TWO DOLLAR PISTOLS
On Down The Track
Scrimshaw

John Howie has a voice you’ve never heard before, but would swear you have. Just the other night, in fact, one barstool over. Older guy, looked a little run-down and weary, knocking back one straight Scotch after another like he was trying to forget something. Except that every sip only made the memories more acute, a feeling he insisted on sharing with everyone within earshot. But no one much minded. He was a good drunk, took his moods out on himself rather than anyone else. A good storyteller, too. Funny. And that voice! Man oh man, smoother than the smoothest whiskey…

Yeah, John Howie has a voice like that, an old man’s sound trapped in a young man’s body. But few people realized it when he was known only as one of the best drummers in North Carolina, holding down the beat in bands as varied as Chris Stamey’s pop group Alaska and Stones-ish crunch-rockers Finger. Then a couple of years ago, Howie stepped out from behind his drumkit and started playing straight-no-chaser country as the Two Dollar Pistols. Locals were awestruck. When he would solemnly intone, “This song was written by a man named Harlan Howard, for another man named Lefty Frizzell,” it was as if Roger Miller had come back from the dead and was walking among the mortals in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle.

The secret is about to get out far and wide. The Pistols became more than a part-time concern after the sadly premature 1996 demise of Howie’s previous band, June, whose atmospheric art-rock Howie anchored with his steady backbeats. June guitarist John Price joins Howie on the Pistols’ debut On Down The Track, along with Squirrel Nut Zippers drummer Chris Phillips and members of a slew of local bands including Soccer, the Tremblers and the Nancy Middleton Band.

Despite the clashing backgrounds, you’d never guess anybody in the Pistols ever played anything but cry-in-your-beer honky-tonk anthems, because On Down The Track is totally convincing. This is hard-core stuff, heartache as viewed from the bottom of a shot glass. Hide the kids and put this record on next to Hank Williams or Merle Haggard, and it more than holds its own.

The key is Howie’s voice, a richly emotional croon that imbues every syllable he sings with intense feeling. He writes as well as he sings, too. Three of these 12 songs are covers — Tom T. Hall’s “I Flew Over Our House”, Harlan Howard’s “Gone” and Roger Miller’s “World So Full Of Love” — and it’s a tribute to Howie’s songwriting that his originals stand up to his covers in quality as well as mood. Howie demonstrates a flair for clever wordsmithing throughout the record, but it’s his singing that brings everything to life and allows him to get away with over-the-top declarations (“You don’t need someone to understand, so let me be your fool”) that might sound overwrought or even cheesy in lesser hands.

Howie makes it all sound as inevitable as the hangover that follows the binge. But now is not the time to think of consequences. Just drink it all in, friend, drink it all in.

— DAVID MENCONI

JON DEE GRAHAM
Escape from Monster Island
Freedom

On the surface, the solo debut by Jon Dee Graham is certain to conjure comparisons with early Springsteen and later Tom Waits — if one can imagine either of those urban artists transported to the border culture of the Tex-Mex cantina. Beneath the surface, however, is where the richness of Graham’s music lies, within songs that are as cathartically powerful as they are uncompromisingly personal, transcending tidy craftsmanship for the unruliness of life lived large. Graham has a big heart, and he refuses to confine it to a tiny songwriting box.

A little background: The former punk-rocking guitarist for Austin’s Skunks first came to national attention when he rode shotgun for the brothers Escovedo in the True Believers. “One Moment To Another”, his signature song for that band, was subsequently recorded by both Kris McKay and Patty Smyth, while his guitar has graced the bands of John Doe, Kelly Willis and Calvin (big in France) Russell. Over the years, Graham has continued to wrestle with his own songwriting demons, trying to express the universal concerns of love, loss and renewal in a manner that rings truer and hits harder than typical troubadour fare.

On Escape From Monster Island, Graham sounds like a raging bull in the china shop of singer-songwriter delicacy. From the deep-soul testament of “When a Woman Cries” to the country-tinged serenade of “Mockingbird Smile” to the hard-rocking triumph of “Soonday”, Graham and band rampage all over the musical map, bringing a common core of conviction to a variety of musical styles. With a rhythm section on loan from Charlie Sexton’s Sextet — bassist George Reiff and drummer Rafael Gayol, plus some superb keyboard shadings from Michael Ramos — as well as guitar by co-producer Mike Hardwick and the bittersweet blend of Kathy McCarty’s harmonies supporting Graham’s gruff leads, the album benefits from the spirit of community through which Austin rises to musical occasions such as this.

