with which he recorded four albums. Leaving that band in 1986 to pursue other musical avenues, Alvin was a member of L.A. punk stalwarts X as well as that band’s musical side project, country-folk outfit the Knitters. Alvin played alongside fellow Blasters members Steve Berlin and Bill Bateman as part of Chris D’s notorious band the Flesh Eaters and, with the equally notorious Mojo Nixon and Country Dick Montana (The Beat Farmers), the trio toured as the Pleasure Barons.
Alvin has also lent his six-string skills to recordings by the Gun Club, blues singer Candye Kane, Belinda Carlisle of the Go-Gos, and rockabilly legend Sonny Burgess, among many others and, as a songwriter, he’s had material recorded by artists as diverse as Townes Van Zandt, Dwight Yoakum, Jo-El Sonnier, Willie Nelson, and Marshall Crenshaw. Alvin launched his solo career with the 1987 major label release of the critically-acclaimed Romeo’s Escape (titled Every Night About This Time in England) but, when the album failed to sell sufficiently in an era of multi-Platinum™ country artists (rising to #60 on the country chart), Columbia Records released him from his contact.
Signed to the roots-rock oriented indie label HighTone Records (also home to artists like bluesmen Robert Cray and Joe Louis Walker and Americana pioneers Joe Ely and Chris Smither), Alvin delivered a pair of albums – 1991’s Blue Blvd. and 1993’s Museum of Heart – that enjoyed modest sales but received mixed critical response. Stepping back from the heavy production and electric instrumentation of his previous two albums, Alvin whittled his songs down to their gnarled, raw-boned roots for King of California. In the original label press release for the album, Alvin wrote “King of California is my 3rd solo album for HighTone, and it’s a bit different…for one thing, I stripped down the instrumentation. I addition to some new original songs, I’ve included a few covers, and some songs I previously recorded solo, or with my first band, the Blasters.”
Dave Alvin’s King of California
Released in May 1994, Alvin’s King of California album celebrates its ‘silver anniversary’ this year with a long-overdue deluxe reissue on vinyl (with bonus tracks!) by Craft Recordings. Widely considered as an influential classic album of Americana, Alvin recorded King of California with mostly acoustic instrumentation, joined in the studio by many of his usual cohorts including bassist Don Falzone, drummer Bobby Lloyd Hicks, and multi-instrumentalist Greg Leisz, who played slide and pedal-steel guitar, mandolin as well as producing the album. Longtime friends like Syd Straw, Rosie Flores, and Chris Gaffney added backing vocals to several songs. As critic Mark Deming wrote for All Music Guide, “While King of California was often lumped in with the then-fashionable unplugged craze, in retrospect it was the album where Dave Alvin’s abilities as a performer began to catch up with his gifts as a songwriter…”
The results were stunning, the predominantly acoustic soundtrack behind the songs placing a greater emphasis on Alvin’s lyrical skills and underrated vocals. “Current trends and fads aside,” Alvin writes, “I’ve wanted to do a ‘quieter’ collection of old, new, borrowed, and blue songs for quite some time. It can be difficult trying to please the people who want to hear sweaty, electric rock ‘n’ roll, as well as the fans who are more interested in contemplating the lyrics. I think King of California is mainly for the latter group. Alongside the new songs on the album, Alvin also re-recorded several songs. He explains why in the press release, writing “I wanted to re-cut songs like “Fourth of July,” from my first solo album Romeo’s Escape because, to be perfectly honest, I can sing ‘em better now.”
The album kicks off with the title track, introduced by lush six-string work which blends into Alvin’s warm, sonorous vocals. The spry backing soundtrack provides the perfect accompaniment to Alvin’s romantic tale and wistful lyrics. The melancholy “Fourth of July” benefits greatly from the more subdued setting, Alvin’s brilliant imagery coming to life above the jangling guitars and rolling rhythm. One of the album’s better original tracks, “Goodbye Again” is a duet with the talented Rosie Flores, an Americana legend in her own right. Opening with Mexican-styled fretwork, Flores’ lighter, pastel-colored vocals provide a sparkling counterpoint to Alvin’s deeper, darker-hued voice. The natural chemistry between the two is remarkable, their performance a pure joy.
Border Radio
The plaintive “Bus Station” offers another brilliant performance, Alvin’s half-spoken vocals telling a sad tale of hard luck romantics as Skip Edwards’ mournful accordion plays longingly in the background. Alvin’s vocals carry the gravitas of Merle Haggard while the song’s simple, effective instrumental backdrop reminds of Doug Sahm’s Texas Tornadoes. On the other hand, a spot-on cover of prolific bluesman Memphis Slim’s “Mother Earth” perfectly captures the song’s original vibe with Alvin’s rowdy, Piedmont-styled guitar-play, performed (appropriately) on a National Steel guitar. “Little Honey” features some of Greg Leisz’s best slide-guitar licks while a cover of George Jones’ “What Am I Worth,” a duet with the wonderful Syd Straw, is a hillbilly romp that displays both Straw’s show-stealing vocals and her sense of humor alongside Alvin’s equally light-hearted vox and spry rockabilly fretwork, the two coming across like a younger Johnny and June Carter Cash.
King of California closes out with “Border Radio,” perhaps the best song from Romeo’s Escape and a holdover from the Blasters’ self-titled 1981 sophomore album. Unlike songs similar in subject as Wall of Voodoo’s “Mexican Radio” or ZZ Top’s “Heard It On the X,” Alvin’s song is an introspective lyrical rumination, juxtaposing the sound of the 50,000-watt radio station floating in the Southern California air against an emotional tale of love and loss. Alvin’s filigree acoustic guitar strum offers fine punctuation to his effective, somber vocals.
Overall, the album’s melting pot of rock, country, and blues music provides a shining showcase for Alvin’s immense songwriting skills and mastery of American music forms. His penchant for story-songs shines brightly in the grooves, Alvin providing a voice for the downtrodden lovers and losers in this world. “A lot of the songs on King of California have to do with people realizing that their dreams may not come true and trying to figure out just where to go from there,” he says in the album’s press release.
The Cuckoo
There are three bonus tracks appended to King of California. The instrumental “Riverbed Rag” is a bluesy, bluegrass-tinted rave-up featuring a duel between Alvin’s six-string and Leisz’s Dobro that was an unreleased performance from the original sessions. A cover of Merle Haggard’s haunting “Kern River” offers up one of Alvin’s most nuanced vocal performances and elegant instrumentation while a cover of songwriter Kate Moffatt’s “The Cuckoo” is provided an equally ethereal performance. All three songs are welcome additions to King of California, fitting in nicely alongside the rest of the material. Alvin’s decade with HighTone Records resulted in six studio albums and a live set, his tenure with the label culminating in the acclaimed 2000 album Public Domain, a collection of traditional folk and country songs that earned Alvin a Grammy® Award for “Best Traditional Folk Album.”
