Eric Ambel. Lakeside. At The Helm Records

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Glory be. An Eric Ambel album, only 12 years after the last one. To be fair Ambel (Roscoe to his friends) has been busy running his own bar in NY’s East Village (The Lakeside Lounge) while still producing a slew of artists for the past two decades. However his bar (and its famous jukebox) fell victim to rising rents and closed two years ago and it seems he’s had the time to come up with Lakeside and what a glorious rambling rock’n’roll creature it is.

A founding member of the Del-Lords and The Yayhoos,  Ambel has also been the guitar slinger for Steve Earle and Joan Jett and The Blackhearts while various incarnations of his own Roscoe’s Gang have come and gone. As noted above he’s an in demand producer with the likes of The Bottle Rockets, blue Mountain, The Backsliders, Nils Lofgren, Cheri Knight and Mojo Nixon all benefiting from his skills. Above all however is the fact that he’s a huge fan of music and Lakeside is a tribute of sorts to his lost and lamented bar with Ambel telling The Bedford and Bowery webzine, “I was working on the record before I even understand that the record really was about the Lakeside. It took me a while to understand that. It was influenced by stuff we had on the jukebox. Our jukebox was really great, and it was just our soundtrack.”

It must have been some jukebox as the album is a firecracker of ten songs that positively crackle and burn. There is a variety of sorts on the disc, a revved up version of Barrett Strong’s Money with Ambel aping Jerry Lee’s Star Club rendition over a stone killer riff and a sweetly distorted guitar rhapsody on the closing Cryin’ In My Sleep that goes all Santos and Johnny on us. Ambel nails his colours to the mast with Hey Mr. DJ where he decries the habit of employing cheap DJ’s to replace live music. It opens with a huge T Rex like guitar surge before forging on like lava destroying all in its path. With corkscrew guitar solos and pummelling bass and drums he sings, “Hey Mr. DJ play another song like the one you just played. Crank the drums, crank the bass, crank that shit all over the place”.

Ambel’s Roscoe’s Gang have oft been compared to Neil Young and it’s true that here he still abides by the Crazy Horse bible, that side of Young which sounds like a bar band about to fall over having had too much to drink (think here of Barstool Blues and Lookin’ For A Love, both on Zuma). So we get Have Mercy which is pumped up with razor sharp guitars and Don’t Make Me Break You Down with its slow burning groove and low rumbled guitar solos that meander throughout amidst crashes of cymbals. Buyback Blues is another delve into that honey slide narcoleptic twilight zone that Young once inhabited and, turned up loud, it’s shiveringly unnerving with Ambel’s desperate voice recalling the misery and mystery of Peter Green in his heyday.

There’s also the Sun studio kissed rockabilly pop of Here Come My Love (which would give Nick Lowe a run for his money) and the wide sweep of Let’s Play With Fire which toys with country rock. Massive Confusion is a Ramones like thrash which is a rush from start to end (1:54 minutes so it fits into the Ramones time limit) and there’s a brief pause for breath on the cover of Gillian Welch’s Look At Miss Ohio which is amped up but slowly delivered over a solid drum beat with squirreling guitars eventually rising to a crescendo before collapsing into a Hendrix Hey Joe riff at the end.

Overall Lakeside is ridiculously brilliant. It brims with evil guitars and attitude and should be on any self respecting listener’s list. Absolutely recommended.

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Karen Jonas. Country Songs. At The Helm Records

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I presume that there’s a gender imbalance in Americana Music, after all there is everywhere else. For every Lucinda Williams there are ten males who will hog the limelight but it seems that recently there has been a welcome upsurge in female artists who are making waves. Courtney Marie Andrews and Margo Price especially come to mind and on the evidence of her second album Karen Jonas should jump to the front of the queue. From Fredericksburg, Virginia, Jonas, like Price (and Sturgill Simpson) grabs a traditional country sound and drags it squealing and bleating into the present. She has the Bakersfield Sound with some honky tonk chops down to a tee while she’s also able to turn in a yearning ballad. She sounds great, sometimes sultry, sometimes sassy and her lyrics range from her thoughts on Dwight Yoakam’s tight fit jeans to a country rendition of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

