Western Centuries. Weight Of The World. Free Dirt Records

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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.

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Best of 2014

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There’s a lot or pros and cons when it comes to listing end of year best ofs or favourites. Two years ago Blabber’n’Smoke eventually plumbed for the pros outweighing the cons so this is the third time we’ve presented what, when it comes down to it, is an arbitrary choice of remembered listen. Albums that have stood the test of (a relatively short) time, the ones we’ve returned to or recommended to others in the pub. Above all it’s been fun to look back, read the reviews and see if they still stand. So with this in mind the following are the official Blabber’n’Smoke 2014 picks, in alphabetical order.

Blue Rose Code. Ballads Of Peckham Rye
Birds Of Chicago. Live From Space
Fire Mountain. All Dies Down
Bradford lee Folk and The Bluegrass Playboys. Somewhere Far Away
Cahalen Morrison & Eli West. I’ll Swing My Hammer With Both My Hands
Jim Keaveny. Out Of Time
Parker Millsap. Parker Millsap
Michael Rank & Stag. Deadstock
Sturgill Simpson. Metamodern Sounds In Country Music
John Southworth. Niagara

Random honourable mentions go to

Lucinda Williams Down Where the Spirit Meets The Bone,
The Johnny Cash Native American album reboot, Look Again To The Wind,
Danny and The Champions Of The World’s Live Champs!
Dan Michealson & The Coastguards Distance
Cale Tyson’s EP, High On Lonesome,
Luke Tuchsherer’s debut You Get So Alone at Times It makes Sense,
Petunia’s Inside Of You,
Ags Connolly How about Now,
Chris Cacavas & Edward Abbiati. Me And The Devil along with Abbiati’s band Lowlands who delivered the excellent Love Etc.,
Zoe Muth. World Of Strangers,
Hank Wangford & The Lost Cowboys. Save Me The Waltz .
Grant Peeples and the Peeples Rebublic. Punishing The Myth.
Simone Felice. Strangers.
Bronwynne Brent. Stardust.
Sylvie Simmons. Sylvie (allowing an honorary mention here for Howe Gelb who produced).
The War On Drugs. Lost In The Dream.
Lynne Hanson. River Of Sand.
Gal Holiday & The Honky Tonk Revue. Last To Leave.
And finally John Murry’s EP, Califorlonia which is brilliant and hopefully just an appetiser for his follow up to the majestic Graceless Age.

Digging through the archives it’s been noticeable that there’s been a fine contribution this year from Scottish acts who dip into or draw from an Americana well to a greater or lesser extent. While Blue Rose Code’s Ballads Of Peckam Rye features above the following are all stellar contributions to the local scene.

Dropkick. Homeward
Dumb Instrument. The Silent Beard (with the Scottish song of the year, Suffering from Scottishness).
John Hinshelwood. Lowering The Tone.
The David Latto Band. Here Today, Ghost Tomorrow EP
Norrie McCulloch. Old Lovers Junkyard
The New Madrids. Through the Heart of Town.
Red Pine Timber Company. Different Lonesome
The Rulers Of The Root. Porky Dreams
Ten Gallon Bratz. Tales From The Long Shadows

Although his album, Little Glass Box came out in 2012, Fraser Anderson is a major find of the year while another local lad, Daniel Meade unleashes his Nashville recorded Keep Right Away in January. Hopefully folk will have long enough memories to recall this when it comes to compiling the 2015 lists. In the meantime it can be first on the New Year shopping list.

Cahalen Morrison & Country Hammer. The Flower Of Muscle Shoals. Free Dirt Records.

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Regular readers will know that Blabber’nSmoke are huge admirers of Cahalen Morrison and Eli West whose three albums have been superb bare boned distillations of what one might call the high church of Americana. Their pure and simple sound of acoustic instruments allied with lonesome voices recalls the pioneers of country music and the land around them. Tradition just about sums them up (while at the same time selling them short as they are as current as any of the big Nashville hitters). Cahalen Morrison continues in this vein with this offshoot release, The Flowers Of Muscle Shoals, recorded with his band Country Hammer. While Morrison & West are rustic, hewn from the ground, here Morrison moves into the city and finds that musicians are plugging in, adding some swing, finding honky tonks to play in, adding some Western to his Country. It still sounds as old as the hills but this time the audience are not on a back porch, more likely they’d be huddled around a radio catching static and occasional Grand Old Opry airwaves. The Carter Family have given way to Hank Williams.

