If you’re familiar with Glasgow’s local music scene then chances are that the name Steve Grozier is not new to you. Since his return to the city last year after a spell abroad he’s been a regular at pub and club gigs while also appearing at various festivals and at prestige venues such as King Tuts and Edinburgh’s Voodoo Rooms. Normally a solo act and described by one reviewer as a player of “drifting, haunting, charming, bluesy folk” Grozier has opted for a band approach for this four song debut EP and is ably supported here by up and coming Glasgow Americana band Anton & The Colts who drape his songs in a warm Laurel Canyon vibe.
Drink Before Dawn opens the EP, lush strummed guitars driving the beat as Grozier’s effortless vocals evoke carefree times driving through the night with friends and eking it out at the last road stop. With guitarist Roscoe Wilson turning out some fine acoustic lead lines the song is more Gene Clark than the Eagles, a fine melancholia offsetting the freewheeling lifestyle Grozier is recalling. Porcelain Hearts is chunkier, a wee bit of Stray Gators in the syrupy rhythm here, the band on top form actually with the guitar curling excellently around swampy byways as Grozier almost croons a delicate love song couched in mystery.
Take My Leave is raw in comparison to its predecessors, the acoustic guitar big and bold, closely miked, Grozier’s voice velvet in comparison as he revisits streets and a home that knows his name, passing broken down arcades searching for memories. Ringing Of The Bells returns to the carefree strum of the opening song, the band freewheeling in fine style with a neat country rock lope that is ramshackle in the best Big Pink sense.
Overall the EP is a fine introduction to Grozier’s world, a world that benefits from the very fine accoutrements of The Colts particularly on Porcelain Hearts. A recent live session on Pulse Radio saw him play several of the songs solo and he’s more than able to carry them off armed just with his guitar, the band here are the icing on the cake. The good news is that there will be a launch party for the EP at Glasgow’s Hug and Pint on September 1st with The Colts playing with the man, the ticket price including a copy of the EP. Should be a fine night.
Back in 2014 Blabber’n’Smoke enthused about Cahalen Morrison‘s offshoot album under the guise of Country Hammer . Morrison is best known as one half of Morrison & West, prime purveyors of bare boned roots music but Country Hammer saw him head into honky tonk dance music, joyous and tear stained, rooted in Hank Williams with a touch of The Band, Morrison aided and abetted by chums Jim Miller and Ethan Lawton. Now Country Hammer has evolved into Western Century, essentially the same trio but with a more democratic spread across the writing and with Miller and Lawton more in evidence on their respective lead vocals. Morrison, Miller and Lawton deliver here a tremendous album that is cooked in a delicious stew brewed from Waylon Jennings grit filled barnstormers, tear filled ballads and some of that old cosmic cowboy music from the seventies with several of the songs reminding us of The New Riders Of The Purple Sage and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.
The trio swap various guitars and share drum duties with bass supplied by Dan Lowinger along with stellar pedal steel throughout from Rusty Blake and fiddle from Rosie Newton on nine of the twelve songs. A versatile bunch they can tackle with ease outlaw honky tonk on What Will They Say About Us Now, Big Pink romps like Knocking ‘Em Down, tear and beer stained ballads on Sadder Day or the gliding country rock of The Long Game. Newton’s fiddle and Blake’s pedal steel dart and dash over the steady beat with occasional twanged solos while the three vocalists add more variety to what is an already varied set. There’s a cornucopia of delights to be found here with repeated listening throwing up new favourites each time. A casual airing might find the light and breezy tones of Philosophers And Fools and In My Cups a balm on a summer day and Sadder Days just right for those who like to be reminded of George Jones’ like lachrymose broodings. Anyone hankering after The Band will love Rock Salt and The Long Game, the spirit of Levon Helm surely residing therein. Closer attention pays dividends however as lyrically all three writers excel, at times deconstructing or updating the familiar tropes of country music. Philosophers And Fools is a break up song that challenges Sturgill Simpson’s metaphysical leanings and is surely the first country song to mention Tinder. The truck driving intro to What Will They Say About Us Now leads into a song about a mid life crisis while the halting and slightly off kilter love song Off The Shelf is wonderfully sung by Lawton not to a woman but to his first hit of booze in the morning.