During the ensuing years, Alvin has experienced the careers ‘ups and downs’ typical of the music lifer. He signed with the similarly roots-oriented Yep Roc Records for 2004’s Ashgrove, and has been with the label ever since, continuing to release acclaimed recordings like West of the West (2006), Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women (2009), and Eleven Eleven (2011). Alvin reunited with his brother Phil for 2014’s Common Ground, an inspired collection of Big Bill Broonzy songs, and again in 2015 for the album Lost Time, a collection of classic blues and soul tunes by folks like Willie Dixon, James Brown, and Big Joe Turner. Alvin recorded with his old friend Jimmie Dale Gilmore on 2018’s Downey to Lubbock.
In a recent label press release for the vinyl reissue, Alvin says that he’s “real proud” of the album, “the whole process was a revelation, to record with everybody in the studio sitting roughly in a circle, sitting there on the edge of my chair with an acoustic guitar knowing that if I blow this chord, we have to start over. And I could use my voice; when I was recording electric my voice couldn’t lead the band. In this situation I could. That allowed a certain openness and freedom I hadn’t experienced before. And for Greg, this was his baby, his chance to produce me and get my voice right. His calmness in all of this led to the vibe of the record.”
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
Alvin continues to tour exhaustively, both as a solo performer and with the reunited Flesh Eaters in support of that band’s recent I Used To Be Pretty album. A quarter-century down the road, though, King of California continues to find a new audience appreciative of its earthy, no-frills sincerity; honest instrumentation; and Alvin’s intelligent story-songs and poetic lyrics. The album has proven to have legs beyond its modest indie-rock roots, influencing a generation of Americana (and country) artists and songwriters to follow. (Craft Recordings, reissue released June 14th, 2019)
This was released several months ago, the return of singer/songwriter Elliott Murphy to these shores, and it’s been growing on me, nagging me to review it ever since I got it. It keeps returning to the CD player, each new spin offering some new insight or phrase that I missed the first time out. Murphy lives up to every claim ever made for him as a songwriter, an artist so poetically gifted that he throws away lines that lesser writers would base entire works on.
In the way of background, after a handful of under-hyped, under-appreciated late ‘70s/early ‘80s albums, which earned massive amounts of critical acclaim heaped upon near-total commercial failure, Murphy split to find some respect and mystery in Europe. Unreal City is a diary, of sorts, of the past decade’s adventures. Each song on Unreal City tells a story, presenting a lyrical postcard of a place, a memory, an emotion...
An artist in paradise, Murphy is following the trail of such literary greats as Fitzgerald or Hemingway. He remains unsure of himself, however, as on “Destiny,” when he sings “thought I was a romantic/when I crossed the Atlantic/ but that didn’t change the tide/but that’s a different story/in the search for love and glory/there’s no place left to hide...” Much of the album possesses a dark shadow to it, with lonliness and mortality often explored. On the haunting “On Elvis Presley’s Birthday,” Murphy remembers his childhood, his late father, and uses Elvis as an icon of both, singing “driving in his Cadillac/it was Elvis Presley’s birthday/they said it on the radio/my father liked Elvis and it was wonderful.” The song sadly ends, though, with the verse, “this is an unreal city/you can be anybody you want to be/when you’re alone.” It speaks to the memories which fuel the dreamer in each of us.
Through all of the travels presented on Unreal City, the joy and the tears, the acute observations on love and life, it is the birth of his son in Paris, inspiring the writing of the album’s closer, “Let It Rain,” which brings this sojourn full-circle. “Ever since I was a child,” begins Elliott, “my manner described as mild/it was always too late to estimate/the force of the hurricane blowing in my head.” He ends this opus of faith renewed, and, indeed, the album’s story, by denying the fates their victory. In joy he sings, “I believe in love/I believe in birth/I believe in giving something back to the earth...so let it rain.” It is as powerful an affirmation of life as has been written, by one of the rock genre’s most talented yet unknown artists. (Razor & Tie Music, released 1993)
Pete Berwick & the Generics - Live At the Kmart 1981 (Shotgun Records)
Americana pioneer Pete Berwick recently released two obscure recordings from his shadowy past and they provide a valuable glimpse into his foundational roots. Live At the Kmart 1981 is his punk rock EP, and not all that surprising, really, as Pete has always displayed a bit o’ punk attitude on his shit-kickin’ country-rock albums like The Damage Is Done and Just Another Day In Hell. The Generics were a short-lived but hard playing outfit that banged around the Midwest for three years circa 1981-1984.
The six songs here don’t so much as caress your cerebellum as carom off your gray matter with a short, sharp shock. The sound sucks – definitely an audience or off-stage recording – with all the sonic artifacts that implies. But the songs are fast-paced, bristling with energy, and showcase an underlying melody that bursts out of the bootleg-quality taping with a reckless fervor. Two tracks, “I Wanna Be With You” and “There She Goes Again,” received regional college radio airplay and the EP overall is highly recommended for fans of late ‘70s/early ‘80s American punk…plus, it’s cheap!
Pete Berwick & Interstate - Poster Above the Urinal 1987 (Shotgun Records)
Fast forward a few years and Berwick – who would soon be haunting the side streets and dive clubs of Nashville – is fronting a more traditional rock ‘n’ roll outfit in his Chicago hometown, albeit one that veers dangerously onto cowpunk turf. Another audience recording, ten tracks, nine originals, and a wonderful cover of the Stones’ heroin ode, “Dead Flowers,” makes for a nice, tidy collection.
The sound is marginally better than on the Generics EP, but still bootleg in quality – which does nothing to diminish the intoxicating cheap thrills that Berwick and his band Interstate serve up with Poster Above the Urinal 1987. The punkish edge is still obvious on songs like “Wild Ones” which, at six-minutes-plus, is adorned with too much cool Duane Eddy-styled guitar licks, wildass harmonica, and explosive drumbeats to be mistaken for Green Day or the Descendents.
“Ain’t Good Enough” amps it up even further with a machinegun rhythm that Berwick’s vocals dance atop while the satirical “American Family” brings the twang with skewed humor and a stripped-down, ramshackle country sound built on aggressive guitar strum and harmonica. Berwick’s lyrics reveal his uncanny songwriting skills and dark sense of humor, skills that would only get sharper through the years. The last few songs on Poster Above the Urinal 1987 get increasingly twangier, with “She’ll Never Know” standing out in the crowd for its Dylanesque fervor and blue collar poetry and “White Lines” is just a solid hard rock jam with raging harmonica and chiming guitars underlining the lyrics.
As for the aforementioned cover of “Dead Flowers” – which is really more of a Gram Parsons song than true Jagger/Richards composition (IYKYK) – Berwick’s drawled vox and nuanced fretwork wrap the song’s dark-hued lyrics in a blanket of pathos and a doomed Hank Williams vibe. Poster Above the Urinal 1987 provides a roadmap for Berwick’s eventual Nashville sojourn while documenting his evolution from young punk to seasoned roots-rocker, Berwick one of the most criminally-overlooked talents in the increasingly stodgy Americana sphere.
When “Little” Steven Van Zandt toured Europe during the early ‘80s with his Disciples of Soul band, he saw the sad results of Reagan administration foreign policy. Speaking with the people he met in the towns that he played, Van Zandt became politicized, a philosophical transformation that resulted in a brace of overtly political albums. The culmination of Little Steven’s left-leaning political evolution was the Sun City project, a direct artistic assault on South Afrikan apartheid.
