ND #16 :: July-Aug 1998
Two Dwights make a write
DWIGHT YOAKAM
A Long Way Home
Reprise
Will Sing For Food: The Songs Of Dwight Yoakam
Little Dog/Mercury
by David Menconi
Quick — name three Dwight Yoakam songs.
Not as easy as you’d think, is it? Nothing against the man’s songwriting abilities, but let’s face facts here: “Songwriting” is not the first word that leaps to mind when one ponders the components of the Dwight Yoakam Vibe. Instead, his appeal is grounded in an attitude that seemed genuinely revolutionary when he first emerged in the mid-’80s — that traditional country was something worth preserving. And of course, there’s also the curling lip, twitching hips and that switchblade sneer of a voice that can make even a romantic declaration sound vaguely threatening.
So it’s curious indeed that the latest two albums to emerge from Planet Dwight play up Yoakam as songwriter. Will Sing For Food is a tribute record in which 14 different acts take a crack at Yoakam’s catalog, with proceeds earmarked for charities serving the homeless. And A Long Way Home is, for the first time ever, a Yoakam album in which he himself wrote every song, with no co-writers.
Will Sing For Food is fine as far as it goes, which just flat isn’t far enough. Most of the usual suspects are present and accounted for, including the Backsliders, whose 1997 debut album was produced by Yoakam guitarist Pete Anderson, and a number of acts from Anderson’s Little Dog Records stable (Scott Joss, Lonesome Strangers, Jim Matt). Pete Droge dirties up “1,000 Miles” effectively enough, and Gillian Welch gives an appropriately stark reading to “Miner’s Prayer”.
But half the fun of these tribute records lies in the unexpected curveballs they offer, and Will Sing For Food plays everything straight down the middle. Imagine Yoakam’s mid-’80s rival Steve Earle doing, say, “What I Don’t Know”; now that would’ve been an interesting piece of détente to hear (not that there’s anything wrong with Bonnie Bramlett-Sheridan’s soulful take of that song). No doubt, the compilers were at the mercy of whoever was willing to get involved. The result is a good album, not a great one; a worthy purchase, especially given the cause, but far short of revelatory.
As for A Long Way Home, it’s Yoakam’s first real record in going on three years, during which time he’s done more interesting work onscreen (Sling Blade, The Newton Boys) than on record. Yoakam’s albums have grown increasingly erratic since he turned 40, with water-treading projects such as a Christmas album and last year’s ghastly Under The Covers — a low point we can only hope he’ll never equal.
Yoakam at least sounds like he’s trying again on A Long Way Home, the least self-consciously “country” album he’s ever made. It harks back to the wide-ranging albums that interpretive singers used to make 25-30 years ago, except Yoakam actually wrote all these tracks himself. The songs brood more than they bluster, although Yoakam retains enough of that old edge to make the occasional threat (as on “The Curse”).
Mostly, A Long Way Home represents his Roy Orbison move. Big, grand, sweeping, operatic and heart-on-the-sleeve emotive — with strings and vibraphone, even! — the material casts Yoakam as heir to Orbison’s King of Pain throne.
The half-dozen or so tracks most evocative of Orbison represent the core of the album; the others are more of a mixed bag. “I Wouldn’t Put It Past Me” and the album-closing Elvis tribute “Maybe You Like It, Maybe You Don’t” both provide further evidence that playfulness does not come naturally to Yoakam (although Anderson’s guitar almost saves both songs anyway). And the Appalachian folk homage “Traveler’s Lantern” comes off as a shade too self-conscious. On the up side, the title track works a bouncy Charlie Rich-type piano riff to good effect, and Yoakam displays some writerly flair for verb/noun puns involving the word “fool” on the album-opening “Same Fool”.
Really, though, the Orbison stuff is the main event. “Listen” has a modified “Pretty Woman” backbeat that just sweeps you away. The string arrangements stop a shade short of overdone on “These Arms” and “I’ll Just Take These.” And “Yet To Succeed” is one of the most remarkable things Yoakam has ever put down on tape. Trading in his tight jeans for a formal tux, Yoakam takes his horse opera straight to the Tiki lounge, singing in the throatiest part of his vocal register. Each line ascends as he testifies:
I’ll be fine
In time
But right now
I’m just trying
To forget you
And clearly I have yet to
Suceeeeeeeeed...
Cheesy? You bet. But it’s a stylishly rendered fondue, not a moldy sandwich.
