CD Review: Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers’ Can’t Outrun A Memory (2024)

“Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rave at close of day;
rage, rage against the dying of the light.” – Dylan Thomas, 1947

If rock ‘n’ roll has the equivalent of Dylan Thomas’s famed protagonist, it would be Joe Grushecky. The Pittsburgh rocker has been fighting the good fight since the mid-‘70s, first with the Iron City Houserockers, and later as Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers. Joe released four critically-acclaimed albums between 1979 and 1983 with his former band and, since ’89, has released four “solo” and eleven band albums with one version or another of the Houserockers. Even more impressively, he’s accomplished all of this largely outside of the major label infrastructure.

Still, Joe has lived, loved, and sang long enough to realize that, as he so insightfully observed with the title track of his 2018 album, there are “More Yesterdays Than Tomorrows” on his horizon. Joe’s seen his son Johnny grow up and become a valued member of the Houserockers, but lest one think that Mr. Grushecky is ready to pass the torch to a younger generation, here is a brand-new album, Can’t Outrun A Memory, to belie that thought. At an age where his contemporaries have long given up the dream or – even worse – spend their days playing golf or tending to their wine cellar, Grushecky has delivered an album that’s every bit as fierce, ambitious, and defiant as anything he’s ever recorded over the past 45 years.

Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers’ Can’t Outrun A Memory

Can’t Outrun A Memory opens with its poignant title track, a mid-tempo rocker with resigned vocals, big beat rhythms, and resonating guitarplay. “I’ve been thinking that it’s been too long since I listened to that old sad song. When I hear that soulful melody, it stirs something deep inside of me,” Joe sings, partly reminiscing, partly wrestling with ghosts of his past that we all possess. None of us can outrun the memory of past loves, past losses, and the risks we didn’t take (and some of those we did). With Grushecky’s gorgeous throwback guitar lines anchoring the song, embroidered by  Danny Gochnour’s intricate fretwork, Joe succinctly states, “time keeps marching on, blink an eye and it’s all gone,” drawing on his own experiences and losses to fuel the song’s wistful lyrics.

By contrast, “Just Drive” is more laid-back, with Johnny Grushecky’s elegant acoustic guitar strum opening and with lovely echoed intertwined electric guitars swirling around the mix above cautious, almost hesitant instrumentation. For those of us without a yacht to chill out on, driving around town, or out in the country, in our car is a form of meditation that provides solace from the barbed-wire existence of everyday life. It reminds me a lot of John Hiatt’s “Drive South,” but with more “Rust Belt” soul to its overall sound, the song dominated by Joe’s yearning vocals. Joe says of the song, “this one is for all of us who ever thought about getting away from it all and jumping into the car to drive off into to the sunset.”

An up-tempo, anthemic rocker with elements of the British Invasion seeping in at the edges, “This Is Who We Are” is the sort of populist message that Grushecky excels at, rock ‘n’ roll as balm for the soul. Singing above a massive drumbeat (courtesy of the ever-reliable Joffo Simmons), with Jeff Garrison’s fluid bass lines providing a rhythmic foundation, Joe shares his vision of the American dream: “I want a home on a quiet street, I just want to be left in peace. When I kiss my kids goodnight, I pray everything’s gonna be all right.” Grushecky’s vocals race out of the speakers like a high-speed chase, lyrically referencing both Dylan and his own past (“I had a good time but got out alive”), roaring out a message of American unity that seems to have been lost in our current quarrel over the soul of the country while guitars duel in the background. “My wife suggested this title to me,” says Joe. “It’s about where we are right now. I’m living on a quiet street, going to work every day, and hoping that we turn ourselves around for a better life for our children.”