Morrison is ably assisted in this venture by the magnificent Country Hammer, a country super group of sorts with Jim Miller and Rob Adesso on Telecaster and harmony vocals, Ethan Lawton on drums, Mary Maass on fiddle, Country Dave Harmonson on pedal steel and Michael Connolly on bass and accordion. Together they offer tear jerking ballads such as Through Your Window which limps along as if it’s four in the morning and the band are still playing for the last couple on the dance floor rebounding from the earlier fiddle led heartache of Over And Over And Over Again and the desolate I’ve Won Every Battle And Lost Every War, a magnificent lament. There’s more heartache albeit with a jauntier step on Sorrow Lines The Highway Of Regret, some Honky Tonk heaven here and they continue in this sweet and sour vein with the rousing Our Love Is Like A Hurricane, fiddles flying and guitars fatbacking in the best Western Swing tradition. Morrison’s vocals are stained with a sepia soak, at times recalling the late Levon Helm, and when they launch into the Cajun influenced San Luis one could be forgiven for thinking this is a Band outtake.

Essentially The Flower Of Muscle Shoals is one of the best albums we’ve heard this year and it is heartily recommended.

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Cahalen Morrison & Eli West Our Lady of the Tall Trees

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When Morrison and West released their debut The Holy Coming of The Storm in early 2011 it received almost universal acclaim and ended up in many a top ten album list at the end of the year. Their unique blend of studied antiquity with their songwriting skills and superb picking and singing struck a chord with listeners and they topped it off with a triumphant Celtic Connections appearance.
18 months later and we have the follow up, Our Lady of the Tall Trees, an album that continues in much the same vein as its predecessor which is tantamount to saying that it’s essential listening. Morrison continues to write the bulk of the material here with one traditional song offered up. However this time around there are three contemporary cover versions included, the very familiar Townes Van Zandt’s Loretta, Norman Blake’s Church St. Blues and closing the album Garry Harrison’s Red prairie Dawn, a nice touch as it serves to pay tribute to Harrison, an Illinois fiddler and lover of old time music who sadly died earlier this year.
It’s a measure of how successful Morrison and West are in creating their sepia toned world that their version of Loretta jars the impression that we are listening to an archived recording from the dusty old days. Theirs is a fine reading but the familiarity of the song accords it an outsider status, a glitch in the matrix if you like, however the instrumental Red Prairie Dawn ends the album with a flourish, a beautiful tune lovingly picked and plucked on banjo and mandolin it captures the essence of old time country music.
As on the debut album however it’s Morrison’s songs that support any claim to greatness here. He has the ability to capture and recreate old time ballads, tales as strong as an Oak with language that seems to be hewn from ancient timber. It’s reminiscent of the best of the English folk rock revival of the seventies when tales of yore were married to a contemporary sound. Morrison and West however eschew drums and amplification creating their tapestries using guitar, banjo, mandolin and bouzouki. The words do hark back to the richness and poetry embodied in the King James Bible. When they sing

“Although starched your apron may now be, it’ll lose it’s shape in the water. But go swimmeth thee to the anchor most near, a lady does not often falter. Oh the winds they blow and the tide she swells, brings life into the beaches. Oh that seem between the Earth & Tide, from land that sea is not quite so wide”

one could be reading from that old good book. Morrison packs his songs with such lyrics on A Lady Does Not Often falter, All I Can Do and All For The Sake of Day. Meanwhile the front porch plucking on their instruments offers some fine moments of beauty with the mandolin solo on All For The Sake of Day especially standing out.
Ancient and modern, homespun and literate, it’s a standout album from a pair who astonish and exhilarate. Do give it a listen.

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