The album opens on a highlight as the honky tonk strains of the title song sashay into ear sight with fiddle and twangtastic guitar to the fore as Jonas sings about her entree into the world of beery sad songs. It’s all down to her boyfriend leaving her apparently as she needed her heart good and broken before she could sing along. The dim fellow then gets compared to Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam with Yoakam singled out for wearing his jeans tighter than Jonas does. It’s a magnificent song, somewhat tongue in cheek but Jonas delivers it perfectly. The following Keep Your Hands To Yourself is a rip snorting warning to another dastardly guy with Jonas well in control of the situation as the song speeds along while Ophelia is a guitar fuelled Bakersfield filed romp which finds Jonas advising womenfolk not to let their double dealin’ men drive them crazy. There’s more country rumble on the The Fair Shake which twinkles with pedal steel and soulful organ over a doleful twang guitar before erupting into an angry outburst.

It’s not all vibrant country strutting. The Garden shimmers with graceful guitar, pedal steel and piano as Jonas recalls a long ago tryst, “I was 17, you were 21″ she sings amidst images redolent of a teenage romance idyll whilst she also harbours a thought that eventually she and her lover will be reunited in the titular garden. The one quibble here is that a squalling guitar solo bursts out midway through somewhat spoiling the mood, a rare misstep from Tim Bray who otherwise is spot on throughout the album. Wasting Time is a ballad with crossover appeal, just ripe for the plucking while Wandering Heart harks back to the likes of Patsy Cline as does the country torch of Why Don’t You Stay. There are echoes of another Country heroine on Whiskey and Dandelions where Jonas taps into Dolly Parton territory on a song about a woman who dreams about getting enough money to, “buy a little house where we both could live” but is actually content with her lot and her relationship singing, “Don’t buy me roses and bring me wine, I like cheap whiskey and dandelions”.  

Jonas closes the album with the sly and slightly louche tale of Yankee Doodle Went Home, her voice a smoky delight, the band in a late night soul jazz groove, a fine end to what is a great album.

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Jeff Crosby. Waking Days. At the Helm Records

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Anyone looking for a whiff of nostalgia for the good old California days need look no further than this album from Jeff Crosby, Idaho raised but inhabiting (at least in his mind) Laurel Canyon circa ’74. He looks the part, longhaired and denim clad on the sleeve, an extra awaiting his call to lie down beside the Eagles for the Desperado photo shoot. His sound is akin to a gruffer Jackson Browne, his voice has a handsome lived in element to it while the songs are snapshots of outsiders; strangers in a bar, folk killing time on the street corner, drifters on a two lane blacktop, all caught up in their memories of happier times.  Delivered with a nod to the stirrings of country rock when rock musicians such as The Dead were starting to sweeten their songs with pedal steel Crosby sails through the album with some finesse.

Aside from one out and out rocker, the ferocious snarl of What’s Normal Now which Crosby says is a homage to his liking for 90’s rock (Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr.?) and the title track’s Springsteen like blue collar rock imagination of the American Dream Crosby sticks to his 70’s template albeit he’s no copyist. Opening with the evocative City Girls he establishes his narrative gift as he describes a chance encounter in a bar with a girl who dreams of better days but who is condemned to endlessly repeat the scene, the song ending on a guitar solo that recalls the likes of Waddy Watchell.  This easy rolling rock’n’roll, reminiscent of artists across the spectrum from Warren Zevon to Fleetwood Mac, continues on The Homeless and The Dreamers with Crosby in particularly good form on the lyrical front here, the words a cry from a lost soul cast adrift from friends and family. The elegantly sculpted piano laden love song Emily is a road song of sorts with Crosby drawing on the topography of the West, the lovers separated by canyons and time, a theme revisited on the brash country rock of The Only One I Need, a song that is borne aloft by the pedal steel playing of Brian Whelan.