Weight Of The World is, quite simply, a delight. Country rock heaven for anyone into Gram or The Band or even The Dead back in their Workingman days along with more recent stalwarts such as Sturgill Simpson or Ryan Adams.
The Westies, a Chicago based outfit fronted by husband and wife Michael McDermott and Heather Horton are named after an Irish affiliated New York gang of the ’60s and 70’s whose home turf was Hell’s Kitchen. Their debut album, released last year was a powerful package of bruised and gritty urban tales which recalled the likes of Springsteen and Willie Niles. Six On The Out very much continues in this vein with McDermott saying, “I was focused on the story, a second instalment. What happens next to these characters?” What happens next is more tales of urban struggle, the outsider trying to fit in, damaged characters with traumatic pasts, physically and emotionally wounded, McDermott gives voice to them all with a grim authority that is partly drawn from his own back story.
As in a Peckinpah movie there is violence galore here but it’s delivered with panache, the blood and guts offered an artistic out, in this case the craftsmanship and, at times, the sheer beauty of the lyrics and music. For the most part there’s a muscular drive to the songs which vary from pained country styled ballads to blue collar rock, Horton’s fiddle as much to the fore as guest Will Kimbrough’s guitar. The opener If I Had A Gun is a fine scene setter, the protagonist just released from jail straight back into the scene’s that sent him there in the first place. A sinister piece with lashes of guitar over a slow beat as McDermott huskily narrates it’s dramatic and somewhat unnerving and he repeats this on several other songs on the album with the closing song Sirens a raw tale of childhood violence, drugs and jail and car wrecks, as dark as the darkest hardboiled American authors.
While the lyrical content is not much lighter the band offer up the Irish influenced The Gang’s All Here, head into Bruce territory on the driving Santa Fe and retell the tale of Billy The Kid on Henry McCarty (the Kid’s real name). Horton gets to sing lead on Like You Used To Do, a wonderful broken down country waltz, her voice so evocative as she sings about a relationship shattered by her man’s drinking, her voice echoed by a hurting guitar solo. Is it fair to ask that McDermott and Horton consider doing more of this as an album of hurt Heather Horton songs could be a winner.
In the meantime it’s McDermott who has released a solo album, Willow Springs. Apparently it’s his tenth effort after being signed to a major label back in the early nineties. His bio is refreshingly honest in that, alongside the initial hype of the times, he screwed up, succumbing to booze and drugs, eventually kind of limping along until he achieved sobriety. A couple of years clean now and with a wife and baby daughter egging him on he is on a roll with two albums from The Westies (along with his wife Heather Horton) under his belt and now this solo album. In fact many of the names on The Westies’ album reappear including Horton, Will Kimbrough and Lex Price and the difference between the albums is at times paper thin. McDermott still reminds one of Springsteen although in this case it’s the Springsteen who reminded folk of Dylan way back in the seventies. Lyrically the albums do differ, Willow Springs still contains its fair share of stories but they’re more opaque than the blood spattered city street tales of Six On The Out and one gets the sense that the romantic losers and redeemed rebels sung about here are McDermott’s way of making sense of his own journey.
While Getaway Car and Half Empty Kinda Guy press the pedal on the E Street highway a little too enthusiastically the opening title song points the finger at Dylan as McDermott fires out the alliterative lyrics with machine gun rapidity as he travels down his own desolation row. The venom at the beginning of the song is eventually supplanted by a sense of hope and the album follows suit almost with its closing songs portraying a man more comfortable in his own skin and able to manage his emotions. In between there is confusion on the brisk These Last few Days, a rebel without a cause on Getaway Car and on the haunting Soldiers Of The Same War casualties build up as folk try to run from their past.
They say before you can get up you have to hit bottom and on Butterfly McDermott paints a grim picture of addiction before seeing a light at the end of the tunnel on Half Empty Kind Of Guy and trepidatiously allowing himself to feel again on One Minus One. On the self mocking Folksinger McDermott is in control and able to poke some fun at the thought of him and Bono sitting on top of their millions and there’s a genuine sense of joy and relief in the sweet and soulful Let A Little Light In, a song that recalls Danny and The Champs country soul with its backing horn section. In the notes for the album McDermott says that in his turbulent years he also had to endure the death of his father and Shadow In The Window is an affectionate tribute to the man who raised him. Switching generations Willie Rain is a delightful ditty dedicated to his daughter (which opens with her saying “I love you daddy”) and it’s delivered with a jaunty country lope. McDermott closes the album with the grand sweep of What Dreams May Come, a powerful and emotive song of hope and dreams that again centres on his father but which also looks to the future. Sung and played with a dignified restraint the song avoids mawkishness and is a fine closing statement on what is a very fine album.