Joe Grushecky photo by Danny Clinch, courtesy Omnivore Recordings

Here In ‘68

Grushecky has long been lauded as a brilliant lyricist, yet it’s amazing and inspiring that he can still dig into his memory and experience to pull out a plum as perfectly-formed as “Here In ’68.” A look back at one of the most tumultuous years in American history, Joe name checks Viet Nam, the Kennedy and King assassinations, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and much, much more in a vivid lyrical history of the year that is punctuated by the poetic refrain “I can smell the smoke from a distance, feel the fire burning in my bones, hold out for hope peace love and desire, question everything that I’ve ever known, trying hard to keep the faith.” It’s a powerful song, Gochnour’s effervescent electric guitar providing a strong counterpoint to Johnny G’s subtle acoustic patterns, while Simmons and Garrison provide a strong, supportive rhythmic backdrop.   

Grushecky seldom covers other artist’s songs on his albums so, when he does, it’s an important moment worth paying attention to. Much as he did with “Old Man’s Bar” and “Junior’s Bar” on the I.C. Houserockers’ sophomore album, here Joe pairs the classic Animals’ track “We Gotta Get Outta This Place” with his own “Living In Coal Country” as matching blue-collar ballads. Eric Burdon delivered a powerful version of the Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil song for the Animals in 1965, and while Grushecky and the Houserockers basically follow that Top 20 hit’s original blueprint, they roughen up the edges and amplify the overall vibe with louder instrumentation and a high-octane arrangement. Garrison’s full-throated bass licks, for instance, build upon Chas Chandler’s original instrumentation, taking the song further onto blues turf.  

It’s the perfect lead-in to “Living In Coal Country,” a tuff-as-nails rocker with Joe’s mournful harmonica and raging vocals, which are accompanied by scorched earth guitars and jackhammer rhythms that drive home the lyrical message. With devastating imagery, Joe snarls “while the company blows up another mountain top, the brown dust mixes with the falling rain. When you do a deal with the devil, you lose all rights to complain.” It’s a protest song, and a wickedly surgical one at that, the singer’s anger at the region’s poverty, addiction, and economic desolation cutting like a scalpel to your conscious. “Both sides of my family were coal miners,” says Joe. “I grew up in coal country. When we went to visit relatives, we drove from one ‘coal patch’ town populated by company houses to another. I know these people and I wanted to tell their story.”

Until I See You Again

“Until I See You Again” is, in my humble opinion, the best song on Can’t Outrun A Memory, a heartfelt ode to that channels a great deal of emotion without ever becoming the least bit maudlin. Remembering those souls we’ve lost – and we all have a similar list of long-gone friends and family who have affected our lives in untold ways – Joe joyfully declares with the chorus “let’s raise our glasses and drink a toast, to all the ones that we love most. To our brothers and sisters and our best friends, I’ll keep you in my heart until I see you again.” The song’s buoyant rhythms and precise-yet-rockin’ instrumentation supports Joe’s electrifying vocals. “This one is about my old friends and how we had so much fun back in the day,” says Joe. “I miss them every day. I wanted to salute all our friends and family both here and gone.”

Can’t Outrun A Memory closes with “Let’s Cross the Bridge,” a nuanced take on life and mortality. Singing above a running river of instrumentation with ringing guitars and backing harmonies, Joe admits that “you can rage on forever, you can rage until you die, or go searching for an answer, and ask yourself the reason why.” With an almost Gospel fervor, Joe invites us all to step out of the darkness and into the light, to throw off the chains of the past. With reverent keyboard fills amping up the emotion, Joe and the musicians raise their voices in a joyous chorus that promises a better life is within our grasp.

It’s not the first time that Grushecky has visited this territory – he covered the 1930s-era Gospel song “Ain’t No Grave” on More Yesterdays Than Tomorrows – but it’s an inspired (and unexpected) spiritual moment nonetheless. The CD includes a brace of bonus tracks, including a bluesy, horn-driven take on “Sleeping Dog,” and powerful, inspired acoustic takes of “Living In Coal Country” (with mournful harmonica) and “Here In ‘68” that would make Woody Guthrie smile. The studio outtake “Leave Well Enough Alone” is a sizzling slab o’ energetic James Brown-styled funk with a hard luck tale that would be more than good enough for any other artist’s album, but sounds out of place compared to the rest of the material on Can’t Outrun A Memory.  
   