Whelan features heavily on several songs that are more contemplative. Carved In Sandstone, a song inspired by a feature built on Table Rock in Idaho, a 60-foot high cross on which teens carve their undying love. It’s perhaps the fulcrum of the album as Crosby again sings of a past lover and their memories but ends up admitting he’s down and lonesome in Tennessee. It’s a lovely careworn country lament, bittersweet but honeyed. Red White and Blue is another pedal steel crowned beauty, somewhat starker but again imbued with memories as is I Should Be Happy with Crosby again facing choices and looking back as he imagines his ex lover’s happy existence while he is stuck in a rut, his internal voice telling him he should be happy.

A fine listening experience, Waking Days is a fresh take on well-worn themes and a welcome calling card for those new to Crosby’s music. This release is a second time around for the album which was originally released in 2015. This version has two bonus songs tacked on at the end, both older songs from Crosby which have been featured in the TV series Sons Of Anarchy. This Old Town is a fine blend of Springsteen and Dylan with harmonica to the fore while Oh Love, Oh Lord is a bang on capture of the funky corkscrewed guitar and keyboard sound of The Band.

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Two Cow Garage. Brand New Flag. At The Helm Records

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Based in Columbus, Ohio, Two Cow Garage are commonly referred to as one of the hardest working bands in the States. Certainly their name crops up repeatedly on several lists Blabber’n’Smoke subscribes to and they have a fiercely devoted following over there; when their tour bus broke down a few years ago an unsolicited fan based fundraiser quickly had them back on the road again. Despite this they remain somewhat under the popular radar especially on this side of the pond, a shame really as they are one of the best proponents of that mash up of country, punk and melodic rock that was born from the No Depression movement of the nineties. In addition they are firmly on the side of the righteous. That is they sing about the human condition, injustice, the daily struggle against the powerful and it’s ironic that Brand New Flag is unleashed just as Americans (and others) shift uneasily awaiting the new order that’s just been given the keys to The White House.

Brand New Flag is a raw album. It blasts from the speakers for most of the time. Churning melodies and amped up guitars hammer through many of the songs at times with the urgency of a Springsteen fist clencher, the clincher being Continental Distance which even has a Roy Bittan like piano break. This Little Light is a noirish account of a mugging and not a million miles away from Drive By Truckers territory while History Now could become an anthem for the Occupy movement as could the title song where they rail against the establishment singing, “I don’t believe in anything”. In addition they plant their feet firmly on the side of diversity with the life line described in the words of Let The Boys Be Girls, a defiant and proud refutation of “fitting in” as they dismiss God, schooling and military service with the defiant cry of, “we don’t need old white rich men to tell us who we can kiss goodnight”.

It’s all stirring stuff but they do let off on the throttle on a few songs. The opening song Movies is a dry as dirt “alt-country” stumble with all four band members singing about their childhood dreams while A Lullaby Of Sorts is a marvellous dissection of teenage neurosis with the narrator alarmed by a gun bearing customer at a roadside stop and pondering on the obscenity of wearing an $800 leather jacket. There’s fear and loathing on the dirge like guitar squall of I Promise which is like an internal dialogue fuelled by self doubt and harried by schizophrenic like other voices. The tune itself eventually collapses into mayhem, a deranged horn section recalling the free form jazz of Albert Ayler.

An album then that is and is not easy to listen to. It’s invigorating. An alternative state of the nation address that seeks ways to survive against the oncoming tsunami of small mindedness.

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Austin Lucas and The Dreaming Spires. Broadcast, Glasgow 18th October

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On paper, it seems an odd match. Indiana based outlaw country and California inspired jangled rock, Austin Lucas, “the tattooed George Jones,” backed by the 12 string fabulations of Oxford’s The Dreaming Spires. Sure, they share a record label in common but this could be something like Willie Nelson backed by Big Star which, when you think about it actually doesn’t seem like a bad idea so maybe the folks at At The Helm Records were “thinking out of the box” when they dreamed this one up. It helps of course that Lucas’s latest album has several songs that have a silvery sheen to them, a cross between Sturgill Simpson’s metaphysical moments and Gene Clark’s cosmic wanderings and a sound which The Spires were well equipped to provide in the live setting along with the tougher Bakersfield type songs.

