« November 2006 | Main | January 2007 »

December 19, 2006

The unfairness of things (3) Rob McNurlin

Somebody not unlike Rob McNurlin lives within an hour's drive of pretty much anywhere within the continental United States, although no two guitar vagabonds are anywhere near the same. Near as I can tell, Rod lives an hour or so east from here, in Ashland, Kentucky, hard against the West Virginia border, and though our mutual friend, the photographer John Flavell, did his best to put us together in the same room when I moved here, the first time I heard McNurlin sing was in the hotel lobby during the Americana Music Association conference two years ago, down in Nashville.

AMA picking sessions are nowhere near as ubiquitous as they are during IBMA, but happen often enough that one tends to walk quietly by, avoiding eye contact. Rob had said hello during registration, a tidy fellow in carefully pressed clothes, big enough to travel alone, a man of no particular age in the middle of his years. He was friendly and professional, and did not tarry long enough to damage that impression.

Those are the dangerous ones, the nice guys (and gals) who are otherwise fully functional adults, chasing musical dreams with modest gifts, and I have learned to keep my distance at least until I've heard them sing, and usually after.

( I should mention that my mentor, the late Maxine Cushing Gray -- first female arts critic at a daily paper west of the Mississippi, and a formidable woman of great wisdom and kindness -- did not believe one consorted with artists whose work might come up for criticism. Every critic draws different lines, but that became mine, and so I count very few musicians among my circle of friends and acquaintances. It would, perhaps, be different if I played, but I don't.)

And so I heard Rob singing in the lobby as I rode the elevator, singing softly, a group of guys around a table (Jeff Wall was probably among them) picking and chuckling and hiding from the sunset while tending their private pleasures. They weren't showcasing for wandering strangers, just playing because it's what they do.

It seems like I rode the elevator several times, my head turning to the sound from that round table each time, and it seems like they were there singing for a long while. For not the first time I wished I had enough talent to sit among them, but I can't sing, not even a little bit, so badly that my little girl laughs when I try and asks me to stop.

McNurlin has a warm voice and sings easily. It's not entirely fair to type that he reminds me of Don Williams, because Rob has a more nasal, more inescapably country voice. But he sings with that same graceful calm; and, also, with more passion.

It seems like that first time I heard McNurlin sing he was flogging an album he'd made with Nancy Apple, but it made a poor introduction; their voices simply don't meld together. Playing in the background as I write is a newer album he made this year of traditional numbers called Sacred Songs, available on his Buffalo Skinner imprint. I have a curious weakness for gospel songs -- I keep meaning to try to find time to pitch a radio show to WMKY, "the secular humanist's gospel hour" or some such (though when I'd have time actually to DO the show is another matter entirely) -- but the man I heard in the lobby in Nashville is wonderfully present throughout these dozen songs. (And John Flavell pitches in on mandolin and vocals.)

The road is littered with singers whose careers resemble McNurlin's, though he's made more albums than most (including one with John Carter Cash) and counts Ramblin' Jack Elliott among his friends. He makes a living, though I'm not entirely sure how, and he travels a lot, and he sings well. And he's not puffed up with himself as an artist, nor does he seem to founder against what might have been and is not.

One of these days Rob will make another album, and maybe this time I'll play it a little more quickly and see about finding space for him in the magazine. That we know each other slightly and live a few counties apart almost counts against him, I fear; almost once a week an aspiring contributor writes wishing to tell a similar story, and there isn't often room.

There ought to be room.

Posted by Grant at 8:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

December 14, 2006

The unfairness of things (2) Dead Moon

Back in 1991, when they were a hip but still-struggling label -- they have since been one or both of those things several more times -- Sub Pop released I Am The Billy Childish, a brilliant 50-track two-disc compilation pulling one track from each of Billy Childish's first fifty albums. Mr. Childish is, of course, a British eccentric who has kept up a staggering schedule, releasing a torrent of singles and LPs and paintings. The self-taught fidelity of his work, his compulsion to create it, and his tendency to repeat themes endlessly tends to suggest that he be grouped as an outsider artist. And so I am always drawn to Billy Childish.

This fall Sub Pop performed a similar service, allowing Dead Moon's creative genius, Fred Cole, to assemble 49 tracks (once again taking up only two CDs) summarizing the bent genius of one of indie rock's most...most...well...what?

Dead Moon are one of those bands that hipster critics namecheck, often without having heard nor seen them in action. Like Childish, they can be rolled into the garage underground, but both artists approach rock with a kind of primitive exultation that more recent garage-stylists can neither imitate nor approach.

For a time I was tolerably well acquainted with Fred and Toody Cole (and much less so with their drummer, Andrew Loomis). Back when grunge was silly, we put them on the cover of The Rocket, in part because we knew some A&R lemmings would seek them out. Fred later said he'd sent a copy of their most recent LP to somebody at Geffen, along with a letter indicating that under no circumstances would he be interested in signing to their label. (The executive in question allegedly framed the letter; I hope that part is true.)

Anyway, I have a lot of their records, and I've seen them more than a handful of times. And though I couldn't quite justify writing about the swell summary introduction offered by this new Echoes Of The Past compilation in the pages of No Depression, it's still one of my favorite things from the year quickly passing.

Long ago in the dark 1960s Fred split from Las Vegas in a band called the Weeds. They got stuck in Portland, Oregon, turned into the Lollipop Shoppe, signed to a major label, and are survived by a track or two on the Nuggets box set. Nothing about that experience pleased Fred, except meeting Toody, and so he took matters into his own hands ever after. For a good long while he ran a guitar store called Tombstone Music, which became his record label. That, I'm told, is where you went in Portland if you needed your shitty punk rock guitar fixed; when we met they'd moved the operation out to Clackamas. I watched him work one afternoon: Inexpensive, modest finesse, operational results.

Punk made sense to Fred, and so he began playing and recording in a trio called the Rats. They ran through drummers, gave up after (I think) three LPs, one of which I later found, in poor condition, and still treasure. Subsequently he and Toody sought, I think, to cash in on some cover bar action (it simply cannot have worked) with a country band they called the Western Front. They gave me some of those singles, and near as I can recall Toody sang lead in that band.

And then Dead Moon.

Fred is deaf in one ear, yes. And, yes, he masters their LPs on the very same lathe which cut the Kingsmen's "Louie, Louie." He has a high, quavering voice, a well-educated primitivism displayed throughout his guitar work, and a willing foil in his bass-playing wife. (One of their children became an accountant. You have to rebel somehow, right?)

Dead Moon set up across the front of the stage, with Andrew in the middle. On his drum kit is a large candle, which stays lit for the duration of the show. They are grandparents, were when I interviewed them in the early 1990s, and they don't flail about, nor do they intentionally break things on stage. But they are some of the toughest, nicest people I've ever met. None of which has a lot to do with their music, except you can hear all of it IN their music.

They are, of course, better live. (At least I hope they still play out.) But this is a first-rate introduction to one of America's strangest, most astringent brews. It's rough. It's an acquired taste. It's something the Velvet Underground might have been proud to pull off, or maybe not. It is what it is. But there is only one Dead Moon, and this is a proud and proudly rocking set of songs. (But nothing from the Rats, nor Western Front, alas.)

Posted by Grant at 3:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)