Crime Blotter: Reported offenses in the Tri-parishes
November 28, 2012
Gumbo’s Greatest Hits revealed
December 3, 2012
There is a percentage of people (and I am among them) who would rather endure the pain of post-oral surgery and other such episodes without the aid of prescription painkillers. These folk would prefer to let the expiration dates on the bottles pass before tossing them away or let them be lifted out of the medicine cabinet by those more in need.
Why? To avoid that feeling of dread, of impending doom, that things are just not right, that’s why.
It’s the same feeling I get when I try to listen to contemporary country radio. For every heartfelt honest song of love or heartbreak there seems to be four or five banal clichéd pop songs sung with an accent, usually with excruciating wordplay or Hallmark poetry featured front and center.
So where are the heirs, or at least the extended progeny, of Hank Williams? (Sr., of course; Jr. is a damn disgrace.) Here are but three keepers of the flame; there are many others, of course.
JAMEY JOHNSON looks the part of an outlaw, and it’s truth-in-packaging. He’s got a gruff drawl and respect for the tradition, a sharp writer’s pen and a fearless determination to do things his way, current fashion be hanged. His excellent “The Guitar Song” from 2010 was warmly received in circles beyond country’s boundaries. His first two were also gems.
Now comes LIVING FOR A SONG: A TRIBUTE TO HANK COCHRAN. Mr. Cochran was a singer with a few records under his name, but he’ll be remembered more for his songwriting skills. Master of the two-to-three-minute weeper, his stock-in-trade was brevity and truth telling. (His motto was, “I always try to make it short, make it sweet, and make it rhyme.”)
He was a friend and mentor to Johnson, and Johnson enlists the help of a star-studded cast to sing him out. So, we get to hear: Allison Krauss juxtapose her angel’s croon against Johnson’s barrel-chested warble on “Make the World Go Away”; Merle Haggard trade impossibly drawn-out phrasing with Johnson, backed by lilting jazz and weepy steel guitar licks; Vince Gill and Leon Russell trade choruses and harmonize with Johnson on “A Way to Survive,” a jaunty comeback strategy with twin fiddles and more killer steel (which permeates almost every track, so I won’t mention it again); Emmylou Harris scratch the air with her needle-fine tone on “Don’t Touch Me”; Ray Price bring his dignified grace to “You Wouldn’t Know Love”, swathed with strings and plucked acoustic guitar; Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel shake things up with “I Don’t Do Windows (and I Won’t Go to Hell For You)”; Elvis Costello get his Blue-era croon on as he trades lines with Johnson on “She’ll be Back”; and George Strait, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, Bobby Bare, Ronnie Dunn and Lee Ann Womack all nail their turns on the remaining cuts. The closing title cut is a round-robin featuring Kristofferson, Haggard, Nelson and Johnson and even some archival singing from Cochran himself in a song made by a songwriter for songwriters.
If you thought they don’t make country music like they used to, then look no further.
DWIGHT YOAKAM may not be anyone’s idea of a true traditionalist (e.g., his movie dalliances and other Hollywood affectations), but when he bears down, concentrates and makes a record, boy can he deliver. His wheelhouse has always been “the Bakersfield sound” championed by Buck Owens and his ilk, but here Yoakam returns to the expansiveness of “This Time,” what some (and by “some,” I mean me), consider his finest moment.
Divorced from his old guitarist-producer, Pete Anderson, Yoakam self-produces all but two songs on 3 PEARS, with those co-produced by Beck. Things get off to a Rickenbacker start, with a bass lick more Stax than Nashville on “Take Hold of My Hand.” Steel guitars (Did I mention how much I love them?) compete with crunching Telecasters as Yoakam’s multi-tracked voice joins with itself in a “Sha-la-la” chorus. “Waterfall” is a bit of whimsy, mixing child-like imagery with stark realities – odd, but compelling.
“Dim Lights, Thick Smoke” is a raver, harkening back to his days when punk greasers cheered his opening act at Blasters shows. Yoakam brings the shame of a neglected family right to the honky tonk, where a mixed-up mom cavorts with the other barflies. “Trying” is a swinging little entreaty to a reluctant lover that’s as sweet as it is soulful. “Nothing But Love” is a stomping lament featuring his trademarked ‘hiccup’ and a cascade of doo-wop backing vocals. “It’s Never Alright” could have been penned by Hank Cochran, a weeper of epic scope with horn charts from Memphis, not its Tennessee neighbor.
“A Heart Like Mine” is the first Beck collaboration, and it sounds like a Monkees/Beatles-era nugget dragged through a countrified egg wash. “A Long Way to Go” is a sobering bracer, probably the most traditional Yoakamesque number on the album. “Missing Heart” is the other Beck contribution, and its acoustic chiming is accented by a rolling tympani and (you probably guessed it, steel guitar). The title cut comes on like a Springsteen anthem, but settles into Yoakam territory very comfortably, with twanging guitar and handclaps goosing the tune into pure bliss. “Rock It All Away” takes the over-familiar three chords of “Sweet Jane” and makes something fresh and new. The final cut is a reprise of “Long Way to Go,” this time with only piano backing the singer, changing it to wistful where the other band version was defiant.
A remarkable album from a guy with plenty of juice left.
AMERICAN AQUARIUM hail from Raleigh, N.C. and could fit comfortably in the defunct alt-country genre. But I’d like to think they’re what true country ought to be. They’ve got several albums out, and they fall somewhere in the continuum between the Drive-By Truckers and Reckless Kelly.
Their latest, BURN. FLICKER. DIE., sounds almost as bleak as the title suggests. Though they’re probably close to being burned out from lack of success and road weariness, they still sound determined to carry on in fine style. It’s produced by ex-Trucker and now solo artist Jason Isbell (who’s got his own excellent live album out, “Live from Alabama”), and it’s got the defiance and big heart of the earlier-referenced Williams.
And the preoccupation with drinking and other enhancements. Almost every cut references the bars and things that happen there. “Write what you know about,” goes the now-discredited fiction workshop adage, and these boys have taken that to heart.
They’ve got a pair of fine guitarists, competent keys and … wait for it … a certain metallic guitar. The lead singer sounds like the Truckers’ Mike Cooley’s little brother, “a two-pack habit and a southern accent,” as he sings himself. Losers, jilted lovers and wrecked troubadours haunt AA’s songs like ghosts in dive bars assuredly do.
But much like blues singers, when country boys sing about their worries they let you know they’re exorcising the dread and galvanizing the spirit. “I’ll never get out of this world alive,” sang Hank, and most of us forget that applies to all of us, not just the hell-raisers. The only question is how we lived that life before exiting. These guys haven’t forgot Hank’s words, and they play accordingly.
– Dave Norman is a local attorney who has written or participated in various critiquing endeavors in the past (movies, restaurants) but who believes now has found his real niche as a music critic. In his opinion.
Jamey Johnson conveys his respect for tradition with his ode to Hank Cochran, a mammoth album in collaboration with Allison Krauss, Merle Haggard, Vince Gill, Elvis Costello, Kris Kristofferson and others.
Jamey Johnson – “Living for a Song: A Tribute to Hank Cochran”
Dwight Yoakam – “3 Pears”
American Aquarium – “Burn. Flicker. Die.”