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

If Grushecky’s last album concerned itself with mortality and legacy, Can’t Outrun A Memory deals with how we get to the end of the road…do we seize each day with unbridled energy, or do we allow entropy to creep into the short time we have on this spinning orb. Memories provide a signpost to the future and, for many, music allows us to approach the dying of the light with no regrets. Meeting Joe for the first time at a 1995 show in Nashville, I asked him why a middle-aged man would give up his job to hit the road with his band. Grushecky simply smiled and said, “it’s rock ‘n’ roll, man, it’s rock ‘n’ roll…” Nearly three decades since that meeting, Joe and the gang – Thomas’s “wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight” – are still burning bright. If Can’t Outrun A Memory is any indication, Joe’s gonna keep on rockin’ until they turn out the lights… (Omnivore Recordings, released July 12th, 2024)

Buy the CD from Amazon: Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers’ Can’t Outrun A Memory

Also on That Devil Music:
Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers’ More Yesterdays Than Tomorrows review
Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers’ True Companion review
Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers’ American Babylon review
Joe Grushecky’s It’s In My Song review

Archive Review: Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers’ Down the Road Apiece Live (2000)

A few years ago – 1995 to be exact – I saw a rock ‘n’ roll show that, if not number one on my all-time list, stands in the top three out of over 200 shows I’ve attended. No, it wasn’t the Stones or the Who or one of rock’s legends that I saw. Those guys couldn’t hold a candle to the spectacle that I witnessed that night. Sitting in a dark, smoky club in Nashville I watched Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers demolish the joint. Six guys crammed on a stage the size of a postage stamp; they spilled out onto the floor and, in the case of lead singer/guitarist Grushecky, on top of the tables. I’d waited fifteen years to see one of rock’s most underrated talents perform live, and Joe and his crew did not disappoint.

At the beginning of the show there were exactly three people in the audience who were familiar with the band (my wife and myself and one of Joe’s former producers). After two sets stretched out over almost three hours, it’s a safe bet that nobody leaving the club that night would ever forget Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers. I’ve thought about that night a lot since then, played it over again in my head, smiling, and marveling that a middle-aged man (only slightly older than myself) could still bring such energy and passion to a live performance. After the show I asked Joe what prompted a man to keep on toiling away in a field that had always shown him such indifference. “It’s rock ‘n’ roll” was his reply and it’s all he had to say…

Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers’ Down the Road Apiece Live

If there was a lick of justice in this wicked world – and we all know that there is none – Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers would be revered as elder statesmen of rock rather than as one of the genre’s more obscure cult bands. The Houserockers would be facing the twilight of their musical careers with their walls covered in platinum records and mucho money in the bank. If this sounds like a fan talking, well, I am and have been since I bought that 7” picture disc of the Iron City Houserockers first single “Love’s So Tough” some twenty years ago. The critic in me, however, recognizes that Joe Grushecky truly is one of rock music’s greatest treasures and that in spite of the commercial and corporate indifference that he’s faced during the past two decades, Grushecky still manages to kick out a new album every two or three years.

I can’t help but thinking that this career insecurity has taken its toll, but you wouldn’t be able to tell it from Grushecky’s music. Each album shows a little harder musical edge, the songs featuring more insightful lyrics. Over the course of four I.C. Houserockers albums and five “solo” releases, Grushecky has matured as an artist and performer in a manner that greater career comfort probably wouldn’t have nurtured. At an age when most men are counting their pension funds and looking forward to playing golf three days a week, Joe Grushecky is still following his rock ‘n’ roll dream with a fervor and reckless abandon that young cubs less than half his age can’t muster. All of which is my way of bringing you, gentle reader, to the subject at hand: Down the Road Apiece Live.