Akin to the old “package” tours, we got two acts for the price of one tonight with The Dreaming Spires playing a set before backing Lucas. From the off there was a powerful thump in the rhythm section to back Robin Bennett’s jangled Rickenbacker on Everything All The Time, a glorious swatch of Paisley Underground/Overground rock (and not a womble in sight). The cowbell intro to Strange Glue hinted at a Stones type raunch but instead we were led into a slightly surrealistic wordy perambulation backed by a fuzzy Big Star like Memphis soul sound mashed up with the percussive drive of Cornershop. There was a sense of the baroque Gene Clark in the keening Road Less Travelled, a mild venture into psychedelia on Strength Of Strings (dedicated to Dylan’s Nobel prize) which slowly built up into a crescendo before they crashed into Harbuton Mead which thrashed around with an energy that recalled the halcyon days of The Long Ryders. House Of Elsinore was a throwback to long lost days of hippie minstrels channelling ye olde folke songs with electric 12 strings supplanting lutes as Shakespeare and Bach like riffs floated from the stage before ending with a sly nod to The Who’s psychedelic masterpiece, I Can See For Miles.

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Far away from being a whimsical recreation of jingle jangle times The Spires thrummed and throbbed with keyboard swells and Eastern accents from Tom Collison while Jamie Dawson powered away on drums along with Joe Bennett’s supple and melodic bass playing. Their climatic Dusty In Memphis was a fine salute to the power of rock and soul while Searching For Supertruth was a blizzard of strings and things.

After a short break, Austin Lucas took to the stage for a feisty couple of solo numbers starting with a powerful rendition of Go West. With gutsy vocals and a dramatic habit of snapping his guitar strings he immediately grabbed our attention. Somebody Loves You was a ferocious example of high mountain folk allied to a punk like snarl with his guitar playing reminiscent of Michael Chapman’s fluid fingertips. The band then came on, Telecaster in place for a muscular Ain’t We Free and a rousing Kristie Rae with The Spires locking into Lucas’s hard-boiled country sound, their harmonies opening the song, but it was back to the Rickenbacker chimes for Thunder Rail, a welcome reminder that Lucas can write soaring pop tinged anthems. Unbroken Hearts, the opening song from the latest album, Between The Moon and The Midwest made the case for the evening’s pairing, the band capturing excellently the glossy sheen of the recorded version and adding a soulful groove with some fine organ playing.  Likewise Wrong Side Of The Dream and Alone In Memphis hit a fine and soulful country groove but there was a step into a deeper country mode when lap steel was added for the keening country lament Pray For Rain. Here Lucas showed why he has been compared with George Jones, the sadness of the song at one with Lucas’s recent loss of his dog Sally, an event which had soured his arrival in Europe. Despite this Lucas was in fine form jesting with the audience and the band.

All too soon we were near the end of the night with the band departing leaving Lucas asking the audience what he should play next. Amid a plethora of requests the overwhelming winner was Shoulders, so, perched on the edge of the stage, Lucas tentatively began this moving song off mic, slowly building up into a spellbinding rendition with some of the crowd singing along. For the last song the band returned for a blistering Call The Doctor, a vibrant slash of spangled joyous rock’n’roll and a perfect end to a perfect night.

 

Austin Lucas On Why Sad Songs Are Here To Stay

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For those in the know Between The Moon and The Midwest by Austin Lucas is one of the finest albums released this year. It’s an album that tugs in two directions. There are chunks of tough country music and then there’s a shimmering, almost psychedelic sheen to several of the songs. Sound familiar? Well when the album was released back in February, several reviewers compared it to Sturgill Simpson’s Metamodern Sounds In Country Music, in particular with the song Turtles All The Way Down. Good company for sure but in the end it’s a shorthand way of saying that both artists are at the forefront of reclaiming country music from the plethora of truck’n’beer’n’broads crap that’s been masquerading as country over the past few years.