Americana music pioneer Jason Ringenberg comes from quite a different background than the Jersey-born-and-bred Van Zandt. The son of an Illinois hog farmer, Ringenberg is more of an “aw shucks” populist than a tree-hugging leftist, and neither his previous solo work or his tenure as frontman for Jason & the Scorchers reveal little of his politics. While touring Europe and Australia in support of his All Over Creation solo disc, Jason found himself questioned and criticized over American policy and the actions of the current administration. It proved to be embarrassing and frustrating and it opened the artist’s eyes to a radically different perspective than that shown by Fox News.
Jason Ringenberg’s Empire Builders
The result of Jason Ringenberg’s politicization is Empire Builders, his third solo rock album and strongest effort to date. The songs written for Empire Builders try to make sense of America’s place in a post-911 world and collectively evince a more critical view of the country. There is no flaming rhetoric or paint-by-numbers polemics on Empire Builders, nor is there any flag-waving jingoism. What you will find, however, is a cautious and considered artistic response to current events. The album opens with “American Question,” Jason thoughtfully asking “can we export dignity, respecting those who disagree” over Jim Roll’s taut recurring riff, the song a minimalist response to an American foreign policy of “bomb-em-and-Big-Mac-em.”
Several other songs on Empire Builders also touch on 21st century manifest destiny. “New-Fashioned Imperialist,” a jaunty satire of CEO stereotypes, is sung over the oompa riffing of Dave Jacques’ tuba while “American Reprieve” is a continuation of the opening cut, delivered as the kind of jazzy tone poem that you might expect from an artist like Ed Hammel, not good old Jason. “Rebel Flag In Germany” laughingly criticizes the “Confederate” mindset that is so prevalent in the south, including his adopted home of Tennessee. Jason’s embarrassment over seeing a rebel flag on a barn in Germany is equaled only by his shame at the fact that the flag – a symbol of racism and slavery no matter what the southern heritage Neanderthals claim – still flies on flagpoles and pick-up trucks across the south.
Ringenberg balances out his social commentary with humanistic tales such as “Tuskegee Pride,” Jason’s love of history resulting in the masterfully crafted story of a World War II African-American pilot. The song remembers the racism that these brave soldiers and their families endured even while fighting for freedom for their children and grandchildren. It is a reminder that we still have a long way to go with the issue of race in this country. “Half the Man” is a loving tribute to his father while a rocking remembrance of guitarist Link Wray pays homage to the criminally overlooked rocker (with a little help from Los Straitjackets axeman Eddie Angel). All the songs on Empire Builders are presented in the twangy folk/rock/country hybrid that has become Jason’s signature sound. Former Webb Wilder sideman and longtime Jason foil George Bradfute lends his considerable six-string skills to most of the songs and Fats Kaplin fills out the sound with some tasty pedal steel guitar.
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
After twenty-something years on the old rock ‘n’ roll highway, Jason continues to grow and mature as a performer and a songwriter. Ringenberg doesn’t claim to have all the answers on Empire Builders, but he does ask some mighty damn good questions… (Courageous Chicken/Yep Roc Records, released 2004)
Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™ zine...
It would be too damn easy to dismiss the Damnwells as a mere Wilco clone, given the band’s penchant for mournful vocals and weeping guitars. The truth is, although the seven songs on this EP skew awfully close to Jeff Tweedy’s artistic vision, the Damnwells throw a few disparate elements into the mix, barely separating themselves from the alt-country legends.
For one thing, the Damnwells fill their guitar pop with traces of psychedelic instrumentation, the brightly shining guitar of Dave Chernis adding swirls of texture behind Alex Dezen’s appropriately morose vocals. The rhythm section of bassist Ted Hudson and former Whiskeytown drummer Steven Terry are solid, if underutilized.
The band’s songwriting tends to lean towards Tweedy’s minimalist lyricism and, lacking the Wilco frontman’s ability to create emotional architecture, the Damnwells come across as less-interesting travelers on an already familiar road. The band should emphasize the aspects that elevate their sound, allowing themselves greater freedom with its instrumentation and pumping up Dezen’s vocals.
Pmr + 1 is a 2002 reissue of an earlier six-song disc self-produced by the Damnwells, so they may have already outgrown their Wilco fascination and moved onto something else entirely. The Damnwells are worth keeping an eye on just to see what they do next. (In Music We Trust, released 2002)
Review originally published by Jersey Beat music zine...
Many music fans may remember Tom Gray’s name from his early ‘80s band the Brains. Down South, ‘round the Nashville-Atlanta-Birmingham triangle, the band was a hot commodity back in the day. The Brains’ self-titled debut album for Mercury Records yielded a minor college radio hit in the bittersweet “Money Changes Everything,” which would later become a huge mainstream hit for Cyndi Lauper. After the monster success of “Money Changes Everything,” Gray moved to Nashville with an eye towards becoming a country songwriter. The talented scribe soon found that a songwriter’s life in the Music City is more about politics and relationships than about talent and, well, songs … so Gray hightailed it back to Atlanta.
Gray’s Nashville tenure produced one positive, however, in that it interested the artist in traditional styles of music. Meeting up with fellow guitarist Mark Johnson, the two formed Delta Moon, a blues-rock band. A number of bass players and drummers have passed through the band in the decade since, as have a pair of fine female singers. With Clear Blue Flame, Delta Moon’s fourth studio album, though, Gray takes over as the band’s vocalist in a move that changes the texture, but not the overall direction of Delta Moon’s unique sound.
Delta Moon’s Clear Blue Flame
Gray’s swampadelic guitar licks kick off the eerie “Clear Blue Flame.” A laid-back yet rockin’ tale of love and betrayal, “Clear Blue Flame” speaks to the heart-numbing qualities of well-made ‘shine. Gray’s gruff vocals and the song’s overall dark vibe reminds of kudzu dropping off the cypress trees in some deep, lost corner of the South. “Stranger In My Hometown” tells of the alienation caused by “progress,” a gentle rhythm supporting Gray’s soulful vocals, the tune offering some delicious six-string sounds. A wicked bad guitar lick hits your ears at the beginning of “Lap Dog,” a classically-styled blues song with Maxwell Street lyrics and a Bourbon Street soundtrack. “I’m A Witness” sways and stutters back and forth, a wonky rhythm supporting Gray’s testimony and some fierce slidework.
The juke-joint holler “You Done Told Everybody” comes straight from the heart of the Delta, Gray and Johnson offering some tasty syncopated fretwork and Charley Patton-styled percussive rhythms beneath Gray’s best Son House vocals. “Jessie Mae” is a wonderful, heartfelt tribute to the late Mississippi Hill Country blueswoman Jessie Mae Hemphill. Gray and Johnson do this one up right, down tuning their guitars, pulling a nasty circular riff out of the Burnside songbook, and bringing it home with a steady, driving rhythm. The song tells of the triumphs and tragedies of Hemphill’s life, but it could also serve as the life story of many blues musicians. The duo’s playing on “Jessie Mae” is magnificent, twin guitars reaching across a smoke-filled juke-joint to grab you by the ears.