For a band that has earned their audience one set of ears at a time by delivering uncompromising live performances night after night, it’s somewhat strange that they haven’t released a live album before now. A few Houserockers performances have found their way into tape trading circles (I have one tape spirited out of WMMS-FM in Cleveland that is phenomenal), circulated among rabid fans. There are also a couple of Springsteen bootleg discs – Paradise By the Sea and Nick’s Fat City – that are really Houserockers performances that the Boss happened to wander onstage during. Down the Road Apiece Live is the band’s first official live set and it sounds, to these ears, as representative of a Houserockers onstage performance as you’re going to capture on disc.

Blood On the Bricks

Assembled by Grushecky and the band, Down the Road Apiece Live is as much a career retrospective as it is a performance disc. Of the baker’s dozen songs that are on the disc, some are from the Iron City Houserockers days, a few are from Grushecky’s early solo career and the rest from his later studio efforts, American Babylon and Coming Home. The album is designed as a straight-ahead rocker, with no fluff and no slow moments – just high octane, turbo-charged street level rock ‘n’ roll. Grushecky has always been known as a populist songwriter in the Springsteen vein, but I honestly think that he brings a working class perspective to his material that Springsteen hasn’t been able to for years. Several of Grushecky’s anthemic “call to arms” are here, including the haunting “Dark and Bloody Ground” and the angry “How Long.”

Other Grushecky originals are inhabited by the kind of literary characters that only a few songwriters can create, such as the memorable Frankie in “Dance With Me” or the star-crossed lovers of “Blood On the Bricks.” Springsteen even drops in for a few songs here, including one of the best Elvis songs ever written, “Talking With the King.” Behind all of these songs stands a band as polished and as rowdy as any rock ‘n’ roll has ever produced. Although many refer to Grushecky’s post Iron City albums as “solo” efforts, they’re really band creations that rely as much on the foundation of original I.C. Houserocker Art Nardini’s bass and drummer Joffo Simmons drums as they do on Grushecky’s taut guitar playing and trademark vocals.

These guys have been playing with Grushecky for more years than the lifespan of many better-known bands’ entire careers and it shows. A Houserockers show is an exercise in musical chemistry and a sincere love of rock ‘n’ roll – after all, these guys ain’t getting rich here, folks! When Billy Toms steps out front on guitar, Joe Pelesky screws up his face and makes a run down the keyboards, Bernie Herr adds some fine percussion touches to a song or Joe G. himself climbs atop your table to kick out the jams, the joy and release that they feel is infectious. It’s what rock ‘n’ roll should be about and for Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers, it always will be…

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

The bottom line on Down the Road Apiece Live: buy it! Forget that trendy new punk rock record or moody, dark-hued album by this week’s “rock rebels.” Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers bring more energy, attitude and sincerity to their music than any of those chart-topping poseurs, kicking out each night’s sets with the same blood, sweat and tears that they did twenty years ago. One of rock’s true original indie bands, Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers don’t get the respect that they deserve but deserve every ounce of respect that they’ve earned. If I had to pick one record to explain to future generations what rock & roll was about, this would be it. That’s all there is to say… (Schoolhouse Records, released 2000)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™

Lost & Found: The Iron City Houserockers (1985)

The Iron City Houserockers, photo courtesy of Cleveland International

The Houserockers – originally called the Iron City Houserockers – should be a superstar band. Their hard-driving rock ‘n’ roll style, sharper than a straight-razor and stronger than a concrete-hungry jackhammer, coupled with singer/songwriter Joe Grushecky’s street-level, dark-side-of-the-sidewalk lyrics create as potent a sound as has ever been heard in rock music. Here’ they are, though, stuck in Anthem’s ‘Lost & Found Dept’.