Joy indeed to have the third album from the oddly named and even odder sounding Canadian outfit Petunia & The Vipers as Blabber’n’Smoke was somewhat enamoured of the two previous releases which we reviewed here and here. Dead Bird On The Highway sees Petunia continuing to wander into the more esoteric byways of popular music while still retaining the core mixture of Western Swing, Blues and Rockabilly which are the foundations of his sound. Although there is yodelling to be found there are songs by Otis Blackwell, Ike Turner and a stunning version of Little Willie John’s I’m Shakin’ along with several numbers that have African roots. All in all a very eclectic mix but if you’ve been following Petunia’s career this should come as no surprise.
Petunia’s reedy vocals in themselves are a joy to listen to as he croons, scats and yodels with a zest that is at times exhausting while The Vipers can lay down a vampish beat, rock like hell and kick the gong around as easily as you switch car gears. At times they do this within the space of a song as on Gonna Put On My Suit where they switch from a bluesy opening into tom tom fuelled guitar blizzards and then tumble into a jazzy Slim and Slam interlude which is then interrupted by pedal steel coming down the tracks. On paper, this seems like a train wreck but it’s an exhilarating ride, the twists and turns coming so fast that by the end the listener is dizzy but satisfied.
The opening song, Blue Yodel Blues, a tremendous mash up of western swing and Jimmy Rogers doesn’t prepare the listener for what’s to come as it’s one of the most straightforward numbers here, straightforward that is for Petunia. As they proved when they played here back in 2013 The Vipers are a deadly force when it comes to delivering hi octane rock, rhythm and blues and they do so here on several occasions. Oh What A Wonderful Time, an Otis Blackwell number finds the band in a viperish mood, all Cotton Club and Cab Calloway swing as Petunia comes across all lascivious, My heart Cries Out For You skitters along like a mutant Buddy Holly number while Bloom, Bloom, Bloom is like Tav Falco with a nervous tic. Throughout the album Petunia takes on familiar styles and mutates them, Chained is a frantic dash that resembles a Merrie Melodies cartoon soundtrack that marries Eastern melodies and hard boiled gangster film noir grit and Put Yourself On The Market (AKA Why Don’t You Do Right or Weed Smoker’s Dream) out Waits Tom Waits with its junkyard jackhammer blues. We reach the outer limits on the surf guitar fuelled Asaw Fofor, a cover of a Ghanaian song from the sixties by Ignace de Souza which finds Petunia switching between English and Swahili over a tremendous groove and on the crowning achievement here, the spooky netherworld of Death Himself. Shimmers of guitar and a rain slicked noirish sheen glower over a slow beat that breathes menace, a shadow in the dark stalking the living. Petunia casts himself as a torch singer, lapsing into French in a danse macabre although he can’t help himself from comparing the man with the scythe to a lumberjack, the Canadian in him coming out I suppose. In any case it’s shivering in its cold beauty.
While it’s not your normal country folk rock blues fodder Dead Bird On The Highway is firmly rooted in supremely listenable roots music as it challenges and provokes the listener to delve and explore but best of all it’s huge fun.
Sometimes an album comes along that just packs a punch, a visceral jolt to the emotions. One such is Rockingham, the first solo outing from American Aquarium’s front man BJ Barham. A carousing alt country rock band American Aquarium gained plaudits for their last release Wolves as Barham, reported at one point as a heavy drinker, was by then sober and married, settling down as he approached his 30s. Apparently he had been mulling over doing some solo songs but it was back in November last year when, marooned in Holland in the panic following the Paris terrorist attacks, he began scribbling the songs that ended up on the album, songs that reach back to his formative years.