Money Changes Everything
With “Money Changes Everything,” Gray covers his own song and lays waste to his past. Whereas the original 1980 Brains version displayed a power-pop edge, and Cyndi Lauper’s 1984 chart-topping reading of the song carried with it a greater sense of yearning, this roosty remake of the song seems to hit the nail right on the head. Starting with a nice acoustic, almost Appalachian-sounding intro, Gray’s voice kicks in, more strained and hoarse than on any other song here, incorporating the emotion of Lauper’s version with a sorrowful acceptance.
Although the song originally spoke of the factors that influence relationships and romance, better than two decades down the road, it could also serve as Gray’s life story, that of the creative wunderkind shooting his way to the top only to be dumped on when the gold rush didn’t pan out as planned. By slowing down the song’s pace, providing it with a sparse acoustic framework, and imbuing it with a worldly weariness, Gray has actually improved upon his already impressive original version of the song with this powerful backwoods doppelganger.
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
Anybody casually picking up Clear Blue Flame on the basis of Gray’s long-past work, expecting to hear the power-pop of the Brains, will be sorely disappointed. The savvy music consumer, however, grabbing a copy of this – or any other Delta Moon album – just to hear the band’s wonderful fusion of swamp-blues, roots-rock, and acoustic mountain music will certainly be entertained.
Tom Gray and Mark Johnson are skilled musicians, well-schooled in the nuances of the styles they’re working in, and both are fine slide-guitarists. Gray has aged well as a songwriter; his tales of ordinary folks, failed romances, and hopeful losers comprise a new Southern Gothic literature worthy of the bluesmen (and women) of the 1920s and ‘30s. Although firmly rooted in the Delta blues and hillbilly music of the past, Delta Moon delivers with a ferocity and passion that can only be expressed in the present. (Jumping Jack Records, released 2007)
Over the past decade and half a dozen albums, Atlanta-based roots ‘n’ blues outfit Delta Moon has quietly made a name for itself as a sturdy, Delta blues-inspired outfit. Driven by the creative vision of singer, songwriter, and guitarist Tom Gray (who, in another life, wrote the Cyndi Lauper hit “Money Changes Everything” while fronting 1980s-era new wave band the Brains) and his musical partner, guitarist Mark Johnson have built upon a hallowed Mississippi blues tradition by heaping on roots-rock, folk, and gospel flavors.
With the band’s 7th album, the refreshingly-erudite Black Cat Oil, Gray and Johnson continue to expand the band’s trademark sound by imbuing their already heady musical brew with a little bit o’ soul and some old-school rhythm & blues. The scrappy acoustic Delta blues influences from which the band takes its name are still obvious and ever-present, as are Gray and Johnson’s well-written and whip-smart lyrics, but in expanding their musical palette, if only a little, they open new doors of possibility for the band in the future.
Delta Moon’s Black Cat Oil
A big drumbeat and locomotive rhythm opens “Down and Dirty,” a working-class tale of romantic woe featuring Gray’s slinky guitar lines and gruff vocals. The backing accompaniment is sparse, but the guitars are layered in thickly and offer a bit of swampy malevolence not unlike John Campbell’s trademark haunted blues sound. “Blues In A Bottle” is equally Mississippi muddy and kudzu-clad, with a smoky buzz ‘n’ rattle emanating from Gray’s six-string drone. Lyrically, the song is a clever but deceptively simple construct, but the emotion swells as violently as the song’s jarring fretwork, the instrumental break three-minutes in shattering the trancelike quality of the performance as Gray and Mark Johnson swap fiery guitar licks.
The album’s title track veers off only slightly from the first four, mixing up the previous swamp-blues ambiance with a little Memphis soul and a minimalist funk groove courtesy drummer Darren Stanley and bassist Franher Joseph. Gray’s solos here shine brightly, taut and wiry like a rockabilly king from the 1950s, reminding more of Jimmie Vaughan’s hot licks than Stevie Ray’s incendiary riffs. The song is low-slung and greasy, spiced up a bit by Gray’s Booker T-styled keyboard notes. The romantic turmoil continues with the story-song “Wishbone,” a gripping narrative where Gray’s gravel-throated vocals hypnotize, riding high above his barbed-wire guitarplay. The following “Black Coffee” picks up on the previous song’s late-night vibe, Gray’s fretwork resonating with bluesy echo on a semi-biographical diary of life on the road. Drummer Marlon Patton lays down a slight rhythmic shuffle as Gray picks out the lonely tune.
Write Me A Few of Your Lines
“Neon Jesus” is the album’s roots-rock heartbeat, the song evincing more of a high lonesome Bakersfield vibe than a Nashville/Music Row commercial ambience. Gray sets his considerable songwriting skills to work on a salvation-seeking, soul-searching hymnal, his yearning vocals backed by jangly guitar and a brassy drumbeat. It’s an introspective number, something you’d expect from, say, a Guy Clark type of scribe, but Gray pulls it off admirably. The lively “Jukin’,” by contrast, is a jaunty lil’ houserocker with an undeniable spirit and spry fretwork that blends the best of both juke-joint and honky-tonk traditions with a sly groove and a barely-subdued performance.
“Applejack” sounds a lot like Memphis to me, or a James Dickinson sort of bluesy, blue-eyed soul to be more specific, a fluid groove rolling out beneath Gray’s deep-fried vocals and Southern rock guitar that draws upon Duane Allman (reckless R&B) and Marshall Tucker Band’s Toy Caldwell (Dixie jazz-rock) but with plenty of Gray’s own unique vocabulary thrown in to mark him as a vastly-underrated stylist in his own right. The album’s lone cover, of Mississippi Fred McDowell’s “Write Me A Few Of Your Lines,” bolsters this guitar argument, Gray’s fretwork crackling and popping like a downed electric line above Patton’s steady drumbeats, the singer capturing, and building upon the hypnotic North Mississippi Hill Country riffing style that McDowell passed on to R.L. Burnside and, by association, Luther Dickinson, Jack White, the Black Keys, and a generation of contemporary blues-rock players.
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
Tom Gray’s songwriting skills have never been at question, and he excels at the sort of lyrical and melodic stories told by the songs on Black Cat Oil. Small-town life and romances, the rigors of the road, the old South slipping beneath the steamroller of modern life – these are all grist for Gray (and Johnson’s) wandering pen. Musically, the album builds upon past triumphs, cautiously fusing the band’s trademark swamp-blues sound with other significant influences, creating an entertaining and engaging work that honors blues traditions while nodding vigorously towards new musical horizons. (Red Parlor Records, released May 22, 2012)
Let’s be as honest as churchmice here, shall we? The corpse that once was the Grateful Dead has long since been flayed, flogged, and laid to rest along with the hopes and dreams of so many ‘60s-era flower children. With better than fifty – count ‘em! – fifty live albums on the shelf (many consisting of two or three discs, or more), even the Dead’s long-standing reputation as a great performing outfit that typically underperformed in the studio is questionable in light of the growing body of evidence.
