ND #16 :: July-Aug 1998
LONDON, ENGLAND
Bap Kennedy: Pure country from the old country
by Kevin Hawkins
Bap Kennedy
It never fails to amaze how a series of chance happenings can hold sway over the development of an artist’s craft — in this particular case, how the circuitous route between London and Nashville was shortened by a succession of events that led to the creation of Bap Kennedy’s exceptional solo debut, Domestic Blues.
First, please note the inclusion of the word “solo” between exceptional and debut, as Kennedy is no newcomer to the role of skilled songwriter, having spent the first half of this decade (and a few years of the last one) in the London-based but Belfast-bred band Energy Orchard. It was a fortuitous encounter ten years ago that led to Energy Orchard’s signing to MCA for two albums, and also later resulted in Kennedy’s solo deal with his new label in America, E-Squared.
“When Energy Orchard were playing London, there was a bit of a buzz going round,” remembers Kennedy in a subtle brogue that reveals his Irish heritage. “And [Steve Earle] was in town and had heard stuff about us from the Pogues and people, and he came around and saw us after a show and we got on fine. And we’ve got on fine ever since.”
Several years later, both parties fell somewhat off the radar. Life for Kennedy and Energy Orchard was “getting less and less everything — it was all getting smaller, the tours were getting worse,” he says. “We saw the writing on the wall, but we had two records to go.”
While that band was winding down, Earle was melting down. “He did the 40 days in the desert thing,” says Kennedy. “I didn’t hear from him from about ’91 to ’94 or ’95.” When they finally did re-connect with Earle, it was through his music: Train A Comin’ (originally distributed in Europe by Transatlantic, to whom Energy Orchard and Kennedy were signed) was a resonant reintroduction.
“I hadn’t heard from Steve in four years maybe, and one day a guy says, ‘You know Steve Earle, don’t you.’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know where he is.’ And he said, ‘Well, here’s his new record.’ And I went, ‘Fucking hell!’, and I took it home and played it and jumped up and down for joy when I heard it. It was exactly what I wanted to do, a pure country record.
“I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but as soon as I heard Train, I just knew that’s exactly what I wanted to do. That record, but with a drummer. I wanted a nice acoustic, stringy, country blues record, and I think I mostly achieved that.”
He totally achieved that. Streaked with dark humor and awash in self-deprecation, but balanced by some truly beautiful sentiment, Domestic Blues is an impressive introduction to yet another gifted songwriter on the E-Squared roster. Although it did take two years (more or less the time between the album’s recording in June of 1996, the demise of Bap’s English label and the usual legal finagling) for the album to be released on Earle’s label.
And while Kennedy could at times be tagged as Steve Earle’s somewhat sweeter, but no less sardonic, younger brother — Domestic Blues even includes a cover of Earle’s “Angel Is A Devil”, and the two share vocals on a hidden-track rendition of the late Ewan MacColl’s “Dirty Old Town” — his songs unquestionably stand on their own.
Earle also co-produced Domestic Blues with his Twangtrust partner Ray Kennedy (no relation), and he plays acoustic guitar on the album. Bap used much of the same supporting cast that accompanied Earle on Train A Comin’, including Peter Rowan on mandolin and mandola, and Roy Huskey Jr. on upright bass (in one of his final recorded sessions before his death last September). Substitute dobro legend Jerry Douglas for Train multi-instrumentalist Norman Blake (not that you can go wrong either way), and you’ve got an ensemble with quite a heady level of talent.
And Kennedy can now say that he actually knows who Jerry Douglas is.
“He hadn’t played on Steve’s record, so I didn’t know who he was; people in the hotel seemed to be more excited about it than me,” laughs Kennedy. “I know who he is now, though, and he’s a top guy, the big cheese, the head honcho. But it was probably better I didn’t know at the time.”
The players on these respective records truly do make the songs come alive. Kennedy himself describes the record as “barroom philosophy with dobros.” Indeed, Douglas’ extensive and expressive mastery of both dobro and lap steel highlights many of the record’s more memorable refrains. The steel work on the title track is simply stunning, and is immediately followed by some sumptuous string interplay from his dobro, Nancy Blake’s cellos and everyone’s guitars on the yearning “I’ve Fallen In Love”.