Barham grew up in Reidsville in Rockingham County, North Carolina, a tobacco town that prospered until the American Tobacco Company shut up shop in the mid nineties. On Rockingham he delivers eight songs which he describes as “fictional narrative in a very real place,” You might consider it to be a hardscrabble equivalent to Lake Woebegone, the latter’s small town whimsy replaced by fly on the wall reportage of hard times. He forsakes the alt country rock of his band for a stripped back approach that only on occasion approaches a full band sound. Instead, his dirt stained voice is backed by his acoustic guitar, accordion, banjo, Dobro and spare keyboards and percussion, his narratives akin to those of Kris Kristofferson or John Prine.
The album opens with the sly country picking of American Tobacco Company, an encapsulation of the dead end drudgery of the factory worker, his hopes and dreams crushed by the 9-5, a theme pursued on the following title song with plaintive banjo and harmonica to the fore. Madeline hits an emotional chord as the protagonist cradles his newborn daughter and lists his advice for her future years. The song itself is cradled in a fine, almost spiritual, collision of guitar picking, stately piano and muted organ swells as his homegrown wisdom conjures up nuggets such as “never trust a man who does hard drugs in his thirties.” This intimacy is reversed on Unfortunate Kind where Barham strips it all back to voice and guitar as he inhabits the persona of a bereaved man holding onto memories of his 39 years of marriage, his courtship, life together and a descent into illness and death.
O’Lover is one of the fuller arrangements here as Barham recounts the tale of a farmer driven to robbery while Road To Nowhere almost skips along, its jauntiness at odds with the romantic desertion sung about. Here Barham hits the heights on a song that bears true comparison with the best of the troubadours, Guy Clark included, as he delivers a perfectly formed marriage of words and music, a song that will dwell in your mind. Reidsville is a fine capture of small town living, teenage cars, early marriage and married doldrums all wound around wheezy accordion and slinky Dobro. The album ends with the cracked and dusty Water In The Well, a rural equivalent of the opening blue collar worker’s dilemma as a farmer contemplates suicide while seeking an answer from his bible for a way out of his woes. Again Barham delivers this with an emotional punch, his voice straining with desperation, devoid of hope as the music haltingly shadows his dilemma.
Time will tell as to whether Rockingham will be considered in the same vein as an album such as Guy Clark’s Old No. 1 but in the meantime it’s probably the best of its kind this year.
Dean Owens is a regular feature at Perth’s Southern Fried Festival where, in addition to hosting the late night Songwriter Sessions, he is a star attraction in his own right. Last year Owens and his band, The Whisky Hearts played a blinder of a show that drew heavily from his album Into The Sea, a finely crafted blend of Celtic Americana which received rave reviews across the board. This year Owens doffed his hat to one of his heroes, Hank Williams with a show that featured him in a trio setting, The Celtabilly Allstars along with guitar whizz Stuart Nesbit and his former Felsons’ band mate Kevin McGuire on double bass. As on a previous venture, his tribute to the man in black, Cashback, Owens and his compadres selected a bunch of Hank written and Hank related songs to perform along with a self penned number, Celebrate The Life that hymned Williams’ life and works.
Despite the tears and tragedy of Williams’ words and life this was a joyous show. Stuart Nisbet’s lap steel playing along with McGuire’s dextrous bass work giving a fine hillbilly feel to the proceedings while Nesbit was in fine vocal form on the Gospel song Calling You. They opened with the excellent country lope and swagger of Setting The Woods on Fire which contrasted with the beer fuelled melancholy of You Were On My Mind, the music still at a fair clip but the youthful exuberance of Setting The Woods on Fire replaced by bitter experience. The show continued to alternate the exuberant side of Williams with his darker side. Hey Good Looking saw Nisbet switch from lap steel to his Gibson for a raucous ramble which was followed by a stellar version of Why Don’t You Love Me while My Bucket’s Got A Hole In It was a light humoured delight.
Owens reminisced about his first encounter with Williams courtesy of a friend who owned a record shop back in the day who played him Ramblin’ Man, Owens’ version today quite excellent, his voice capturing Williams’ hi and lonesome vocal break on the line endings. He also recalled his attempt to write in Williams’ style when back in The Felsons on a song called Dave, a warning to a friend about a treacherous woman. There were fine deliveries of Lost Highway and Your Cheatin’ Heart, the melancholia seeping through, Nisbet’s lap steel a mournful wail, before Owens sang his song, Celebrate The Life, a number delivered in the style of I Saw The Light with the audience joining in on the chorus as Owens entreated us to remember the “hillbilly Shakespeare” with his “songs of love and heartache, liquor, beer and tears“. The show ended with Owens alone on stage to deliver a spellbinding I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, a reminder not just of William’s genius but also that Owens has matured into a masterful performer, his voice rich and emotive along with a whistling solo that was just superb.