In the annals of hardcore Grateful Dead fans (a/k/a “Deadheads,” which the Reverend’s dictionary defines as “one who has smoked so many flowers as to make their musical judgment suspect), no live performance by the band is more legendary that the Dead’s journey to the sands of Egypt during late 1978 to play three nights in front of the Great Pyramid. Outside of the historical significance of the performances, there’s little here to recommend, however. A two-CD and one-DVD set in a nifty fold-out pop-up package with images of the pyramids, Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978 is a document of the band’s experience, but offers little else.
With audio culled from two of the Egyptian nights for the CDs, and video from one night’s concert on the DVD, the band sleepwalks through performances of songs from the upcoming Shakedown Street album along with a few older chestnuts. The usual spark of the Dead’s free-form live performances seems to be missing here, however, and highlights are few and far between. The band gets behind a cover of the New Orleans Cajun classic “Iko Iko,” slowing down the pace to that of a strutting fly-by with a loping groove and a couple of solos full of rich tones. “I Need A Miracle” offers a few hot licks threaded throughout the longform jam, but an obligatory performance of “Truckin’” suffers from a too-mellow vibe, reducing the song’s innate anarchic spirit to a hearty bassline and rushed vocals. Sadly, much of the rest of the album’s 18 tracks (and their DVD doppelgangers) are entirely somnambulant.
Don’t get me wrong here folks, and please don’t deluge Blurt editor Fred with barrels of hate mail – the Reverend simply adores GD albums like Workingman’s Dead, American Beauty, Blues For Allah, even In the Dark – but methinks that you should spend your lunch money on one of those stellar efforts rather than waste your hard-earned coin on this snoozefest. You’ll thank me later… (Rhino Records, released September 30th, 2008)
For a teenaged music fanatic, Nashville in the early ‘70s was a magical place.
As a high schooler who looked just “adult” enough to sneak into bars and clubs
like The Villager, Sam’s Pizza Place, and the Exit In, I witnessed performers
like Guy Clark, Jimmy Buffett, Townes Van Zandt, Waylon Jennings, and David
Allan Coe honing their craft on stage.
Flash forward a couple of
decades when, as a grizzled local music critic, I found a similar magic in the
Nashville rock scene of the early ‘90s. Artists as talented as Tommy Womack,
Will Kimbrough, and Will Owsley, among many others, hit many of the same stages
as their forebears, as well as a few new clubs, trying to forge a career in the
“Music City.” Of all of these young talents, none burned hotter or shined
brighter than singer/songwriter
Todd Snider.
Snider passed away this week at the age of 59 after a bout with
pneumonia. He’d suffered through a rough couple of weeks that would likely have
been fodder for one of his brilliantly insightful story-songs: assaulted outside
of a club before a performance in Salt Lake City, Snider ended up in the
hospital. After being treated for his injuries, Snider thought that his release
was premature and got into an argument with hospital staff. Police were called,
and Snider was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, threat of violence,
and suspicion of criminal trespassing.
He was released from custody on his own recognizance earlier the following
morning, and the rest of his remaining tour dates were canceled. Returning home
to Tennessee to rest and recuperate, Snider fell ill with undiagnosed walking
pneumonia, and landed in the hospital where things took a turn for the worse.
Snider had been touring in support of his critically-acclaimed 15th album, the
bluesy High, Lonesome, and Then Some, which had been released in
September on his own Aimless Records label.
Snider was born and
raised in 1966 in the Portland, Oregon area and attended college for a semester
in Santa Rosa, California. He moved to San Marcos, Texas near San Antonio in
1985. It was there that he’d have a life-changing epiphany after seeing the
legendary country outlaw Jerry Jeff Walker perform at a local club. Despite not
knowing how to play a guitar, or even owning one, Snider decided then and there
to become a songwriter. He began penning his wry original tunes, and playing
writer’s nights at local clubs while developing his sound.
Finding an
invaluable mentor in San Marcos club owner Kent Finlay, Snider was introduced to
the work of songwriters like Guy Clark, Shel Silverstein, and his future boss,
John Prine. Snider began to develop a following in San Antonio and Austin clubs
and eventually came to the attention of Memphis musician and songwriter Keith
Sykes, a member of Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band. Sykes convinced Snider to
move to Memphis, where he took up a residence at The Daily Planet club and
quickly built a loyal following as he continued to crank out songs.
After a development deal with Capitol Records in Nashville fell through (the
label likely didn’t know how to promote Snider’s quirky, unique material), Sykes
approached Buffett, his former boss, and managed to get Snider a deal with
Buffett’s Margaritaville Records label, which was then distributed by MCA. The
label released Snider’s 1994 debut album, Songs From the Daily Planet,
comprised largely of material Snider had performed at the Memphis club. The
album resulted in a minor hit with a ‘hidden track’, “Talking Seattle Grunge
Rock Blues,” while humorous tracks like “My Generation (Part 2)” and “Alright
Guy” received widespread national airplay on the syndicated Bob & Tom radio
show.
More than a mere novelty act, Snider was capable of writing
powerful, emotion-inducing songs like Daily Planet’s “I Spoke As A Child”
and “You Think You Know Somebody.” Sales were good enough to prompt a follow-up,
and Snider’s sophomore effort, Step Right Up, was released in 1996 with
Viva Satellite arriving in 1998. Snider had issues with his label,
however, as Margaritaville left MCA before the release of Viva Satellite,
and the major label retained the rights to Snider’s work. As was typical of the
MCA at the time, they subsequently released Snider from his contract after they
under-promoted the album.
Quickly bouncing back, Snider signed with
Nashville singer/songwriter John Prine’s independent Oh Boy Records label, where
he’d do the best work of his career. He released his fourth album,
Happy To Be Here, in 2000 with studio contributions from Nashville
talents like guitarists Will Kimbrough and Pat Buchanan, NRBQ bassist Joey
Spampinato, and multi-instrumentalist Peter Holsapple (The dB’s, R.E.M.). The
R.S. Field-produced New Connection was released in 2002, followed a year
later by Snider’s first live album, Near Truths and Hotel Rooms,
featuring Snider, his guitar and harmonica, and a guitar case full of
stories.
Snider’s fourth and final album for Oh Boy was 2004’s classic
East Nashville Skyline, arguably the singer/songwriter’s best work.
Recorded with friend and bandmate Will Kimbrough and a studio full of talented
young Nashville studio hotshots, East Nashville Skyline offered up
finely-crafted, intelligent story-songs like “Play A Train Song,” “The Ballad of
the Kingsmen,” and the wickedly-funny, autobiographical “Tillamook County Jail.”
After East Nashville Skyline, Snider took a jump towards the major
leagues, signing with the Universal Music-distributed New Door Records.
Snider
recorded just one album for New Door, working again with Kimbrough, who
co-produced 2006’s The Devil You Know, with another friend, Tommy Womack,
adding guitar to the album. Although critically-acclaimed, and a damn fine
album, New Door didn’t have the resources to properly promote
The Devil You Know. A solo Snider performance at Grimey’s Music in
Nashville was recorded and released by New Door in 2007 as
Live With the Devil You Know At Grimey’s Nashville, which would mark the
end of the singer/songwriter’s tenure with New Door.