Based in Indiana Lucas had a punk rock background before edging into his country sound on albums such as Somebody Loves You and A New Home In The Old World. His 2013 album Stay Reckless was considered by many to be his best but it coincided with a collision of personal and business problems that almost derailed him. Amidst a failing marriage and bouts of anxiety and depression his record label dropped him saying they didn’t hear any singles on the album. Cast adrift Lucas could have sank but instead he’s back, leaner and fitter and with a new label who believe in him and in the record. Between The Moon and The Midwest, recorded with Joey Kneiser from Glossary and featuring appearances from John Moreland, Lydia Loveless and Cory Branan is a tremendous slice of modern country and Lucas is touring the UK over the next few weeks promoting the album. An opportunity then for Blabber’n’Smoke to talk to the man about the album and its torturous conception. First of all we asked him about those comparisons to Sturgill Simpson.

I think there are several comparisons that can be made considering that we’re both legitimate country artists who are trying to push the boundaries of what the genre can be. Although it may be worth mentioning that his releasing Metamodern Sounds very nearly derailed the making of Between The Moon and The Midwest. I got pretty worried when I first heard Turtles All The Way Down reckoning that he’d already done the thing that I was in the middle of working on. However, in the end I decided to allow it to hearten me. Firstly, it showed that there was interest in this style of music. Secondly, his wasn’t a concept album. Nor was it psychedelic all the way through. Merely one song and a couple of small hints at psychedelia scattered throughout. Therefore, I felt I was still innovating the genre in a way that he hadn’t exactly done with his album. 

While people have honed in on the psychedelic aspect of the album at heart there’s a lot of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings in the album. Are they big influences on you?

Of course they are. In my mind, they are two of the greatest and most innovative artists from that period in country music or any other genre. These are two guys who pushed more boundaries than anyone else and who did things their own way. In many ways, they’re role models for me and who and what I want to be and how I want to do things.

Some of the characters reappear throughout the album, is it a concept album, were you trying to tell a story?

Yeah, I actually came up with the concept for the album under the influence of a very special brownie, in the desert while on tour with Willie Nelson in 2011. It’s a love story about 3 best friends and how they miscommunicate, hurt each other and eventually ruin each other’s lives.

You open the album with Unbroken Hearts singing, ““I’ve been told to walk away nearly every time I make an album. I hear there’s no good men left, everyone in Nashville’s deaf, sad songs are a thing of the past.” I read that actually happened to you when you took the album to your previous label. The album’s been out for about eight month’s now so are there people out there wanting to hear “sad songs?”

There are absolutely people who want to hear sad songs and I am glad to say that I think there will always be people of quality who are interested in real songs. Truthfully though, since we’re on the subject, the song isn’t an indictment of the world at large, or even music row. It’s simply something that I wrote because I find the large scale music industry overall to be sort of unnecessary. There are many artists who court mainstream success but I’m not one of them. I exist in a world where that’s never been a desire or even an option. I’ve always existed on the fringes of the music world. Even within the scenes that I play in I’ve generally been an outsider. As a result I’m no stranger to the fact that, there has always been and always will be a place for independent artists, people who make extensive bodies of work for nothing more than the need to do so. My records or career may not ever have big money behind them. But quality music always finds fans and since I’m not interested in being a pop star music row is something that exists outside of my career equation. To be direct in a way that I haven’t been before, the words to that song in particular were only meant to shine a small amount of light on exactly that. The idea that these traditions of great song writing and storytelling would die after all these years is ludicrous. I think most of us know that, at least my friends and I know that. So I wrote it as a tongue in cheek battle cry of sorts. Nothing more, nothing less. 

You’re on a new record label, Last Chance, who have a deal with At The Helm in the UK. Are you able to say anything about them in terms of releasing albums that some major labels don’t see as hit material. After all, there is something of a resurgence in a more traditional country and songwriter form at present.