Dean Owens has several other shows lined up over the coming weeks (see here) but currently there are only two further outings for this Celtabilly Allstars show. One is tonight at Glasgow’s Glad Cafe and then in Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall on Wednesday 24th August. Aside from being a tremendous show these will be the only opportunity to buy a limited edition CD that The Celtabilly Allstars have recorded of Hank’s songs, Settin’ The Woods on Fire (Songs I Learned From Hank) which features most of the songs from the show including Celebrate The Life. It’s a fine listen that enlivened our journey back from Perth.
You’ve probably heard of the house concert movement that’s been creeping up over the past few years, you may in fact have attended or hosted such an event. For Blabber’n’Smoke this was our first foray into such an event as we’d heard that Chuck Hawthorne, the Texan ex-marine was appearing at one not a million miles from our headquarters.
The concept is relatively simple. A host connects with an artist, arranges whatever deal needs to be arranged and then opens up their house to a bunch of strangers (and some friends presumably) who have the opportunity to hear and meet the aforesaid artist. Thereafter the details can vary. Is there a suggested donation as a cover charge? Do you bring your own beer? Where do all the chairs come from? Fortunately, there’s a wealth of information and advice to be had regarding all of this on various websites and Facebook pages and one such site is managed by Blabber’n’Smoke’s good friend Rob Ellen (it’s here ) and it was Rob who connected Mr. Hawthorne with last night’s host.
First off, it was comforting to see that you don’t need to have a mansion or some such in order to host a house concert. This one was in a top floor Glasgow tenement flat, the front room set up with three rows of assorted chairs and couches at either side. A simple wooden pallet allowed a podium for the artists. While some of the audience were already acquainted by the end of the night we were all on good talking terms, swapping emails etc after a couple of breaks which allowed a fine degree of mingling. I didn’t do a headcount but there were about 25 folk in attendance.
It’s all about the music of course and here the concept really proved its worth. First up was local singer Les Johnson (normally to be seen with his band Les Johnson and Me offering up some croonsome velvet country stylings) who, armed only with his guitar and striking baritone voice sang a set mostly taken from his album 15 Hands. With his easy wit and rapport with the audience (remember, those sitting at the front less than a couple of feet away) this was a delightful experience. Anyone remembering a tipsy relative giving it laldy in the parlour at New Year will recognise the intimacy that was on offer here, fortunately without the attendant embarrassment. Johnson’s dark humour in the song introductions was excellent as he sang what seemed to be a love song to a horse on 15 Hands. Requested to sing a Ronnie Lane song he gave us a finely understated version of The Poacher and there was also a powerful rendition of Dylan’s Senor (Tales of Yankee Power). Best of all however was the “urban country” melodrama of Dear Marvin where Johnson was accompanied on vocals by a member of the audience (Meghan, sorry didn’t get the surname) for what was a fine Glasgow version of George and Tammy.
With a short break to refresh drinks, dash down three flights for the smokers and queue for the loo it was time for Chuck Hawthorne to come on. By then he’d already swapped at least a handshake with all in attendance and was on first name terms with those in the front row and his set was perhaps the best mixture of song craft, performance and informality that I’ve seen. Hawthorne is formed from the same Texas dirt as Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. Tonight he was freewheelin’ with nods to both telling stories about his one encounter with Clark before his fine rendition of LA Freeway while TVZ’s No Deal was quite affecting. Hawthorne grew up in cowboy country and told his tales of working amidst the piss and shit of bovine herds before eventually signing up for the Marines reckoning that it might be safer and at least it was a steady wage. As the songs unfurled there were tales of his dad’s old tools, his mum’s erratic driving, his chance encounter with Ray Bonneville (who eventually produced his album) and finally a grim recounting of service in Iraq. As with Les Johnson, the frisson of hearing and seeing Hawthorne up close as he sang several songs from his album Silver Line was somewhat shivering. Away from the cover songs Hawthorne proves to be a gifted songwriter. He grabs blue-collar working songs by, well, the collar on The Gospel Hammer and Welding Son Of A Gun while Silver Line flowed wonderfully. Dusty ballads, hard hammering work songs, he works them all but the most poignant moment was on the incredibly moving Post 2 Gate, a song about a kid blown up by an IED in Iraq. Hawthorne was there, billeted in a Saddam Palace in the green zone, the kid familiar to the leathernecks as they drove in and out. Had a pin dropped at the end of this it would have startled all as there was an awesome silence. The balloon was burst as Hawthorne valiantly moved on to a cover of Tom Russell’s Navajo Rug but it was a powerful reminder that he’s lived a life and more.