The Iron City Houserockers hit the blacktop running in 1979 with their first album, a tasty lil’ sucker by the name of Love’s So Tough, an excellent introduction to their songs of blue collar life and love, angst and frustration. Grushecky’s voice goes beyond sandpaper in comparative quality, more closely resembling the bubbling molten metal so prominent in the band’s Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania home. This initial recording finds the band missing the mark as often as not, but when their aim is true, the results are amazing: the bittersweet “Stay With Me Tonight,” the lovely “Dance With Me,” and the rockin’ “Heroes Are Hard To Find.”

The Houserockers didn’t miss a beat, giving us their underrated classic second album, Have A Good Time…But Get Out Alive. This is a vinyl cry of defiance, the Houserockers representing both a city and a culture, both sadly oppressed by the economic and urban decay destroying the industrial cities of the Northeast and Midwest. The song titles sum it up and are as tuff & muscular as the tunes themselves: the title cut, “Don’t Let Them Push You Around,” “We’re Not Dead Yet.” This is the same populist common ground that Springsteen and John Cougar have found so much success with the past few year … the Houserockers were doing it five years earlier!

Have A Good Time… features two cuts that are among the most powerful and emotional ever recorded: “Old Man Bar” and “Junior’s Bar.” The young man in “Old Man Bar” hopes that none of his friends see him drinking beer in the old-timer hangout. Backed by only a sparse accordion and mandolin arrangement, the voice sees in the old men and their dashed hopes and dreams his own future. This creates a haunting conflict with his own aspirations, which is reflected in the song and its ending: “It’s true that I am younger now, but it’s very clear, that time is catching up with me I know…”

“Junior’s Bar” has our hero on the prowl, the band suddenly crashing in with guitars ringing as the voice looks for solace and escape, preferably with alcohol and a woman. The contrast between the two songs is pointed, but the continuity of the main character and his attempt to transcend his everyday grind creates a potent seven and a half minutes.

Blood On the Bricks, the third I.C. Houserockers LP, continued their forward motion. Produced by Steve Cropper, the sound is deeper and clearer, but the edge is still sharp. The band handles the familiar working class themes, throwing in a great Viet Nam vet story in “Saints and Sinners” and a tragic romance in “This Time the Night Won’t Save Us.”

In 1983, the band left behind their “Iron City” moniker, searching for a wider audience beyond the geographical limitations of the Northeast. Their first album as the plain ol’ Houserockers, Cracking Under Pressure was an overlooked gem. Currently, the band is playing the bar circuit, another obscure though talented buncha guys found only in the Lost & Found Dept.   

Review originally published in the ‘Lost & Found’ column of the Summer 1985 issue of Anthem: The Journal of (un)Popular Culture

CD Review: Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers' More Yesterdays Than Tomorrows (2018)

Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Joe Grushecky is a music biz lifer, a survivor whose first band of note – the Iron City Houserockers – delivered four near-perfect albums of intelligent, unbridled rock ‘n’ roll circa 1970-1983. With a sound and lyricism inspired by blue-collar scribes like Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger, tho’ often displaying more blues and soul influences, the I.C. guys earned a lot of critical acclaim but few record sales. When the band broke up after being dropped by MCA Records, Grushecky worked on his songwriting chops while pursuing a career as a teacher for “at risk” youths in his hometown of Pittsburgh. He would resurface in 1989 with the album Rock & Real, credited to “Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers.” Minor masterpieces like the Springsteen-produced American Babylon (1995) and True Companion (2004) would follow, yielding great reviews but providing no breakthrough.

After suffering through record deals with both major and minor labels, Grushecky launched his own indie Schoolhouse Records imprint years before many of today’s critically-acclaimed indie-rockers were born. When Grushecky wanted to explore other facets of his music, he recorded solo albums like 2002’s Fingerprints, 2006’s A Good Life, and 2013’s Somewhere East of Eden. He has always drifted back to the Houserockers, though, and this year’s model – More Yesterdays Than Tomorrows – finds Joey G. and cohorts in fine form as they deliver their first studio album together since 2009’s exceptional East Carson Street. In spite of an impressive body of work comprised of better than a dozen studio and live albums, Grushecky remains one of the best-kept secrets in rock music, forever marginalized by his association with a coterie of talented ‘70s-era rockers including Willie Nile and Elliott Murphy and bands like the Del Lords.

Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers’ More Yesterdays Than Tomorrows

From the new album’s title to the music in the grooves, Grushecky seems preoccupied with mortality and morality. Not a sort of Goth kid’s black-eyeliner and mopey obsession with death, but rather that of a middle-aged man staring down, as the title suggests, the reality that their existence holds “more yesterdays than tomorrows.” Turning 60 this year, I’m well aware of the Reaper’s stare – my father made it less than two months past his 60th birthday before passing, my mother a little more than a year and change beyond that before her death. The Oglala Lakota Indian chief Low Dog is famously quoted as saying “today is a good day to die” and I suppose that’s true, but many of us are dragged screaming to the grave. While the specter of death permeates our culture, it’s seldom addressed musically outside of blues and gospel songs.

Opening with the mid-tempo title track, Grushecky ponders the situation with his keen lyrical eye and takes stock of where he sits in life. Rather than mourning the days behind him, the singer’s joy at each “brand new day” soars atop a transcendent guitar solo and jangly instrumentation. Never a quitter, Grushecky wears his scars proudly as he soldiers on, headfirst, into whatever tomorrow has to bring. His reverie broken by reality’s intrusion, Grushecky launches into “Got To Go To Work Today,” a no-frills rocker with more than a little boogie backbeat hidden beneath the din. Burnishing his blue collar bona fides, Grushecky creates a protagonist who begrudgingly accepts his fate, the songwriter’s vague description of the workplace spinning a tale of an everyman’s curse, albeit one set to stinging guitar solos and clamorous rhythms.

That’s What Makes Us Great

Released earlier this year as a single, “That’s What Makes Us Great” is an incredible duet with Joe’s buddy Bruce (as in Springsteen), the song itself a call to arms for those resisting the loss of our country to greedy businessmen and craven politicians, the slipping away of the American dream to jackboots of fear and hate as refugees in need are turned away in our ignorance and the country itself seems under siege. The words are sung passionately, Grushecky and Springsteen’s voices surrounded by chaotic instrumentation, clanging guitar licks sounding like the Liberty Bell ringing the chimes of freedom.

Both men realize that we’re collectively witnessing a brutal turning point in our nation’s savage history, the song asking “is there a difference I can make,” its creators choosing love above all else in what may be Springsteen’s most overtly political statement yet (and I’m sure that I’m not alone in wishing that Bruce would record a full album with Joey G and the Houserockers). If “That’s What Makes Us Great” is an unabashed rocker with a political edge that pulls few punches, “Burn Us Down” is the body-builder’s roid-rage – a muscular, feverish, powerful cry from the darkness, the song’s bluesy undercurrent matched by Grushecky’s anguished vocals and empathetic, electrifying fretwork, both aspects of the song perfectly capturing the angst-ridden zeitgeist suffered by at least half of the country.

Joe Grushecky, Bruce Springsteen & the Houserockers, photo by John Cavanaugh

Blood Sweat and Beers

Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers have frequently been referred to as the best “bar band” in America, but they’ve always been much more than that. The core of the band has been playing together for decades, long past the point where rock ‘n’ roll dreams are realized, talented musicians reveling in the mere act of music-making. They’re professionals by any standard, with a lengthy history of thousands of performances and a couple dozen albums trailing in their wake. Grushecky and the Houserockers are the standard to which a “bar band” should aspire, but that doesn’t mean the Joe and his gang haven’t torn up a tavern a time or two. Grushecky isn’t above using a bar setting for a song, either (“Junior’s Bar” comes to mind), and “Blood Sweat and Beers” is really just a country song waiting for the addition of steel guitar to strut shamelessly down Nashville’s ‘Music Row’. A classic barroom tearjerker set to a twangy, rollicking rhythm, the singer lays out his romantic woes in a manner that would make ol’ Hank proud.