Only Billy Joe Shaver could write a song about a cowboy’s last one-night stand in New York City and turn it into a parable for the immaculate conception. Or at least that’s what “Cowboy Who Started The Fight” seems to be about, but, then, only Shaver could write “It’s hard to be a Christian soldier/When you own a gun/And it hurts to have to watch a grown man cry.”
As advertised, Victory (named for Shaver’s mother — his birth certificate is reproduced inside) is a country gospel album. It is also made poignant by his ex-wife’s battle with cancer. Gospel has always been a part of Shaver’s music, if less obviously; indeed, two songs here are familiar (“Live Forever” and “Old Five And Dimers”). But Victory is something more than a collection of Shaver-penned gospel numbers. Like Kurosawa’s Ran and David Lean’s A Passage To India, this latest work feels like the summation of a lifetime. And if the only analogies which come to mind are from film, perhaps that’s because few writers working in popular music chase their art as long and as hard as Shaver has.
In keeping with Shaver’s personality, his is a simple, understated summation, just Billy Joe’s still-raw voice, with son Eddy on understated guitar and dobro in a studio for eight days. Roll tape. And he holds nothing back, from the broken, aching exultation of “You Can’t Beat Jesus” to the worn prayer of “If I Give My Soul” (“If I give my soul/Will my son love me again?” he asks, and Eddy’s dobro answers yes three times, sweetly).
Or put more simply, Victory is just that: a simple victory, wise words learned hard, said plain, the cost and joy both in Shaver’s voice.
— GRANT ALDEN
WAYLON JENNINGS
Closing In On The Fire
Ark 21
Claire is up to her dainties in headlines and deadlines, perpetually prolificking her pulchritudinally printable prosaics, but the missive Mister (in his shummer sorts, no less is more) just hove through my alcove and C-deposited Waylon Jennings’ 72nd like a prisoner release. And so, while I am like Eve apple-tempted to be a first-class lass and let him cancel my peekaboo postage, I without dilly-dally shilly-shally unrung the phone, sketch the blinds, and like a pilgrim’s pumps buckle down and get on the good foot, scribing out a diatribal wherefore or a flock of larks, as the music Mussolinis. Here, like Rich Little’s bare butt on a bumpy beach, are my impressions:
• “Closing In On The Fire”: Sweaty-swampy Tony Joe White groover. My fretty regret: Tony Joe is sweatier and swampier.
• “I Know About Me, Don’t Know About You”: Waylon’s weary waxing like an accountant on a tightrope counterbalances Travis Tritt’s butt strutt.
• “She’s Too Good For Me”: Sting’s lyrics are eighth-gradey, but his bass is bouncy, and Waylon gallops right up to the edge of a dreamy-squeamy Sheryl Crow’s-foot bridge.
• “Just Watch Your Mama And Me”: The verses are trite, but the chorus is right. Waylon tips back his outlaw hat and denture-whistles gentle like Ben advice over a longing-not-shorting piano.
Claire whacks Waylon into her holy country trinity for infinity, but she also like a snarly sniper cusses and swears to shoot straight, and this album is no bulls-eye. Butt like roast, while some cuts are overdone (enough rehashishing the drug-busty days), some cuts are right on the mignoney. Grandpa Jennings is best when he acts his age — and on the like a screen door spring closer, the Keith not Moon Richards/Jagger-meister number “No Expectations”, he proves like a theorem that he can rock weary and still rock steady.
Claire now concludes dudes by taking like a sailor the liberty of dispensing like a nice shot of horseradish mustard some Dear crabby Abby advice: For number 73, dump like a truck the production, move into the mike like it’s an old sharecropper shack, turn up the knob labeled scratchy, and lay it on us, old man.
— CLAIRE O.
TODD SNIDER
Viva Satellite
MCA
I believe Todd Snider’s an alright guy, and this is an alright album. Only thing is, it could have been a darn fine album if it wasn’t cluttered up by so much filler.
The first sign of weak material is a useless cover of a song that was fairly useless to begin with, Steve Miller’s “The Joker”. Who needs it? Then, by the end of the CD, some of the songs tend to be forgettable clunkers. “Never Let Me Down”, for instance, sounds like it might be at home on one of those Greg Allman solo albums where Greg’s trying to convince everyone that everything’s just fine.
