The glut of new releases at year’s end and the pressures of the holidays both tend to exacerbate my innate tendencies to procrastinate. With that in mind, here are some fairly brief looks at some 2011 releases that I didn’t get around to in a timely manner.
Dave Provost: My Favorite Ghost
(self-released, 2011)
Nantucket-based (though bi-coastal) Dave Provost’s second CD My Favorite Ghost comfortably rides the borderlands between country and rock, with a side of folk and a taste of the blues.
Fans of Dave Alvin, Tom Russell, Guy Clark and Lyle Lovett will find a lot to like here, as Provost employs his warm, husky voice on eight originals and two covers – John Prine’s “Killin’ The Blues” and Steve Earle’s “Ain’t Ever Satisfied.” Those covers are tastefully done, but the real revelations here are tracks like the bluesy slow-burning rocker “Hula Girl,” with lots of wailing slide guitar and moaning organ; and the jaunty Southwestern shuffle of “Partner In Crime” with tasteful dobro and accordion fills.
There’s no little influence of homey New England folk music here, too, in songs like “Partner In Crime” with its lyrical references to the natural world and the weather, or the fingerpicked 12-string of “Up In The Air.” But there’s also a little bit of Springsteen in rockers like the opener, “Hall of Bones.”
Provost had able assistance on this disc from a bunch of musicians who know how to play for the song, not to call attention to themselves. The arrangements, production and mixing all stand out, too. A fine effort by all involved, including the folks who financed it through a Kickstarter campaign.
Some Dark Holler: Some Dark Holler EP
(This Is American Music, 2011)
The music of Some Dark Holler sounds like it came out of … well, you know. It’s true Southern Gothic, not some hip put-on. Chris Porter, who writes the songs and plays guitar, sings lead on these songs about modern lives of despair, desperation and the thin remnants of hope. He’s backed on fiddle and harmonies by Helen Gassnheimer, whose crystaline voice is a perfect foil for his gritty drawl. The sound is filled out by acoustic bass and drums and occasional banjo and Dobro, but the focus here is on mood and lyric.
“Purple Hearts” is a simple minor-key shuffle that tells an all-too-common tale in many small towns in the 21st century: young men damaged by war who come home and damage each other. “Pills and Kerosene” is the equally downcast ballad of a woman who cooks meth because she sees no other options. Each rendition of the chorus gets increasingly harrowing as her house and the neighborhood and then the town burn down, whether literally or metaphorically: “Pills and kerosene, a little time and a little heat, puts bread on the table and bread in the bank, there’s no god to damn, no god to thank…”
“Sweet Red Wine” is a tale of love long denied or just plain lost, backed by double-stopped fiddle and primitive stomping percussion. “Nothing haunts a man like time / pass me down that sweet red wine,” Porter rasps. There’s a death ballad, “Abigail,” and a bitter love song in the shape of a country shuffle that quotes from “Wayfaring Stranger” (“Cry For Me”) and “Cottonmouth,” a haunting ballad in first person of a young man who’s seen his granddaddy and his daddy die violent deaths and fears that “the devil’s got his eyes on me.”
You can download this EP, and some other equally fine recordings, from the website of This Is American Music.
Snake Wagon: Have Fun With Snake Wagon
(BandCamp, 2011)
Snake Wagon appears to be a collaboration between members of The Low Anthem and The Barr Brothers, a couple of Rhode Island-based indie bands. Its Facebook page and BandCamp site feature a wildly fabricated biography, the band members all share names with our founding fathers and mothers, etc., etc. The band’s low-fi goof of an album draws on several threads running through Americana music, including the Grateful Dead, Dylan and The Band’s Basement Tapes, the bubba-rock of Cracker and the pop-music satires of Zappa.