Launching his
own independent Aimless Records label with the 2008 EP Peace Queer,
Snider recorded a one-off album for Yep Roc Records – the Don Was-produced
The Excitement Plan – before returning to his own imprint with laudable
efforts like 2011’s double-CD Live (The Storyteller), which positioned
Snider as a stoner sage to the left of Will Rogers, 2012’s acclaimed
Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables and the same year’s
Time As We Know It, a tribute to Snider’s original musical inspiration,
Jerry Jeff Walker. Through the years, Snider has also contributed performances
to several tribute albums for such personal heroes as Billy Joe Shaver (whose
son Eddy played in one of Snider’s early bands), Kris Kristofferson, Peter Case,
and Kinky Friedman.
Hooking up with Widespread Panic bassist Dave Schools, Snider formed a jam
band “supergroup” in the Hard Working Americans in 2013, adding the late Neal
Casal (The Cardinals) on guitar and Duane Trucks (guitarist Derek Trucks’
younger brother) on drums. The Hard Working Americans released a pair of
studio albums in 2014 and 2016 as well as a pair of live albums, the first of
which – The First Waltz – included a full-length documentary film about
the Americans directed by Justin Kreutzmann. The group has since recorded a
yet-to-be-released album of material written by Snider.
A
charismatic and charming performer, Snider was seemingly made for TV, and he
performed on all of the late-night talk shows of the ‘90s and early 2000s,
including Late Night with Conan O’Brien,
Late Show with David Letterman, and
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno as well as several music-oriented
programs like ABC’s In Concert and Austin City Limits. Snider
released his sorta, kinda memoirs,
I Never Met A Story I Didn’t Like: Mostly True Tall Tales, in 2014 and
contributed a chapter on his mentor, Cheatham Street Warehouse club owner Kent
Finlay, for a 2016 book on the musical entrepreneur’s life.
Over
the years, Snider co-wrote songs with a number of Nashville talents, including
his frequent musical partners Will Kimbrough and Tommy Womack, as well as
Keith Sykes, Billy Joe Shaver, Jason Ringenberg (Jason & the Scorchers),
Dan Baird (The Georgia Satellites), and Gary Bennett (BR-549) and had songs
recorded by country artists like Jerry Jeff Walker, Cross Canadian Ragweed,
Robert Earl Keen, and even legendary ‘60s hitmaker Tom Jones.
The Hard Working Americans (Todd second from right)
Snider’s eclectic and personable songwriting and performing style isn’t
everybody’s cuppa. He’s brutally sincere and speaks openly about his battle
with substance abuse. His humorous and often-times satirical songs reveal
something of the human condition at the core while his more serious fare is
emotionally-charged and thoughtful. Snider was too often categorized as a
“novelty” act because he infused his folkish story-songs with humor and wit,
reducing funny-cause-they-could-be-true songs like “Beer Run” or the satirical
“Talking Seattle Grunge Rock Blues” to comedic status without recognizing the
skill it took to weave these tales.
In my 2004 review of Snider’s
East Nashville Skyline, I boldly wrote that “considering Snider’s
entire oeuvre (and I have heard it all), it’s time, perhaps, for a bit of rock
critic heresy: Snider is this generation’s Dylan. Snider’s rootsy blend of
rock, folk, blues, and country echoes that of rock’s greatest scribe.” I stand
by my words, and Snider has done little in 20+ years to make me reconsider. A
talented and vastly underrated singer, songwriter, and performer, the recent
release of High, Lonesome, and Then Some proves that Snider still had
something to say and songs to write.
As news of Snider’s death
reverberated throughout the Nashville music scene and beyond, tributes poured
in and stories were shared by many of his friends and musical collaborators.
Former Georgia Satellites frontman Dan Baird wrote “whether you knew him or
not, the fact is our world has lost a true creative ball of cosmic chaos.”
Producer and musician Eric Ambel (of the Yayhoos and the Del Lords) wrote
“thank you for the beautiful songs and stories and for championing so many
wonderful artists while you were here with us.”
Former Snider band
member and frequent musical collaborator Tommy Womack wrote in his tribute for
The Nashvillian, “Todd Snider was the most naturally talented person
I’ve ever met. I first saw that from looking at his face while he performed.
Later, I saw it while looking at his keister as a member of his band. He could
have coasted on that talent, but Todd never coasted. About anything. He was
either driving 200 mph or he was in the pit bay being lectured to by doctors
who thought they were dealing with some sort of mere mortal.”
Smilin’
Jay McDowell of the country band BR-549 remembers “I moved to East Nashville
in 1994. It was purely because it was the cheap part of town. There were very
few restaurants or bars. So, you crossed paths with people regularly. It
seemed every time I turned around, there was Todd. He never said hi, he just
always said, “B R 5 4 9” in that crazy way of his,” adding “I’m sure gonna
miss that guy.” Peter Holsapple wrote “grateful to have gotten to record with
Todd Snider in 1999. Such a remarkable songwriter, what a terrible
loss.”
Behind the mask that hid Snider’s pain, he had a
(perhaps) accidentally profound take on life, closing East Nashville Skyline
with the poppy “Enjoy Yourself,” reminding his fans to always “enjoy yourself,
it’s later than you think.” Read Tommy Womack’s full tribute to Todd in The Nashvillian
Born in Canada, but raised in America, singer/songwriter and self-professed “blues poet” Ray Bonneville considers himself to be a “North American.” The itinerant musician has traveled constantly throughout the three decades of his career, from Boston to Seattle, from Arkansas to Alaska. Yet, Bonneville will be the first to tell you that no location has been more influential to his music than the city of New Orleans. Listening to Bonneville’s Goin’ By Feel, it’s easy to hear his musical and spiritual connection to the Crescent City.
The Sound of New Orleans
Although New Orleans has a grand tradition in jazz music, the city also has a rich heritage in the blues. After all, the mighty Mississippi River runs south from the Delta, through the city, and into the Gulf of Mexico. Many Delta bluesmen made their way down the river through the years and landed in New Orleans, bringing their country blues style and sound to “The Big Easy,” mixing it up with the city’s native jazz, Cajun, and ragtime styles.
More than anything else, however, the sound of New Orleans is that of rhythm. Most of the city’s music incorporates a distinctive rhythmic pattern of one sort or another, whether it’s the rhythms of a brassy jazz band or Professor Longhair’s raucous piano pounding. Most importantly, however, is the rhythm of slowness…it’s hot in New Orleans in the summertime, and humid, too, and nobody is in a big hurry to get anywhere or do anything. There’s a slower pace to the sounds of New Orleans, one that you grow, as a listener, to appreciate over time.
Ray Bonneville’s Goin’ By Feel
If Ray Bonneville has taken anything in the way of influence from New Orleans, it’s the city’s languid feel. With Goin’ By Feel, Bonneville’s sixth album, the singer and producer Gurf Morlix have managed to capture the sound of kudzu growing and cypress creaking. The songs here are saltwater-drenched, with an undeniable bluesy vibe that is reinforced by Bonneville’s soulful, gruff vocals and rich six-string pickin’. This is music as atmospheric as the fog on a Louisiana swamp at daybreak, and performed with a casual, laid-back style that is in no hurry towards its destination.