Then again, when Snider and his band the Nervous Wrecks are on, they are really on, as with sublimely rocking tracks such as “Positively Negative” and “Out All Night” (their Tom Petty-ish nature aside). Snider devotees insist that his live shows are bonafide rock ’n’ roll bacchanalias, and there’s definitely evidence of that here.
There are the obligatory echoes of Exile On Main Street, hints of Skynyrd and the Allmans, nods to psychedelia, and a big shoutout to Led Zep in “I Am Too”, which contains what may be the best line on the album: “I wanna hit this town ’til its teeth come out.”
While Viva Satellite will surely enhance the Wrecks’ reputation as a crackerjack band, many of Snider’s fans were initially attracted to him for his clever lyrics in songs such as “Alright Guy”. The only overtly funny song here is the last cut, “Doublewide Blues”, a look at life in a trailer park. At first it might seem that the target is too obvious, that the jokes have already been done by a thousand standup comedians. Yet, in context with the rest of the album, “Doublewide” is a wry culmination. Viva Satellite is threaded with tales of out-of-control, unsupervised teenagers (“My mom works/My dad’s gone/I skip school here all day long,” he sings in “Rocket Fuel”) and the mind-numbing traps of the lower-middle-class life (In “Guaranteed”, he declares, “I have made my wish on a satellite dish.”)
With fewer silly exercises like “The Joker” and a tighter focus on the storytelling, Viva Satellite could have been a revelation.
— STEPHEN W. TERRELL
JACK LOGAN/BOB KIMBELL
Little Private Angel
Parasol
Fans of Athens, Georgia, mechanic-turned-songwriter Jack Logan generally fall into two camps. On the one hand, there are those who gravitate toward Logan the do-it-yourself storyteller, whose shadow-filled sketches of prairie desolation and gothic paranoia are created with subtle, painterly strokes. Then again, other folks prefer Logan the ringleader, who regularly gathers his musician pals together to wallow in boozy three-chord bluster and searing rock ’n’ roll.
While both Logans exert a strong pull on Little Private Angel, what’s most striking about the album is how well it navigates the middle ground between those two approaches. A collaboration between Logan (who wrote the lyrics and vocal melodies) and Indiana-based songwriter Bob Kimbell (who composed the music and plays most of the instruments), this collection of songs is a decidedly nonextravagant affair, which is not to say it is frivolous or insubstantial. When listened to in full, the album leaves one with the sense of having heard an acoustically inclined garage band fronted by two gifted singer-songwriters.
Running a narrow gamut from majestic balladry (“Nerves Of Steel”) to jaunty pop-rock (“Fire On The Boat”), and even an excursion into blue-eyed funk (“220 Volts), Little Private Angel dips a toe into just enough styles to keep things interesting. Throughout, the songs teem with vocal harmonies that are downright spine-tingling; in fact, one is occasionally put in mind of such heralded duos as the Everly Brothers. Moreover, Logan’s work with Kimbell relies less on the apprentice charm that characterized his previous albums, and more on a sound that’s relaxed, confident, and fully developed.
Many folks know the story of Logan’s brief run at becoming a critically acclaimed songwriter and a media darling. Free of publicity machinery and concentrating once more on what he loves, his best work may yet lie ahead. — RUSSELL HALL
(Parasol, 905 S. Lynn St., Urbana, IL 61801.)
JUSTIN TREVINO
Texas Honkytonk
Neon Nightmare
Honky-tonk crooners have been serenading the Texas dancehalls since the beginnings of the genre, and while they’re not as ubiquitous as they once were, 24-year-old Justin Trevino is a worthy upholder of the tradition.
Comprised of eight classic-country covers, four originals, and two new songs written for Trevino by songwriting great Lawton Williams (“Fraulein”, “Farewell Party”), Trevino’s latest album (he recorded his first at the age of 17) is the real deal, its relaxed shuffles and heart-rending ballads masterfully evoking a melancholy world of dim lights and hardwood floors.
Cross Marty Robbins with Johnny Bush and add a bit of a lisp, and you have a rough approximation of Trevino’s soulful, dramatic croon. His own songs are rock-solid honky tonk squarely in the tradition and touching upon the time-honored themes of drinking, cheating, unrequited love and eternal devotion. Of particular note are the shuffling title song and the desolate “I Turn To The Wine”. Williams’ contributions are also stellar, especially the chilling “Lord Forgive”, a song from the perspective of a spurned man who’s about to murder his former lover and her new love.