The songs all are shambling, low-key affairs, recorded as though in a barn or circus tent. They cover lots of stylstic bases, from the honky-tonk clatter of the opener “Give It All Away” to talking blues like “Yes Ma’am, Yes Ma’am” and “You Had To Be There Talking Blues” to the folksy strum of “The Law of Inevitability” and the deadpan jail ballad “Oh, Lolita.” There’s also some electric blues (“Those Lesbian Blues”), circus music (the calliope-filled sing-song waltz “[Don't You Really Mean To Say You] Love Me So”), New Orleans funk (“Dirty Crustacean”) and electric folk-rock (“Honey You Can Keep The Money”). Oh, and a good-hearted satire of New England folkies, “Every Boston Singer,” which features a repeating Jack Johnson-style electric guitar riff.
It’s fun and light and you can get it free at the Snake Wagon BandCamp site.
Alice Wallace: Sweet Madness
(self-released, 2011)
Alice Wallace is a young country-folk singer-songwriter from Florida now based in Southern California. Her debut album contains nine tracks in a variety of styles that draw on country, blues, pop and soul. They’re mostly straight-forward songs with basic instrumentation, which complements her surprisingly muscular, sweet and warm vocals. One of the high points is the final track, a recorded-live-in-the-studio solo affair called “A Little Yodel,” in which she recounts the story of “teaching myself how to yodel one summer,” as she says in the spoken intro.
The breath control demonstrated in the yodel song is evident elsewhere, particularly the chorus of the lead track, “Always,” a country shuffle with some electric guitar fills from Tom Bremer. There’s some sweet organ backing Wallace on the bluesy country-soul song “Tell Me Something,” too. In addition to the swinging shuffle of “Baby I Do” and jaunty folk-pop of “Strange Town,” Wallace holds her own on some slower ballads including the pensive title track and the bluesy waltz “Your Score.”
Wallace’s Kickstarter-financed debut shows lots of promise: above-average songwriting, strong vocal chops, good acoustic guitar skills and uncluttered arrangements. She’s been out on the road this winter gaining some performance experience, too. Keep an eye on her. You can learn more and purchase her CD at her website.
Various: I Love – Tom T. Hall’s Songs of Fox Hollow
(Red Beet, 2011)
I’m not all that keen on children’s records. I pretty much stopped listening to them in second grade when The Beatles came along. And I pretty much tried to raise my own kids on appropriate grown-up music, too. But there are children’s records of all kinds, and Tom T. Hall’s Songs of Fox Hollow is one of the good kind. This 2011 homage to it helmed by musicians, writers and all-around good guys Peter Cooper and Eric Brace does the original proud, in the same way – it doesn’t talk down to its audience. It was a 2011 Grammy nominee, and you can read about Brace’s thoughts on that subject in a column he did for The Washington Post.
Brace and Cooper have, as usual, assembled a crack crew of some of Nashville’s and country music’s best to bring these songs to life. In addition to Lloyd Green on pedal steel, Jen Gunderman on keys, Mike Bub on bass and Mark Horn on drums, the great Duane Eddy plays guitar on a couple of tracks. Patty Griffin opens the album with the title song, and it’s immediately apparent that these songs are being approached as pure country music, not children’s music per se. She sings harmony with Buddy Miller on “Sneaky Snake,” which also features some great duetting between Duane Eddy and Lloyd Green. Cooper sings lead on “Everybody Loves To Hear A Bird Sing” with its subtle environmental message. Jim Lauderdale’s “I Like To Feel Pretty Inside” is a jaunty bluegrassy shuffle, and Green and Gunderman add Southwestern flare to “The Mysterious Fox Of Fox Hollow” by Brace and his band Last Train Home. In one nice touch of many, they have Tommy Cash (Johnny’s younger brother) sing “Ole Lonesome George” about a basset hound that upstages Johnny himself.
There’s much more, including a cameo by Tom T. himself on the final track, “I Made A Friend Of A Flower Today,” sung with typical restraint and dignity by Fayssoux Starling McLean. The whole album is filled with songs that are fun but not silly, childlike but not childish. And most of all, they’re just good songs, well played. Even without an actual Grammy, it’s a winner in my book. You can learn more about it here.
Comments