Bonneville is a natural-born storyteller, and beneath the gorgeous music on Goin’ By Feel is a raft of brilliant story-songs. An erudite songwriter with one foot in the South’s literary tradition and the other firmly planted in the narrative style of the blues, Bonneville conjures up characters and situations out of whole cloth with his vivid imagery and finely-crafted use of the language. His lyrics, when combined with the wide, loping groove of the music, create an almost fictional sense of space.
Not that Bonneville is afraid to ramp it up a bit when necessary. “What Katy Did” builds on spry rhythms with quick, dark-hued vocals and sparse, elegant fretwork. A love letter, of sorts, to New Orleans, “I Am the Big Easy” offers clever lyrics that tie together the city’s cultural wealth with the tragedy of Hurrican Katrina. By contrast, the stark “Carry the Fallen,” is a brilliant anti-war song that lyrically brings home the cost of the war in human terms.
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
A gifted songwriter and skilled guitarist, Ray Bonneville brings the expansive worldview created by his travels to every word he writes and each note he plays. Incorporating elements of folk, country, soul, and blues into his distinctive sound, Bonneville weaves pure magic here with his intricate story-songs. Goin’ By Feel is a thoughtful, intelligent work of immense beauty, sincerity, and honesty. This isn’t your usual blues music, but then Ray Bonneville isn’t your average blues musician, either. (Red House Records, released April 16th, 2007)
One of the true overlooked treasures of American roots music, songwriter Bill Neely toiled away in obscurity for decades, performing a distinctive style of “hillbilly blues” that incorporates country, blues, and folk traditions in creating an entirely unique sound. The son of a Texas sharecropper, Neely came to music through the influence of his mother, a Nashville native who played guitar, piano and accordion. It was a meeting with the legendary Jimmie Rodgers, however, that sealed Neely’s fate. The famous “Blue Yodeler” taught the youngster how to make a C chord on the guitar, a story retold by Neely’s with his classic song “On A Blackland Farm.”
Bill Neely’s Texas Law & Justice
Quitting school at the tender age of fourteen, Neely wandered the country, riding the rails and making money where he could. He worked the mines and the fields, spent time in the Army during WWII and the Korean War, later working as a cook and as a carpenter. Twenty years later, Neely settled down in Texas with a family and a trade, writing songs based on his experience and travels. During the 1960s, he became part of Austin’s early music scene, playing in local clubs both solo and with folks like Janis Joplin, Tracy Nelson, and the great Mance Lipscomb. When Neely died in 1990 of leukemia at the age of 74, he had been playing guitar for 60 years and writing his own songs for over 40 years. Yet Neely only recorded one album, On A Blackland Farm, reissued here on CD with several “bonus” tracks as Texas Law & Justice.
All of this background on Neely is necessary to understand the man who crafted the honest and authentic music preserved on disc by Texas Law & Justice. While great country blues artists like Mississippi Fred McDowell and Lightnin’ Hopkins enjoyed significant careers late in life, Neely remained largely unknown during the same time period. Yet I can hear echoes of Neely’s distinctive guitar style and lyrical abilities in such Texas troubadours as Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, acclaimed masters of the form. Songs like “A Soldier’s Thoughts” and “Crying the Blues Over You” are masterpieces of hillbilly blues, while the vivid imagery of “Skid Row” underlines an intelligent tale of rural innocence lost in the big city.
“Satan’s Burning Hell” is a gospel-tinged gem and “Blues On Ellem” is a Texas-style blues tune. “Never Left the Lone Star State” is a wonderful road trip through Neely’s memories while the two instrumentals included on Texas Law & Justice are inspired raves that showcase Neely’s not inconsiderable six-string skills. The one song here not written by Neely, but rather penned by a relative in 1930 – the haunting title cut “Texas Law And Justice” – is performed with great passion and energy and is all the more chilling considering the state’s dismal record of state-sanctioned executions.
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
Too raw and realistic by today’s country music standards, Bill Neely nevertheless wrote songs of enduring life and spirit, infusing them with humor and tempered by years of hard-won experience. Artistically, I’d rank Neely as the equivalent of great bluesmen like Mississippi John Hurt and Big Bill Broonzy. That Neely’s talents remain a secret is an artistic crime, one that might be remedied by the CD release of Texas Law & Justice. With a sound that would appeal to fans of both country blues and alt-country music, Bill Neely is ripe for rediscovery. (Arhoolie Records, released 2001)
Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™ zine
Austin, Texas has been the breeding ground of instrumental outlaws and various cosmic cowboys for nigh onto a decade now, ever since the city’s identification as a musical mecca in the early ‘70s. The current class of artists reaching for that ever-elusive brass ring includes such talents as Zeitgeist and True Believers, a band whose self-titled vinyl bow is sure to create unparalleled aural excitement in the uninitiated.
True Believers offers up an energetic blend of roadhouse blues, country-honk, and guitar band histrionics (the Believers featuring not one, not two, but THREE competent axemen!). There’s not a dull moment to be found within these grooves, with this writer’s personal faves, the melodic cover of “Rebel Kind” and the lyrically-haunting original “The Rain Won’t Help You When It’s Over” representative of the depth of talent to be found in True Believers. The band’s sincerity, the intensity of their music, and their sense of roots proves that rock ‘n’ roll lives outside of London or Los Angeles. (EMI America, released 1986) Review originally published by Nashville’s The Metro magazine...
With the release of Frenzy, Mojo Nixon insures his place among the pantheon of great rock eccentrics, among such strange stalwarts as Frank Zapa, Lord Buckley, and Captain Beefheart. Mojo and his sideman Skid Roper can best be described as musical minimalists, mutant madmen who swap washboard licks with demented guitar riffs and a little wild mouth harp now and then as Mojo runs amok through a musical menu that includes inspired covers of Alice Cooper’s “Be My Lover” and an amazing one-and-a-half-minute version of Iron Butterfly’s psychedelic classic, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”
Mojo’s original material is not for the weak of heart, showcasing his fervor and passion on such songs as “The Amazing Bigfoot Diet,” a good-natured swipe at those tabloids found in supermarket check-out lines; “Stuffin’ Martha’s Muffin,” a scatological anti-MTV protest song which reveals Mojo’s hidden lust for veejay Martha Quinn; and the hero worship of “The Ballad of Wendell Scott.” All totaled, Frenzy delivers over a dozen of Mojo’s finest creations, a musical blend of talking blues, roots-rock, and incredible insanity, counting among his influences artists as diverse as Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Lou Reed, and Iggy Pop. Mojo Nixon is a true social iconoclast.
For those of you who can’t get enough of the right Reverend Mojo Nixon and his ‘Screamin’ Church of the Epileptic Jesus, his first LP – Free, Drunk & Horny – features such classic tunes as “Jesus At McDonald’s,” “Moanin’ With Yer Mama,” and “I’m In Love With Your Girlfriend” and is also available from Enigma Records. (Enigma Records, released 1986)
Review originally published by Nashville’s The Metro magazine...