Getting back to the house concert concept, after the show both Johnson and Hawthorne were happy to pose for pics, sell CDs and just hang about. Beers were quaffed and the fat was chewed. A tremendous night.
Last October Blabber’n’Smoke was intrigued to receive a bona fide album of Texan tunes that was recorded in France. The album, Long Way From Home was billed as recorded by Texas Martha & The House of Twang and some investigating (well, reading the liner notes) revealed that while Texas Martha AKA Martha Fields was indeed from the Lone Star State the House Of Twang were all Frenchmen who appeared to have been steeped in the whys and wherefores of Americana. Now Martha has her second album, Southern White Lies ready for release (we reviewed it here), again recorded with her expert Gallic pickers (Manu Bertrand -Dobro, banjo, mandolin, Serge Samyn -double bass, Olivier Leclerc -violin, Urbain Lambert – guitar and Denis Bielsa –drums). Southern White Lies reverses the urge to go West as Fields heads northeast to the Kentucky foothills of the Appalachians, her mother’s homeland. Martha’s playing all over Europe to tie in with the album release and she and her band are making their first Scottish appearance this weekend at Perth’s Southern Fried Festival. She took some time out of her busy schedule to talk to Blabber’n’Smoke about the new album. First off however we asked her how a Texan musician comes to be living and recording in Bordeaux, France.
I’ve been coming over to Europe and to France in particular for the past four years after I was invited to play some festivals. I have some friends who live around Bordeaux so I was invited to play here and I thought, “Wow, they like this kind of music over here” so I started to come over in the summer to escape the Texas heat and found that I really like the lifestyle. So just staying here and playing shows, I happened to meet some amazing players and eventually formed the band.
Your band are all French I believe.
They’re all French but they’ve been playing this kind of music since they were little bitty kids and they love it. They know more about the history and the trivia than I do. They live it and they are super players, they’ve played all over the world with some very well know French stars, Johnny Hallyday, Dick Rivers, stars for another generation but big names over here.
I’ve heard of Johnny Hallyday but not Dick Rivers.
Oh, he’s kind of like the French Elvis. He’s older now but he cut an album last year that I really like, he’s good.
Was Long way From Home your first album?
It’s my first solo album but I’ve played with other bands and in various collaborations back in the States. I’ve been writing songs since I was six or seven years old but I had another career. I was a professor in Texas, teaching but I was always playing my music, weekends and such. But now I’ve taken a hiatus from that to concentrate on the music for the meantime. I can always go back to that when I’m 80 or so. In the meanwhile I’m having a great time and it’s working really well.
Long Way From Home got some fabulous reviews
I was really pleased. We got a lot of radio play all over the place. I was very happy with the album, it was Texas boogie most of the way but as you know I love folk music, that Appalachian thing as well and in my live show I do both and people seem to appreciate that variety. I was really pleased with the way Long Way From Home turned out but for this one I really wanted to show that other folkier side. Some folk might prefer the honky tonk songs, some the folkier ones but I want to express both aspects, who knows, it might help me gain a new audience because of this slightly different approach but overall this is me.
Southern White Lies is quite different, the music’s acoustic, it draws from the Kentucky and Virginia Appalachian traditions with the cover art reflecting your memories of family playing on the front porch. Where did you get the inspiration for the songs you wrote for the album?
I usually always take it from real life, reflecting on things that have happened to my, my friends, my family, things that are happening politically. That’s how I’ve always dealt with things that I find joy in or sometimes pain, I set them to music.