One senses that Graham would rather write an awkward line than a dishonest one, that he’s more concerned with prickly emotions than polished artistry. His narratives often imply more than they elaborate, leaving the listener to fill in the blanks. In coming to terms with the musical mystery of “Wave Goodbye” — a eulogy that provides the musical linchpin of an album so full of life — the listener might want to cross-reference Alejandro Escovedo’s “Tell Me Why” and Lisa Mednick’s “When You Say Strong”. Though Graham’s material may leave things out, his performance never holds anything back.

— DON MCLEESE

TONI PRICE
Sol Power
Antone’s/Discovery

Since 1992, Toni Price’s musical realm has been anchored by a happy-hour gig she plays every Tuesday evening at the Continental Club in her home of Austin. Accompanied by some of that city’s finest players — for the past couple years guitarists Jud Newcomb and Casper Rawls plus fiddler Champ Hood — Price holds forth in front of an always-packed house, the musicians seated in chairs but nevertheless stirring up a soulful and energetic experience. The instruments may be acoustic, but air is full of electricity.

The surprise, then, about Price’s first live album is that she chose not to record it at the Continental, forgoing her home turf for a club called Railroad Blues in the small West Texas town of Alpine (pop. 5,637). Upon further consideration, it’s a good call: As central as the Continental gig is to Price’s identity, her shows there are almost too predictable anymore, with a call-and-response between audience and band on many songs set in stone to the point of ritual. Furthermore, even though this is a live album, it’s not a greatest-hits package: This is all-new material, and, as such, deserved a setting that focused more on the songs than the surroundings.

The calmer quarters of Railroad Blues prove a fine choice for such a project, even lending a special ambience to the disc via opening and closing tracks that consist of nothing but noise from trains on the tracks that run right by the club. In between, Price proves once again that she’s one of the finest female singers of her day, possessor of a voice so rich in melody and personality that the fact she doesn’t write her own songs ceases to be an issue. She makes them her own.

Besides, even though she doesn’t write, there’s a definite consistency to her catalog, thanks to Gwil Owen, an old pal from Price’s hometown of Nashville who penned about half the songs she recorded on her first two discs. That relationship continues on Sol Power: After the opening seconds of train sounds and a beautiful showcase for Hood on Richard De La Vega’s “The Old Fiddler’s Waltz”, Price reels off five Owen tunes in a row, then tackles two others later on the disc. And while there’s nothing here as drop-dead beautiful as “I Doubt If It Does To You” from Swim Away or “Something” from Hey, it’s all strong enough to have warranted recording, and continues to build a case for Owen being one of the most talented (if underrated) songwriters in Nashville. Perhaps more notable is the presence of three songs co-written by Herb McCullough, who had one tune on Price’s last album. “Sarah” (written with David Schnaufer and long a staple of Price’s live set) rivals Owen’s “Tumbleweed” from Hey for its sheer hummable infectiousness.

Price’s general reluctance to tour likely has precluded her from attaining the widespread recognition her voice and presence deserve, but her records continue to document that little slice of Texas heaven taking place down in Austin. (Or, in this case, Alpine.)

— PETER BLACKSTOCK

TIM O’BRIEN
When No One’s Around
Sugar Hill

You’d have to be a dog-kicking drunk to dislike Tim O’Brien, and while I used to trip over the late Chow when he’d sprawl into the wrong corner of darkness, it was never intentional. O’Brien’s credentials, stumbling quickly to the point, are impeccable. Sixteen years with crossover bluegrass band Hot Rize, substantial songwriting credits (including Kathy Mattea’s “Walk The Way The Wind Blows”), a Grammy nomination for last year’s Dylan-gone-bluegrass Red On Blonde, and a Ph.D.

What permeates When No One’s Around, however — and despite the life of quiet desperation suggested by the title — is an overriding sense of decency. A nice guy who can flat play. And write, witness the opening “Kick Me When I’m Down” and “How Come I Ain’t Dead” (“If I can’t live without her/How come I ain’t dead?”). Those are both jilted lover songs (and co-writes), and they’ll be stunning covers in the hands of a singer able to invest desperation in the words. O’Brien’s voice belongs to such a genuinely nice guy (I don’t know him, it’s the quality of his vocals being described here) that it’s hard to imagine anyone hurting him that much.

That’s both the problem and the pleasure of O’Brien’s solo outings. He’s a first-rate adult contemporary figure waiting to break, able to toss a tenor saxophone into the mix of “When You Come Back Down” (co-written with Danny O’Keefe) and come out with a well-educated kind of very adult music. Bluegrass, the tradition from which he emerges, is not typically so well-mannered. O’Brien — lucky him — brings none of that discernible pain and privation to the microphone.

And so he writes comforting, comfortable songs; indeed, the closing “When There’s No One Around” sounds like nothing so much as an invitation to make a splendid and enduring children’s record. Those of us still tripping through the darkness will take our pleasures elsewhere.

— GRANT ALDEN