There is no question that they release a lot of stuff which would not be considered to be viable from a commercial standpoint. Certainly they are benefactors of the arts and in that way, I’m very proud to be a part of their team. 

The album and its predecessor Stay Reckless were recorded when you were going through a rocky patch, your marriage ending and such. I hope it’s not glib of me to ask if you subscribe to the notion that “break up” albums bring out the best in an artist?

I have no idea. I think that turmoil is well documented as being extremely fertile artistic soil though I’d rather not hypothesize on whether one must be in an aggravated or depressed state of being in order to make great art. To me, I think it’s simply a matter of staying hungry and being interested in getting better at your craft that should propel one to ever greater musical endeavours. 

You’re touring here with The Dreaming Spires who will be your backing band as well as playing their own support slot. It’s an interesting prospect and I was wondering what your thoughts are on what they’ll add to your sound.

I met them last year in the States during Americana fest through our shared UK label At The Helm. We got along very well and I quickly grew to respect them musically as well as personally. I have no question that they’ll have an effect on my sound and that’s exciting to me. The beauty of playing with new and different people is that freshness that you can get on old songs. Every new set of ears hears things in a different way and therefore, you can quickly find yourself in new musical territory. I’m excited to explore what those talented guys are going to show me about of my own songs. 

Before we go can you tell us anything about any future plans?

Just gotta get back into the studio and work on another album. Hopefully that will happen in the next half a year or so. 

Well, thanks and the best of luck with the tour. austinlucas_euro2016-800x565

Austin Lucas with The Dreaming Spires tour the UK and Ireland starting in Oxford on the 15th October with a Glasgow date at Broadcast on the 18th October. All dates are here.

Tim Easton. American Fork. At The Helm Records.

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Sadly Blabber’n’Smoke is not familiar with Tim Easton’s previous output so we weren’t sure what to expect from this release. The title apparently is a nod to Easton’s wish to “prod a fork in the somewhat predictable Americana format,” whether he succeeds is essentially down to the listener but over the eight songs here he certainly offers a tasty selection of various dishes. What became clear from our research prior to writing this review is that Easton has a wealth of experience behind him. Aside from an impressive back catalogue on various labels he spent seven years way back in the nineties busking around Europe, taking advantage of the fall of the USSR to visit countries which were no longer blocked by the iron curtain. He recently completed a project to play 100 songs in 100 days, the fruits of which can be found on YouTube and he’s an entertaining (and engaging writer) with his blog well worth reading while he his account of watching the Rolling Stones’ gig in Cuba this year is excellent, his experience of present day Cuba given more space than the concert. All told he seems like a real nice guy.

Happily, American Fork does not dispel this notion. While Easton easily inhabits several skins here, the opening song Right Before Your Eyes a slinky rock’n’soul gumbo with Little Feat roots that eases one into the album, he lays out a manifesto of sorts on the excellent follow up, Killing Time. A cool country styled call to arms with Easton proclaiming, “I say Rock & Roll can still change the world, so don’t let your life be wasted on you. Don’t hang there like a broken door. Find out what you’re living for. There has to be something more than just killing time,” the song paves the way for what is to follow as he asks is there more to life than “Just to get up and go to work and eat your American Pie with your American Fork?” It’s a wonderful song, Easton vocally reminiscent of Nick Lowe while the female harmonies summon up Leonard Cohen’s oeuvre while the guitars are as creamy as a Nashville cat.

Having set out his manifesto Easton gleefully swings into blues territory on Elmore James, a rousing salute to old-fashioned “fun and games songs” and their seductive effect before Gatekeeper’s sinister flick knife slide guitar glissandos hover into view. Burning Star is a burnished night time revelry beautifully played and arranged with Easton’s voice acrobatic and intense. The bouncy power pop of Alaskan Bars Part 1 again recalls Nick Lowe when he was hefting bass with Cooder and Hiatt in the ill-fated Little Village although it’s more akin with that trio’s work on Hiatt’s Bring The Family album. Easton tones it down for the remaining songs. Now Vs. Now a slowly swelling capture of memories, dreams and wishes, the organ washes offering the song a Band like majesty while the closing On My Way is a pared back offering to his daughter, its gentle shuffle replete with keening pedal steel.

