The View On Pop Culture: Trent Gardner's Explorers Club, David Jacobs-Strain, Andrew Vachss (2002)

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The brainchild of musician/producer Trent Gardner of the band Magellan, his Explorers Club project gathers together the best and brightest from the progressive rock and metal genres to share ideas and create some daring, adventuresome music. Raising the Mammoth (Magna Carta Records) is the second Explorers Club album and the pedigree of the assembled players includes members of Kansas (Kerry Livgren and Steve Walsh), Dream Theater (John Myung and James LaBrie), Megadeth (Marty Friedman), and Frank Zappa’s band (Terry Bozzio). With talent like this on board, it’s no wonder that Explorers Club is often called a “prog-rock supergroup.”

Raising the Mammoth is a collection of musical passages – some small and finely crafted, others longer and more majestic – strung together into a single, cohesive creative theme. The first extended section offers vocals from Gardner, Walsh and LaBrie, thrown into the stream of instrumental chaos created by the attending musicians. The result is quite invigorating; Gardner’s lyrical poetry containing many hidden directions while the musical undercurrent batters your consciousness like white water rapids along the Colorado River. The instrumental second section is grander in scope, the music often swelling to a crescendo before swerving off into unforeseen directions. The first section of Raising the Mammoth seems to work better than the second, with the instrumental interplay among the musicians showing a brighter chemistry and more disciplined performance. Taken as a whole, however, the hour-long recording is a wonderful example of a proud progressive-rock tradition, the torch carried well by Gardner and his friends.

Contrary to what this humble scribe has long believed, you don’t have to be old to sing the blues (tho’ I would submit that it certainly doesn’t hurt any). Extraordinary guitarist David Jacobs-Strain first performed onstage at the Oregon Country Fair at the tender age of eleven and was named as a faculty member of the Port Townsend Country Blues Workshop in 1999 while still in high school. Jacobs-Strain released his first album before he entered college and Stuck On the Way Back (Northern Blues Music), his sophomore effort, proves that the young blues prodigy has come of age quickly.

Produced by musician Kenny Passarelli, who convinced bluesman Otis Taylor to come out of retirement, Stuck On the Way Back is a magnificent showcase of both Jacobs-Strain’s six-string acumen and his songwriting skills. With sparse musical accompaniment and his stark, powerful guitar playing, the young Jacobs-Strain’s vocals sound as ancient as the music he sings. Original songs like Jacobs-Strain’s apocalyptic “River Was Green” or the discordant “Dark Horse Blues” are terse, muscular affairs with timeless lyrical concerns and strong performances. Covers, such as R.L. Burnside’s classic “Black Mattie” or traditional tunes like “Linin’ Track” are afforded great reverence and excellent delivery. A lyrical collaboration with Taylor, “Black And Blue,” results in a haunting tale of love and betrayal, the music fleshed out by Passarelli’s subtle keyboard work. Unlike a lot of young, white guitarslingers aiming for the late Stevie Ray Vaughan’s crown, David Jacobs-Strain is the real thing, an authentic bluesman with instrumental chops and lyrical maturity the equal of artists twice his age and experience.

Author Andrew Vachss could be considered the literary equivalent of the Delta bluesman. His fictional alter ego, Burke, is the same kind of hustler and street-level survivor that Muddy Waters was in real life while Burke’s adopted “family” is not unlike that which grew up around the Chicago blues giant. Burke, an ex-con, is a city-bred predator whose religion is revenge; his troubled childhood is the stuff that the blues is born of. In Vachss’ novels, Burke is typically getting even with someone, usually over something done to a child (reflecting Vachss’ own work as a lawyer and children’s advocate).

Vachss has written better than a dozen Burke novels to date, but the latest, titled Only Child (Alfred A. Knopf) may be his best riff yet. Forced to leave New York City, Burke has spent the last few years (and couple of novels) hiding out in the Pacific Northwest. Burke slips back into the Big Apple under the shadow of night and reconnects with his family, which includes an Asian martial arts expert, a reclusive scientific genius and a hustling, streetwise philosopher. Low on cash and eschewing his usual cons and hustles as overpopulated with amateurs, Burke goes back to his roots as a “man for hire” and private investigator without papers. Hired by a Mob boss, Burke assembles his crew to hunt down the murderer of the Mobster’s daughter that nobody knew existed.

