Chuck Hawthorne. Silverline. 3 Notches Music.

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The good book mentioned beating swords into ploughshares and Chuck Hawthorne’s debut album, Silverline is a fine example of this. Hawthorne is a time served US Marine joining straight after high school and spending 21 years as a leatherneck. He starting picking guitar when aboard the USS Iwo Jima and was writing songs by the time he served in Iraq. Retired, he was scuffling around when a chance encounter with Ray Bonneville led to the recording of this album with Bonneville in the producer’s chair. The end result is a relatively unadorned slice of down home rootsy picking and singing that’s elevated on two counts. Hawthorne has one of those voices that just fits, half Don Williams, half Guy Clark, superbly supported by the pared back playing, for the most part acoustic guitars and a rhythm section with occasional pedal steel and fiddle. Secondly Hawthorne turns out to be a fine writer in the grand Texas style offering snapshots of hard lives that breathe life into the characters.

He opens with Silver Line, a mellow train song which has Gurf Morlix on pedal steel adding a stately grandeur to Hawthorne’s hymn to the frontier rail lines. Morlix again features on Welding Son of A Gun where Hawthorne salutes the sweat and toil of a man who has sold all his guns and bought himself a welding machine while the thumping The Gospel Hammer has Hawthorne recalling his father’s skill with a hammer and bal peen which defines his life and death. Eliza Gilkyson adds fine harmonies to Dragon Flies, a song that comes across like a Guy Clark rewrite of The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan and she features again on Leaving Amarillo, a dusty portrait of a woman with a chequered past, “A wild desert rainbow lost in her shadow. She’s dated every cowboy that fell to the ground.”

Hawthorne’s fine sketches continue on the slow country waltz of Ovando and the story of an old drinker lost in his thoughts and memories on Ashes and Embers. There’s a darker edge however on the sinister Enemy which features only Hawthorne’s guitar and voice along with some spooky harmonica from Bonneville. Finally, Hawthorne confronts the war in Iraq with the simple folk tale of Post 2 Gate which tells of the murder of a child street vendor caught up in a suicide attack, a scene revisited each night by the soldier narrator in his dreams as he eventually returns home a different man.

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Tom Russell. The Rose Of Roscrae. Proper Records

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The first thing to say about this album is that if you intend to listen to it then best go out and buy some beers and snacks beforehand. Next, get a comfy seat, set up your audio for its best “widescreen” effect and prepare to sit through two and a half hours of prime Americana country folk opera. It’s an effort for sure to sit throughout The Rose Of Rosecrae but having done so on three occasions (along with several dips into individual songs) Blabber’n’Smoke can confidently declare that ultimately it’s an interesting and rewarding endeavour and that the album, while not quite the masterpiece that some are pronouncing, is poised to loom over competitors in year end lists.
Tom Russell is no stranger to themes and concepts with previous albums such as The Man From God Knows Where and Hotwalker comprised of songs and spoken word, sound collages and guest artists. The Rose Of Roscrae takes this to another level, it’s a full blown musical story that traces the journey of a young Irishman to America where he goes West (as young men were inclined to do) allowing Russell to include Celtic laments, talking blues, cowboy songs, square dance, slave songs, Native American chants, Gospel and Mariachi music. Weaving traditional songs, standards and his own material into his sonic tapestry Russell has engaged a luminous cast of characters using archive recordings and contemporary collaborations to flesh out the story, the list is daunting……………
Jimmie Dale Gilmore, David Olney, Johnny Cash, Joe Ely, Augie Meyers, Fats Kaplin, Barry Walsh, Jimmy La Fave, Gretchen Peters, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Walt Whitman, Moses “Clear Rock” Platt, Jack Hardy, David Massingill, A.L. “Bert” Lloyd, Finbar Furey, Sourdough Slim, Blackie Farrell, Tex Ritter, Glen Orhlin, Pat Russell, John Trudell, Henry Real Bird, Thad Beckman, Maura O’Connell, Eliza Gilkyson, The McCrary Sisters, Ian Tyson, The Swiss Yodel Choir of Bern, Bonnie Dobson, Lead Belly, Guy Clark, Dan Penn, Gurf Morlix, Pat Manske, The Voices of the Waverley School, Pasadena, California and The Norwegian Wind Ensemble.
You get the picture.
As we said the album is a night in, the songs rolling over you. Some are snippets, over in less than a minute but like connective tissue essential to the overall sinewy aural chew. However there is sustenance galore in many of the individual songs which cleave to Russell’s familiar styles, bold and proud American folklore with sparkling guitar and Dobro providing punch and his spoken soliloquies that paint campfire pictures with tender guitar backdrop. When his hero is thinking back to his homeland Russell captures a fine Hibernian air which is best heard when Finbar Furey provides an excellent Carrickfergus/ The Water Is Wide before Russell wades in with a fierce expatriate’s memories of the Irish landscape. Throughout the album Russell deploys his “actors” as a director might with Jimmie dale Gilmore’s high lonesome voice capturing the frontier while David Olney rants magnificently as a hang ’em high judge. Meanwhile Eliza Gilkyson is a fine vocal foil to Russell on the opening songs of the second disc as does Gretchen Peters before the story heads down to Mexico allowing Augie Meyers and Joe Ely to shine.
Overall there isn’t enough space here to dig deeply into the 52 songs that comprise The Rose Of Rosecrae. Suffice to say that it’s a bold adventure and one that by and large succeeds. It’s begging for a visual accompaniment, a stage show or film gathering all of the cast (although the deceased might have to phone it in) but it’s safe to say that for those who have enjoyed Russell’s previous thematic albums this is essential. As for the others I’d recommend a deep breath, some popcorn and open ears and prepare to be astonished. Tom Russell will be appearing in Glasgow as part of Glasgow Americana in October.