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BJ Barham. Rockingham. At The Helm Records

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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.

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Massy Ferguson. Run It Right Into The Wall. At The Helm Records

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Back in May of 2014 Blabber’n’Smoke reviewed Seattle band Massy Ferguson‘s album  Victory and Ruins  giving it a big thumbs up while noting elements of  The Drive By Truckers, Son Volt, The Jayhawks and Bottle Rockets in the mix. We said it was a great album to have on you when someone asked you what American roots rock sounded like and having revisited it this week we stand by that.  Two years later and here’s the follow up, Run It Right into The Wall. It’s no huge departure from their hard driving blue collar rock template but it does find the band slimmed down to a trio (Ethan Anderson, bass & vocals, Adam Monda, guitar and Dave Goedde on drums) following the departure of keyboard player Tony Mann. In addition, there’s none of the pedal steel that graced several of the songs on Victory and Ruins, instead there’s an emphasis on the guitars and a big boost for the drum sound. They haven’t, thank God, turned into a blunderbuss power trio; there’s still plenty of light and shade here. Instead they’ve set their sights on classic guitar bands of the 80’s, REM, The Replacements and such for this set of songs all written by Anderson. In addition, there’s a healthy dose of slightly older classic American rock informing the set.

There’s certainly an REM like jangle to the opening Gallipoli while Anderson’s vocals aren’t a million miles removed from early Jay Farrar here. It’s a ferocious scramble of guitars and driving percussion with a brief and inventive spiralling guitar break midway through. The following Santa Fe then recalls their previous work opening as if Crazy Horse were about to take off before settling into a hard bitten and hard driving road tale which takes the band into Drive By Truckers territory with Monda’s guitar squalling away. While comparisons might abound as the songs unfold it’s important to say that the band in the main transcend their influences. Perhaps the best example here is on Firewater which ripples with translucent guitars giving it a Byrds like feel as it flows along, Anderson’s vocal gruff yet melodic as he sings of a loser whose only friend is the bottle.

The band continue to walk along the ragged highway of American music with the Southern rock  strut of For A While and there’s a Creedence Clearwater guitar vibe on the steady rolling Dogbone where the band stretch out allowing Monda space to set off some guitar fireworks.  Away From The Devil is another memorable match of classic hardscrabble living lyrics and stone cold American rootsy rock drive, the rhythm section solid as a levy while guitars squirrel and swarm. Anderson comes into his own with the introduction to Front Page News, his voice stained with emotion and hurt before the band swoop in and he lets loose over a powerful E Street type melodrama with an organ added for extra heft.

Heading for the end zone there’s a ferocious run through on Special Meds with Anderson ranting about pills and sanity before the sonically adventurous Into The Wall. Again Anderson is impressive on vocals as a scrubbed guitar and synth drums gently propel his words which portray a character beaten into submission by everyday obstacles and at the end of his tether. As the tension builds the band weigh in with crashing guitar but a mandolin also appears tethering the song and avoiding bombast. They close with the impressive Into The Sun, a pulverising drum beat and furiously scrubbed guitars opening and Anderson’s voice soaring on the choruses before the song ends in a welter of sound.

 

While it’s not as immediate as its predecessor Run It Right into The Wall is a solid slice of gritty roots rock music which deserves a listen. The band have a fine live reputation and if you’re down south you can check this out as they’re currently playing several dates in England including a slot at next week’s Maverick Festival on the Saturday. There’s an official album launch in London at Zigfrid Von Underbelly at Hoxton Square on Thursday 30th June with fellow At The Helm artists Daniel Meade, Society and Stevie Ray Latham also appearing, a line up well worth catching and at a price you won’t believe (£6 if you ask.  Other dates here.