There’s a thread going though the album, a sense of social justice. You see Southerners as being used and abused over the years, especially by politicians.
It’s happened to my family! Right now, there’s a lot of conflict going on, not just in the states, politically it’s a very difficult moment. I wrote two songs, American Hologram and Southern White Lies maybe 12 to 18 months ago but I didn’t realise things were going to get this challenging. I’ve got family on both sides of the political spectrum and it can get really difficult to talk about these things over the kitchen table. I don’t think that people realise that we are all fodder for all these games that politicians play but we’re living it. I try to stay positive and one of the ways that I’m able to address it is through my music. I wrote a line in the title song that says, “pandering politicians, we need more musicians”. We need artists to really address what’s happening. If you think back to the sixties, there were a lot more artists singing about issues but there’s less of that these days, maybe because of the way the industry is these days. We don’t have much of a voice now and I think that’s one of the reasons we’re in the mess we’re in.
The album isn’t all political. I redid my song about my aunt (Do As You Are Told) because when I wrote it I really had in mind more of a bluegrass feel although I suppose it is a political song in a way just because of her own life. But there are love songs, bluegrass, Gospel and there’s a good old drinking song.
The Janis Joplin cover (What Good Will Drinking Do You)?
Yes, you’ve got to have at least one drinking song. It’s life. We cry, we drink, we go to church, we do all these things so it’s really just a part of everyday life.
So are you bringing the whole band over to your appearances at Southern Fried?
Yes. The only one who’s not coming over is Oliver, the violin player. He’d already been booked for something else by the time we arranged to come over but the rest of us will be there. We are playing two shows, one on Friday evening and then late on the Saturday night. I’m really looking forward to it, it’s my first trip to Scotland and the festival line up looks amazing.
Thanks for taking the time to talk with us. I look forward to seeing you in Perth.
As Martha says, she is playing two shows at Southern Fried with the Friday show on the free outdoor stage, an incredible opportunity to see an artist who in a short time has leapt to the forefront of rootsy American music. You can check her show times here.
This was Mike + Ruthy’s second appearance in Glasgow this year, the first being a spirited and well received show at Celtic Connections back in January in the Old Fruitmarket. Tonight was a not to be missed opportunity to see them at closer quarters and they did not disappoint making few , if any, concessions to the intimate setting, a far cry from their appearance at Newcastle’s Summertyne Festival last Friday and their forthcoming shows at The Cambridge Folk Festival. A five-piece band with folk roots they can rock as well; at one point Mike Merenda almost apologised for a song being somewhat loud before going on to say “that’s because it is loud.”
This Glasgow show was one of four gigs squeezed in between the two festival appearances (there’s one to go on Wednesday 27th at The Birnam Arts Centre in Perthshire) and the band were obviously out to have some fun. They treated the audience to a two hour set plus encores, the core being their main show but allowing them an opportunity to drag out some old songs and to road test a couple of new ones. There was no horn section tonight (unless you count Merenda’s occasional harmonica) but the infectious, joyous and robust playing of the rhythm section (Jacob Silver, bass and Konrad Meissner, drums) along with Rob Stein, superlative on pedal steel, hummed and roared with the front pair (playing guitar, fiddle, banjo and banjo-uke) sparring and bantering and delivering some deadly songs.
They slipped into the set with the beguiling simplicity of Simple & Sober with Ruth Ungar in fine voice on a song that is rooted in American folk music as popularised by Pete Seeger. With some fine three part harmonies wafting the song along and a sweet liquid pedal steel solo this was a hypnotic opening but then they pumped up the volume for the rousing folk rock strains of Bright As You Can, Ungar transformed into a powerful belter while the band just rocked out. Almost as if they were setting out their stall they then launched into a magnificently slow lumbering rendition of sixties’ peacenik Len Chandler’s civil rights song, I’m Going To Get My Baby out of Jail before wafting into their rendition of an unfinished Woody Guthrie song, My New York City. With these four songs they had established their credentials, rooted in protest era folk of the fifties and sixties and fuelled with the bite of later folk rock acts, a true embodiment of the spirit that inhabits the Catskills and Woodstock to this day.