Vachss has branched out over the last few Burke novels, changing locales and the situations he throws his protagonist into, and he continues to experiment with Only Child, taking crime fiction to new heights. Vachss writes with a gritty realism and street-inspired rhythm that only Elmore Leonard comes close to matching, his Burke a dark avenger and hunter of men that could only exist in the imagination. If you’re looking for fiction a little headier and more headstrong than what exists at the top of the best-seller charts, give Andrew Vachss and Only Child a shot. Chances are you’ll go back to the store for more of Burke… (View From The Hill, September 2002)

The View On Pop Culture: Johnny Cash, Andrew Vachss, Waylon Jennings (2002)

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Country legend Johnny Cash recently celebrated his seventieth birthday and, with his health improving, has announced plans for another new album. Like many of Nashville’s old guard, Cash will keep working until he is physically unable to record or perform, and based on his last couple of albums, the Man In Black seems to only get better with age. Columbia Records – Cash’s musical home for over thirty years – is reissuing a number of his classic albums on CD this year, many for the first time. To kick off the celebration, the label has released the excellent The Essential Johnny Cash (Columbia/Legacy) compilation, a historical overview of Cash’s lengthy career.

The two-disc set kicks off with Cash’s early singles for Sun Records, mono jukebox favorites that became big hits during the mid-fifties. “Hey Porter,” “I Walk the Line” and “Ballad of A Teenage Queen” and their B-sides share a youthful energy, even if they only hint at Cash’s incredible charisma. Cash’s early-sixties treasures, songs like “Ring of Fire” and “The Ballad of Ira Hayes,” set the stage for Cash’s commercial peak of 1968-1972 and crossover hits like “Folsom Prison Blues” and “A Boy Named Sue.” From this point, the set is somewhat erratic, overlooking much of Cash’s 80s output, offering highlights like “(Ghost) Riders In the Sky” and “Highwayman,” ending with his 1993 collaboration with U2, “The Wanderer.” Overall, The Essential Johnny Cash provides the listener with a fair representation of Cash’s immense talents. If you’re looking for more, I’d heartily also recommend the expanded versions of At Folsom Prison and At San Quentin, reissued on CD last year.

If a novelist creates one lasting, memorable character in a book, they’ve accomplished more than most writers manage to do during their entire careers. Andrew Vachss has created an entire world revolving around his central character Burke, building a New York City peopled with fascinating characters like “Silent Max,” the Asian martial arts master, or the “Professor,” a street-smart philosopher and Burke’s mentor. The shadowy Burke is an ex-con and “man for hire” continuously walking a tightrope between freedom and prison.  

In his previous novel, Dead And Gone, Vachss left Burke stranded on the west coast; “presumed dead” by the NYPD after exacting revenge on the enemies that tried to kill him. With the latest entry in the Burke series, titled Pain Management (Alfred A. Knopf), Vachss takes the character into uncharted territory. Working in the unfamiliar environs of Portland, Oregon, Burke has taken on the job of finding a runaway teenager. Working without the safety net of his self-styled “family,” Burke finds himself embroiled in the designs of the drug-running “pain management” underground, the book delivering an ending that should surprise even the most faithful of Vachss’ readers. Vachss writes with the soul and the poetry of the street, bringing his own experiences as a lawyer, federal prosecutor and children’s advocate to bear in creating his rough-hewn and dark-hued tales. Pain Management is a fine introduction to Burke’s world, but be forewarned – after you’ve devoured one Burke novel, you’ll be running to your local bookstore to grab them all up.

Everybody who has lived in Nashville for any length of time has a favorite Waylon Jennings story, and your humble columnist is no exception. Jennings was a familiar figure in the Music City back in the seventies and one Christmas Eve, a group of friends and myself ran into Waylon drinking beer and playing darts by the fireplace of Daddywacker’s, a local joint with big burgers, cold beer and homemade potato chips.

We began drinking beer with him and as the night wore on, Waylon suggested that we needed a Christmas tree to make the night memorable. Several of us staggered out into the alleyway behind the restaurant and found a scrappy little pine sapling behind a dumpster. Setting it up in the main room, we decorated it with empty beer mugs and potato chips. Waylon sat and drank with us until midnight and, as the restaurant closed, we wished each other a Merry Christmas and went our separate ways.

That’s the kind of guy that Waylon Jennings was, more comfortable sitting and drinking with a bunch of working class stiffs than in hanging out at any one of the industry parties that he was certainly invited to. At the time, 1976 or ‘77, Jennings was riding high, one of the biggest stars in Nashville. Success never seemed to go to his head, though, and Waylon continued to fight to retain his artistic integrity. Throughout the course of his career, Waylon never lost his connection to his fans, the audiences who appreciated his efforts to bring them music that was sincere, passionate and from the heart.

With the attitude of a punk rocker, the soul of a bluesman and the heart of a poet, Waylon Jennings forged a name and legend for himself in country music. Jennings’ death at the young age of 64 from complications due to diabetes is a sad reminder that he was one of a dying breed of Country musicians. One of the last of a generation of giants such as Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, Waylon and his friends worked their musical magic without focus groups or image consultants. They remained true to their roots, to their beliefs and to their idea of what country music should be. There will never be another artist quite like Waylon Jennings, and come next Christmas Eve I’ll be sure to raise my glass to his memory... (The View On Pop Culture, March 2002)