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Grant Peeples and the Peeples Rebublic. Punishing The Myth.

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Grant Peeples is a muscular, shaved head, scary looking guy, the kind you’d avoid in a bar in case he’s looking for a fight. His music too is muscular and it’s looking for a fight, in this case with the hucksters and moral majority who run his nation. Always on the side of the downtrodden and oppressed, Peeples, over the course of his four albums is a powerful voice telling us what the networks and syndicates won’t.
Punishing The Myth, his third album to be produced by Gurf Morlix kicks against the pricks and punctures the balloon of hypocrisy that populates the American Dream. Peeples sings about outsiders including a lesbian aunt and a revolutionary while he takes a pop at himself and his ilk on the opening song You’re A Slave To Your Imagination where he writes
“You call it art but you’re just jerking off, all you want to do is make a name for yourself, sucking up to owners and promoters, could it be any good if it’s something you sell?”
before going on to say “Yea its true every song is just a compromise, but every now and then I find a word’ll ring true, I hang my hat on a hook I know’ll get um, then I scribble down some crap and I call it a tune.” The irony here is that it’s a rollicking good tune with Sarah Mac trading vocals with Peeples over a wicked bluesy groove with organ and cornet in the driving seat over finely picked electric guitar and that’s true of all of the songs here. Peeples songs are first and foremost eminently listenable and on the face of it Punishing The Myth is an excellent album of country, folk and blues that will please fans of Willie Nelson, Guy Clark, J.J. Cale and Mr. Morlix himself.

Who Woulda Thunk It, the one cover on the album (written by Greg Brown) is another cracking bluesy number with Knopfleresque guitar snaking throughout while the lyrics connect with the overall sense of the album that Americans are sleepwalking to doom, relying on Mastercard and Visa instead of being self reliant. This belief is hammered home by Peeples on the spoken word High Octane Generation where he thunders against the pampered state of present day car owners who rely on the bleeps and alarms on their space age dashboards but who are unable to check their oil. This could have become a Luddite rant but Peeples changes gear to celebrate the automobile as an allegory of the “passions, and ideals that mapped out our interior destinations across the crooked fields of time” before lamenting that owning a car that can park itself appears to be nothing to be ashamed of these days.

Peeples hammers oligarchs and Wall Street in The New American Dream while The Morning After The Coup appears to share The Who’s sentiment of “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” I Can’t Imagine Him Carrying a Carbine subverts a father’s greeting to his new born son as he fears he’ll not be fit to defend the revolution and guns feature in She Was a Wildflower as the narrator remembers “watching her swing from the barrel of an M1 rifle.” There’s a militant feel to many of the songs, Peebles says of himself “I’m a vegetarian that watches NASCAR, a tree-hugger that keeps a gun under the seat,” but his recollection of his lesbian aunt “Aunt Lou” has a tender edge to it while acknowledging her bravery.

Peeples ends the album with an excellent live recording, “It’s Too Late to Live In Austin,” that firmly places him in the Texas story telling tradition as he tells of a night in “this myth-ridden city” with vocal support again from Sarah Mac. The highlight of the album however is the dark country duet, The Hanging where he’s joined by Eliza Gilkyson who sings wonderfully on what is a powerful portrait of an execution and in its chorus damns the death penalty. A powerful song on a powerful album.

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