A pair of very real and timely moving moments can be found toward the end of the record as Kennedy reflects on the long history of what he, and many others, feels has been senseless warring in his native homeland. On both “The Ghosts Of Belfast” and “The Shankill And The Falls” (the two roads at the center of the ongoing conflict), Kennedy’s Celtic heritage is briefly on display (along with some lovely vocal support from Nanci Griffith). It’s hard not to broach the topic on the eve of the peace referendum in Northern Ireland.
“At the moment, [the chance for peace] looks pretty good because people, even the hardline people, are sick of it because it’s a no-win situation,” Kennedy commented in a phone interview that took place less than a week before the referendum’s successful passing in the May 22 poll. “So I think people are going to compromise. It’s just an absurd thing that two roads so close together are separated by all theses years of history and madness, and the people are exactly the same in both places.”
As that long and bloody war is hopefully laid to rest, Kennedy still has plenty to occupy his time, including a regular Sunday night gig at London pub Sophie McNasty’s and possibly a spate of U.S. dates this summer. He’s also working on a new record.
“I’m trying to merge country and trip-hop,” he says, dropping reference points such as Beck and Sparklehorse before adding that he would like it to be “more structured and more country” than either. “A stoner record for country fans.”
HILLSBORO, OH
Suzanne Thomas: Branching out on her own
A commanding singer with a broad, expressive range, a deep knowledge of country idioms and some 30 years of experience in the music business, Suzanne Thomas remains largely unknown. In large part this is because she’s spent the past decade as part of the Dry Branch Fire Squad, a bluegrass outfit whose frontman, Ron Thomason, can upstage just about anyone with his convoluted, comical hillbilly raps.
Now, though, with the release of her first solo album, Dear Friends And Gentle Hearts (Rounder), those who don’t know her can find out what Southern Ohioans have known for years: Suzanne is the real deal.
When I first moved to Cincinnati, back in the late 1970s, Thomas’ band, the Hotmud Family, was — well, the hottest thing around. Though known as old-time performers, the Hotmuds were, nevertheless, supremely eclectic; “That band,” she says, “would play anything.”
Such eclecticism informs her album in surprising and pleasing ways. Sure, there are numbers here from Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family and DaCosta Waltz’s Southern Broadcasters, but there are also songs from Robin & Linda Williams and Loretta Lynn & Conway Twitty, as well as John Hutchison, whom Jon Hartley Fox’s notes describe as “Ohio’s poet laureate of hillbilly despair.” Fully half the cuts find Thomas accompanied by some of the leading lights of contemporary bluegrass, starting with the Seldom Scene, with whom she recorded a moving version of “Faded Coat Of Blue” that shaped the direction of the project.
“We did ‘Faded Coat Of Blue’ at the first session; it’s a song I had recorded 17 years ago — in the same key, I might add — and [the late] John Duffey would get up and sing it with us every time we did a gig with [the Scene], so I thought that would just be kind of a nice tribute to him to do it with them.
“My co-producer, Bill Evans, got to listening to this cut and said, ‘This just sounds so cool.’ He went to Rounder and asked, ‘Couldn’t we have a little more money to do this album, so we could get these other people?’ Then he asked me, ‘Who would you have if you could have anybody you wanted on these cuts?’ and I said, ‘Oh, well, if I could have anybody I wanted, this is who I’d want.’”
The list turned out to include friends such as modern bluegrass icons IIIrd Tyme Out and the Lonesome River Band, as well as John Hartford, Glen Duncan, Laurie Lewis, Jim Hurst, Missy Raines, and Thomas’ bandmates in the Dry Branch Fire Squad.
The Squad backs her on the album’s title cut, a lament for Stephen Foster written by Chris Stuart from a phrase on a scrap of paper found in Foster’s pocket after his death. “Chris and I were sitting in a hotel suite at Wintergrass just visiting, and he said, ‘I’ve finished that song about Stephen Foster.’ He played it for me, and I’m crying, of course, and I said, ‘Oh, can I do that?’ and he said yes.