While Ruth Ungar was to the front for the opening songs Mike Merenda stood up for the excellent Word On The Street as Ungar skirled away on fiddle with Stein skirting around her bowing. Thereafter we were treated to a cornucopia of delights, delightful folky numbers such as Freckled Ocean and the ominous Cigarette, their fine and full bodied tribute to The Band on The Ghost Of Richard Manuel. The pulsating Golden Eye, a song that Ungar described back in January as “country disco” allowed the band to riff magnificently while there was some soulful wailing on the powerful Rock On Little Jane and Merenda’s banjo had a fine outing on The Farmer which was Appalachian in its rippling country flavours and hi lonesome harmonies. There were some new songs, one, from Ruth called Old Days another nod to Greenwich Village times and they closed the set with an invitation to the audience to sing along on the rousing On My Way Home, the pair duelling on their respective strings and the band all offered a short solo that was somewhat invigorating. Time up but space for an encore and here they really called in the audience for an affecting rendition of The Water Is Wide, the audience reciprocating in fine voice. Thereafter there was a rip snorting Cajun like instrumental, again with solos from all band members that just about raised the roof. A fantastic show from a very versatile band, loud, soft, folk, blues, country? All of these and more. They should slay Cambridge.
Martha Fields sprang to our attention last year under the guise of Texas Martha who, along with her band, The House Of Twang, released Long Way From Home, a terrific album of pedal steel driven twangy Texan honky tonk songs. Fields is indeed a Texan but she recorded the album in France with French musicians with only the very occasional lyric sung in French signalling that Ms. Fields was more likely to be sipping a Bordeaux rather than quaffing a bottle of Lone Star. While the album was chockfull of barrelhouse road songs Fields reined it in on a couple of songs, most notably on Do As You Are Told, a song which verged on Southern Gothic. Tellingly this song reappears on Southern White Lies, an album which finds Fields reaching out to another aspect of her heritage, her mother’s Appalachian roots which lie deep in Kentucky and West Virginia.
Still based in France and still with her hotshot French pickers Fields forsakes the twang-fuelled telecasters and barrelling pedal steel for an acoustic set of numbers, fiddle, banjo, mandolin and Dobro fuelling the numbers. She refers to memories of back porch picking on her regular visits to her mother’s kinfolk but the music here is more muscular with bluegrass, blues and country all imbued with a Southern defiance, a sense of social justice, some God fearin’ good sense and a love of a good time. Fields has a gutsy voice that allows her to cover Janis Joplin’s What Good Can Drinkin’ Do You with some aplomb as you reckon she might be able to match Pearl drink for drink. The traditional Lonesome Road Blues and Jimmy Rodgers’ California Blues allow Fields and band to show that they can still summon up the lure of the road unplugged with both songs ripping along finely, the solos as acute here as they were on the chrome plated Texas numbers of the previous albums.
The western dream of sun kissed bliss that’s invoked in California Blues, a bluesy hobo’s dream of escape to the coast reminds the listener of the hardscrabble times that have hit the poor denizens of the rural south time and time again. Fields allows for that other form of escape via The Good Lord on her cover of the spiritual What Are They Doing In Heaven but elsewhere she’s fired up at the way common folk are treated. Over the course of seven songs she covers emotions ranging from despair (on the opening Soul On The Move) to a burning sense of anger on the title song. Do As You Are Told, Fields’ song about her aunt, retold from the previous album still packs a punch as it’s relayed this time as a frontier song, all rolling guitars, snake like Dobro and skirling fiddle. The closing song, American Hologram is perhaps the crowning achievement here as Fields and the band adopt a slight Texicana lilt, a cantina like tune that belies the anger behind the words. Here Fields spits out her diatribe against shock jocks who paint her people as poor white trash and politicians who use them as cannon fodder in foreign wars.
Southern White Lies is a brave album. One that packs a social message or as we used to say, protest songs but it’s no mere finger pointing. Fields has the sense to deliver her powerful words clothed in an incredibly attractive suit of rootsy finger picking. She’s not immune to the lure of the heart as heard in the fine and lilting Where Do We Go Now but overall she manages to combine the anthems of Woody Guthrie and the Southern documentation of Bobbie Gentry.
Good news is that Martha Fields makes her Scottish debut this weekend at Perth’s Southern Fried Festival.