Trevino nails all eight covers. Highlights include his sprightly version of Carl Smith’s “Let Old Mother Nature Have Her Way” and his operatic takes on Jeanne Pruett’s “Love Me” (which was also a hit for Robbins) and the Boudleaux Bryant-penned “Take Me As I Am”. Also excellent are two duets with his mentor, Johnny Bush: “Walk Me To The Door”, a 1963 hit for Ray Price, and the 1968 Bush hit “What A Way To Live”.
Bush also plays drums on the record (the Country Caruso drummed behind both Price and Willie Nelson in the 1960s), and a couple key members of Don Walser’s band (pedal steel guitarist Scott Walls and fiddler Howard Kalish) also provide accompaniment.
Trevino’s own production is at times a bit too plain to suit the richness of his voice and the often melodramatic material, but that’s a minor quibble with an album that’s aptly named: It’s sure to stand as one of the finest examples of Texas honky tonk in the ’90s.
— DON YATES
BIG SANDY
Dedicated To You
HighTone
After eight years and four records with Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys, vocalist Robert “Big Sandy” Williams has decided to (temporarily) set that band’s rootsy Western swing-abilly on the back burner and pay homage to two of his heretofore untended passions: early West Coast doo-wop and honkin’ R&B. And while few who have heard the Sand-man wrap his creamy, elastic tenor around a croonful, Tommy Duncan-esque swinger would doubt Big Sandy’s pipe-ability, the resulting disc is a collection of such exquisite, understated passion as to suggest that Williams’ main gig has merely been an exercise in denial.
With the aid of veteran local heroes the Calvanes (a fully-equipped vocal combo), pianists Carl “Sonny” Leyland (of the Fly-Rite Boys) and Skip Edwards (Dwight Yoakam band), and the raspy counterpoint of guest vocalist Dewey Terry (of the Don & Dewey duo, which originally waxed “I’m Leavin’ It All Up To You”), Big Sandy cruises through sixteen tracks — fifteen extraordinary chestnuts and a self-penned ringer — alternating brassy bravado on the R&B and heartbreaking vulnerability on the teen-angst arias of doo-wop.
The sound is bright, spare and immediate, all the while evocative of the music’s time and place. Ron Holden’s bleak “Love You So” paints a desolate, nocturnal cityscape which fairly bathes the listener in the cool pool of a 3 a.m. streetlamp’s light. Meanwhile, the Cufflinks’ marvelous “Guided Missiles” embraces the late-’50s straddling of the wonder and potential devastation of then-incomprehensible rocketry with eloquent, lost-love imagery.
As an unimaginable bonus, the recently-deceased Richard Berry (the sculptor of “Louie Louie”) is represented by loving treatments of two of “Louie’s” siblings — “Have Love, Will Travel”, and the even dumber “Yama Yama Pretty Mama”. Yikes! Anyway, as good as Big Sandy has been at dialing up West Texas memories, it sounds like his heart has been waiting at El Monte Legion Stadium.
— JIM MUSSER
Kevin Kirby used to play guitar in the Little Rock, Arkansas, band Ho-Hum. A few years back, they signed to a major label (Universal), put out a debut record, drove around the country, came home, got out of their contract, and released a second record on their own. Kirby is also a painter and the product of a small, Southern religious college.
Plenty of tension there, and much of it provides the central theme to Mulehead’s debut (Kirby is joined here by Ho-Hum’s ex-drummer, Dave Hoffpauir, and two friends). Kirby’s songs are full of the specifically Southern pull between Saturday night and Sunday morning, and are startlingly unguarded at times. Some times too much so; “Baby Brother” and “Kudzu” (the latter as a metaphor for love) are a bit saccharine.
For the most part, though, these are warmly confessional pieces, set off simply to a casual, country beat and carried by Kirby’s loping guitar. He proves a gifted songwriter whose themes and approach are slightly reminiscent of Billy Joe Shaver.
In some ways, Never Again sounds like a retirement announcement, as if Kirby is unable to reconcile the pull of the road, the bottle, and the muted pleasures of playing strange bars with his deeply held religious beliefs. Nowhere is this more touchingly expressed than in the final song, “Pray For Me”. He sings in a worn, morning after voice: “If you wanted/I could take you two-stepping/Out on that hardwood floor/Spin till we can’t spin no more/But I ain’t no dancer/And you ain’t my gal/Pray for me.” Do; pray that he continue.
— GRANT ALDEN