“I thought, ‘All right, I’m going to get off my butt and make this album. I want that to be the title song, and these are the other songs I want to record, because these will go with that.’ That was sort of the centerpiece.”
Simple enough, you’d think, but the whole thing turns out to have taken close to a year — or 30 years, depending on how you look at it. “It’s one of those things that people had been telling me for years — ‘Why don’t you put out your own album’ — and I’d say ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna do that just as soon as I get time,’” Thomas laughs.
“I’m very lazy, I have no ambition whatsoever, except about the work itself. I’m very ambitious when it comes to what I want to do, and how I want it to sound, and how much care I take with doing it, and thinking about it and presenting it, but I’m not ambitious about my ‘career.’ I had chances to go to Nashville and be a product, and I never wanted to be a product. Clever of me to wait until I’m way too old, you know, to do an album like that.”
— Jon Weisberger
BUFFALO, NY
Steam Donkeys: Northern Americana
The Steam Donkeys are either psychic or just plain lucky. The Buffalo, New York, band called their first CD, released in 1994, Cosmic Americana, not realizing that soon afterward there would be a new radio format recognized by the trade magazines as “Americana.”
According to singer and guitarist Buck Quigley, it was purely a happy accident and more a Gram Parsons reference (to his “Cosmic American Music” circa the International Submarine Band) than anything else. “We’re gonna sue somebody over stealing it from us, though,” Quigley jokes.
The Parsons connection is deeper than that, however, as the Steam Donkeys manage a sly country vibe akin to Gram’s solo material. Clean instrumentation, great stage presence, and the polished, professional performance style of the band (which also includes Doug Moody on fiddle and mandolin, Charlie Quill on lead guitar, Joe Kross on drums and John Weber on bass) make them a crowd-pleaser.
The Steam Donkeys began plowing their way through the Northeast country music scene around 1991 and issued a cassette recording the following year titled Songs From A Stolen Guitar. “That title came from a guitar that I had which was signed by Roy Orbison. I had written those songs with that instrument, but it was stolen soon afterward,” Quigley explains. “I got into trouble in those early reviews because people thought I was advocating thievery.”
The only theft the Steam Donkeys practice is effortlessly lifting the sound of classic dancehall acts like Ray Price; they place the two-stepping tunes alongside ’50s-inspired rock ’n’ roll numbers in their live sets. Quigley is a master of not-so-innocent innuendo and double-entendre lyricism such as “What You Been Spreadin’ Around” or “Put Your Money Where My Mouth Is”, but the Steam Donkeys couch their come-ons in some well-rounded arrangements featuring Moody’s exquisite fiddle solos.
With constant trips up and down the East Coast, the Steam Donkeys have become favorites in such far-flung locales as Atlanta; they appeared on the 1995 Sky Records compilation for that city’s Bubbapalooza festival. “The Buffalo-Atlanta connection came from playing there a bunch and finding a supportive fan base,” Quigley says.
A chance meeting with radio promoter Al Moss helped lead to a record deal with Atlanta indie label Landslide, which re-released the first CD and put out the band’s second disc, Little Honkytonks, in May. “We were selling CDs on consignment and at shows, so this was a way to get bigger distribution for an album we’re quite proud of,” Buck says of the re-release of Cosmic Americana.
The new album, Little Honkytonks, is a reflection of the band’s roots in the dancehalls and barrooms where their music sounds the best. “Buffalo has had a strong country scene for years,” he explains. “The Club Utica here in Buffalo, where we were practically the house band of sorts for a while, was open for 45 years and hosted everyone from Ernest Tubb to Wanda Jackson.”
Quigley doesn’t agree with any perception of country music as a purely Southern art form, anyway. “There is a general perception of country as having geographical boundaries, but that’s not really valid,” he says. “My interest goes back to my dad in Pennsylvania, listening to the broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry at night, shows that were heard all over the country on AM radio.”
The new album aims to capture the spirit of those older days and those little honky tonks for which the album is named — “little places like that which cease to be, that just don’t exist anymore,” Quigley says. But a little honky tonk is exactly where you’d expect to find a band like the Steam Donkeys.
— KEVIN OLIVER