Band website

At the Helm Records

http://massyfergusonband.com/track/1016227/firewater?autostart=true

 

Daniel Meade and The Flying Mules. Let Me Off At The Bottom album release show. The Rum Shack, Glasgow, Saturday 29th May.

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Lady Luck’s been smiling on Glaswegian Daniel Meade, either that or several years of hard graft is paying off as his song writing skills and musicianship are making waves well beyond his hometown. Following rave reviews for his independently released and Nashville recorded album, Keep Right Away, at the beginning of 2015 and support slots with artists such as Sturgill Simpson, Pokey LaFarge, Diana Jones and Old Crow Medicine Show Meade was signed to the well respected UK label At The Helm Records (joining an illustrious roster that includes Brent Best, John Moreland, Austin Lucas and Good Luck Mountain) earlier this year. The first fruit of this union, Let Me Off At The Bottom was released last week with some very positive press reviews in the run up to the day and the weekend saw Meade and his band The Flying Mules launch the album in fine style in Glasgow’s South Side.

Let Me Off At The Bottom is Meade’s third official release and the first to feature the band. Recorded in Glasgow (with mixing done by Morgan Jahnig in Tennessee) it’s a fine capture of the raucous hillbilly rock’n’roll and honky tonk country that Meade and The Mules (Lloyd Reid – guitar, Mark Ferrie – double bass, Thomas Sutherland – drums) excel in. Meade’s songs drink from the well of Hank Williams and Jerry Lee Lewis (among others) and The Mules (who have notched up several hundred gigs over the past two years) are a well oiled music machine (not in the sense of well drunk). Their recent stint at The Kilkenny Roots festival in Ireland (five gigs in four days) is a contender for the festival highlight.

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Anyway, a capacity crowd turned up for the album launch. A good number were aware of the band but the audience was swelled by the show’s inclusion in Glasgow’s South Side Fringe Festival. This allowed the opportunity to see several folk, who before the band came on ask what sort of music they played,  pretty soon get up and join the party. And a party is what is was, the band in great form, the music infectious and impossible not to sit still for. There’s a great deal of nuance in Meade’s songs but live it’s much more primal as they cram sixty years of folk, blues, country and rock’n’roll into the set. With a batch of songs from the new album and some favourites from his back catalogue Mead and the band certainly ripped the joint.

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The band ripped into the opening trio of songs, Back To Hell, Not My Heart Again and There’s a Headstone Where Her Heart Used To Be creating an instant buzz before Meade sang the plaintive He Should Have Been Mine, a switch in mood but one which had the audience captivated. As far as I recall this was the only ballad of the night, the remainder being full blown rockabilly rock although the occasional country lope hove into view. With no  piano to hand Meade stuck to guitar for the night, showing some fine picking skills on Lock Up Your Daughters, a song which also included fine breaks from guitarist Lloyd Reid and bassist Mark Ferrie. Please Louise is a definite crowd pleaser, the bawdy lyrics going down a bomb, the girls at the front checking that it wasn’t their big behind Meade was singing about. If It’s Not Your Fault (I Guess It’s Mine) showed off the band dynamics starting off as a skifflish railroad beat before picking up steam. By the end there were dancers at the front and the back of the crowd (more space there to jitterbug I presume) and there was a definite (and justifiable) swagger about the band as they launched into Long Gone Wrong, a song that just about sums them up with its Sun Records rhythm and harmonies along with Meade’s lyrics that nail the travelling musician’s life. The set ended they offered one more song, a fine rendition of Sonny Terry’s Hooray, Hooray, a fine end to the night.

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There was an opening set for the evening from Sorbet, a guitar/bass/drum trio who ventured into the avant-garde as they responded to a backdrop of films which included the first two parts of Jean Cocteau’s Le Sang d’un Poète. They were followed by guitar/drums duo The Rivers who describe themselves as “country grunge”.  An exciting pair with jangled guitar and frantic percussion there was a Buzzcocks like rush to a song that I think was called your Love Is On My Side while their new single, Nine Miles High is worth checking out.