From haunting, 1970s-styled Southern-fried riffs and wiry fretwork to gorgeous, ethereal backing vocals, Grushecky imbues “The Voice” with an undeniable Stax soul sound. Singing above muted rhythms with his underrated, soul-drenched vox, Grushecky creates an incredibly charming vibe for a song that, lyrically, offers a light that pierces the darkness, the cosmos reaffirming that our inner strength and moral compass will win out in the end. A sort of thematic bookend to “The Voice,” the wonderfully poetic and insightful “Work In Progress” offers up a positive message riding upon an infectious melody with self-aware lyrics that are applicable to any of our lives, the reckless abandon of pure rock ‘n’ roll creating what would be a surefire hit if corporate radio – with its crippling playlists and overly-conservative consultants – hadn’t neutered the airwaves. Nevertheless, “Work In Progress” is a completely joyful slab of classic rock music.

Hell To Pay

With syncopated guitar licks, squealing six-strings, and explosive percussion pounding out a tribal Bo Diddly beat, Grushecky’s mesmerizing vocals leap out of the wall of sound with a sense of urgency on “Hell To Pay” as he sings of wasted lives and lost opportunities, praying for “love to conquer hate” and surmising that “something’s gotta change” or else there’ll be “hell to pay.” The addition of a wailing sax to the arrangement is sheer genius, the instrument offering a strident, sobbing counterpoint to the Bacchanalian instrumentation that bangs and crashes in the background, running amok as society burns. As many of us do, Grushecky sees a country that has strayed from its core values, teetering on the edge of decline with a conman at the helm.

Grushecky’s thoughts turn back to mortality with a contemporized cover of the 1930s-era gospel song “Ain’t No Grave,” which has most notably been recorded by Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Johnny Cash. Grushecky brings a gospel-blues spirit to the well-worn song with energetic acoustic guitar strum and locomotive blasts of high-lonesome harmonica before the entire band kicks in to take the song to the Promised Land, turning the performance from a plaintive plea to a tent-show revival complete with glossolalia. More Yesterdays Than Tomorrows closes with the acoustic “Don’t Mourn For Me Like That,” a hauntingly beautiful song where the protagonist says ‘goodbye’ to his loved one with words of reassurance and kindness, the belief in “today is a good day to die” reimagined as a gossamer ballad.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Forty years since the creation of the Iron City Houserockers, Joe Grushecky continues to create vital, complex music that is lyrically eloquent and relevant while remaining timeless in scope. After so many years, Grushecky continues to find new ways to express his muse in song, and while time-to-time he may revisit familiar themes that he first touched upon years ago, he does so with new perspective and insight. The music shows surprising instrumental flourishes that prove that old dogs can learn new tricks, and Grushecky’s status as an unheralded guitar hero is embellished by his fiery performances here.

More Yesterdays Than Tomorrows is an entertaining, exciting work that takes full advantage of the Houserockers’ immense musical chemistry – forged by decades of hard knocks and a shared faith in the religion of rock ‘n’ roll – to create a wonderful collection of songs that rock recklessly but pump the brakes when needed. Reunited with his longtime band after a handful of solo albums, Grushecky displays a renewed fervor and commitment to rock music as both soapbox and as a catalyst for social change. With More Yesterdays Than Tomorrows, Grushecky delivers a career milestone, outdoing himself once again. Grade: A+ (Schoolkids Records, released February 2018)

Get More Yesterdays Than Tomorrows through the band’s PledgeMusic crowdfunding effort

Related content:
Joe Grushecky’s It’s In My Song CD review
Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers’ American Babylon Live CD review