The “Rock ‘n’ Roll Farm Report” was a short-lived review column that ran on our Alt.Culture.Guide™ website for almost a year until we closed the site, not due to lack of readers, but from lack of time and money to continue the project. Still, as these columns show, we reviewed a diverse range of music...
CITIES – Cities “Post-punk revival” is all the rage these days, thirty-something critics auditioning for Pitchfork writing gigs fawning over bands like Interpol or the Walkmen in an effort to relive their misspent youths and assure their continued relevance. Bullocks! The Reverend is a crusty old rockcrit of the Marsh/Bangs/Johnson persuasion, and all the adjectives you can remember from grad school notwithstanding, an album either rocks or it doesn’t. Besides, “post-punk” as a description is mostly a lazy attempt by lesser minds to categorize music that refuses to be pigeonholed. Case in point: North Carolina’s Cities. With the “post-punk revival” albatross neatly hung around their neck, the band’s solid debut disc has mostly been dismissed in favor of more “acceptable,” i.e. New York based noisemakers. ‘Tis their loss, however, the self-titled Cities a mind-tickling collection of fuzzy lyrics and fuzzier sound, each song filled with guitars that ring like Quasimodo’s fabled bell and buzz like a mix of Husker Du and Radiohead. Yes, Cities filters its ‘80s-styled college-rock personality against a new millennium soundtrack, and although the melodies are sharp, the album’s production is a bit more blunt than need be. Nevertheless, Cities the album shows the promise of a band that has its feet on the ground and just needs to reach a little higher to hit the stars. (Yep Roc Records)
GOOD RIDDANCE – My Republic Better than a decade down the road, straight-edge punks Good Riddance sound as hot-and-bothered on their seventh album as they ever have. Part of this can be attributed to former drum-kit mauler Sean Sellers returning to the fold after a lengthy hiatus. The other aspect that keeps Good Riddance young and grounded in an honest punk aesthetic is frontman/songwriter Russ Rankin, as proper a ranter-and-venter of left-wing political polemics as you’re likely to find. Rankin’s intelligent and carefully considered lyrical broadsides are matched with a pure white light/white heat musical assault, the band kicking it old school with a renewed fury and self-righteous anger at the powers that be. Usually overshadowed by more loudly militant bands like Anti-Flag or trendier faves like Against Me!, Good Riddance nevertheless remain one of the best political bands on the punk rock landscape. My Republic is an essential release, a sterling example of punk at its relevant best. Plus, these jams will knock the plaster from your walls and shake the cobwebs from your brain! (Fat Wreck Chords)
GREG GRAFFIN – Cold As the Clay The Reverend has always admired Bad Religion frontman Greg Graffin for his unyielding intelligence, machine-gun vocal delivery and refusal to “dumb down” the band’s songs for a mass market mindset. It comes as little surprise, then, that Graffin’s Cold As the Clay should attempt to teach a punk audience about the charms and wit of “old-time music.” This sort of musical exercise is to be expected from, say, Bruce Springsteen, but it’s an extremely punk rock thing to do for a hardcore legend like Graffin to throw aside fan’s expectations in an effort to make an honest artistic statement. Cold As the Clay succeeds both as an opportunity for Graffin to apply his songwriting talents to a drastically different musical format, and as a showcase for his soulful, vastly underrated vocal abilities. Mixing traditional folk and country songs with inspired originals, Graffin’s delivery is supported by solid, appropriately understated performances by a talented group of sympathetic musicians. Bandmate/producer Brett Gurewitz also shows an unexpectedly deft hand in capturing these performances. If one goes into Cold As the Clay expecting the sort of blistering punk rock that Graffin delivers with his full-time band, you’ll be sorely disappointed. However, if you open your ears and free your mind, you’ll find a collection every bit as powerful as anything Bad Religion has ever recorded, music with roots deep in the earth and a history as ancient as mankind. Somewhere, Dave Van Ronk is smiling down on us all… (Anti- Records)
THE GOURDS – Heavy Ornamentals This Austin, Texas bunch of ne’er-do-wells has been kicking around for almost a decade now and Heavy Ornamentals, the band’s eighth album, displays everything there is to like about the Gourds. Chock full of irreverent humor, pop culture references and whip-smart lyrics, you might think that the Gourds are a little too, well, “intelligent” for the room. These boys temper their smart-aleck intellectual leanings with a lean-n-mean mix of roots rock, trad-country, folky witticisms and blues flavor, all delivered with the mastery of a band that has spent many nights on the road. All of which means that the Gourds are equally at home ripping through a honky-tonk rave-up like “Shake The Chandelier,” a Byrdsian rocker like “Decline-O-Meter,” or a poetic weeper like “Our Patriarch.” Consistently entertaining and as unique as the band that created it, Heavy Ornamentals is more soulful than anything you’re likely to hear from Nashville’s Music Row this year. (Eleven Thirty Records)
JUNGLE ROT – War Zone Let’s go ahead and say it – War Zone is every bit as valid a creative statement as the latest Conor Oberst snoozefest, rockcrit bias against “extreme” music be damned! Pursuing an American (as opposed to Scandinavian) death metal style that uses bands like Sodom or Death as their blueprint, Jungle Rot’s fifth album in eleven years lyrically tackles the violence, brutality and inhumanity of man’s crusades with a stark brilliance and dark poetry. Behind the band’s disturbing, intelligent lyrics, however, lies a soundtrack as explosive, dangerous and powerful as anything you’ll find in extreme metal. Frontman Dave Matrise’s vocals are more intelligible, and thus accessible, than most metal growlers, and guitarist Geoff Bub attacks his axe with a zeal that’s downright scary. Bassist James Genenz provides the anchor that keeps the entire thing from flights of fancy while Neil Zacharek is that rare find, a drummer with muscular chops that enhance, rather than bludgeon, each song to its demise. Not to say that Jungle Rot will be pitching songs for The O.C. any time soon, but War Zone delivers a real ass-kicking, one that metal fans should ignore at their own peril. (Crash Music)
RAINBOW – Live In Munich 1977 Featuring the best version of Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, the one with Dio belting out the tunes and bassist Bob Daisley and drummer Cozy Powell backing the maestro, Live In Munich 1977 is the live Rainbow album fans have long desired. Touring in support of the sub-par On Stage live album, Rainbow was mixing songs from its now-legendary first two albums with material from the yet-to-be-released Dio swansong Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll. The performances captured on this budget-priced two-CD set are simply brilliant, Blackmore’s incendiary six-string work matched by, perhaps, the best one-two rhythmic punch in the metal world in Daisley and Powell. Featuring eight songs stretched to the 90-minute breaking point by extended jams, Dio’s soaring vocals and mind-numbing feats of instrumental prowess that would write the book for ‘80s British heavy metal, Live In Munich 1977 rocks with reckless abandon. Younger fans that never got to witness Blackmore and his wrecking crew firsthand can revel in live versions of “Sixteenth Century Greensleeves,” “Catch the Rainbow” and “Man On the Silver Mountain” that leave scorched earth in their wake. For those of us that were there, Live In Munich 1977 revives some long-forgotten rock ‘n’ roll memories… (Eagle Records)
