Americana Reviews

Randy Newman     Cam Penner     Bruce Molsky     Ben Bedford      Furnace Mountain     

Sam Baker    James McMurtry        Pierce Pettis     Sara Watkins      Gurf Morlix      

Eliza Gilkyson        Eric Taylor       Darrell Scott       

AJ Roach       Hayes Carll      Crosby Tyler

 

David Olney, The Village, Leith

 

David Olney doesn’t tour over here with a band. He doesn’t have to. Between his own sturdy rhythm-and-riffs guitar playing and his trusty sidekick, Mark ‘Sergio’ Webb’s extraordinary range of accompaniments, Nashville-based Olney gives a performance that borders at times on the orchestral. In fact, it’s a kind of travelling music theatre show.

 

Songs aren’t just sung; they’re put in context, prefaced by pronouncements and tales – tall and otherwise – and explained, although many a red herring is served, such as the hand on heart mourning of America’s worst ever railway disaster that turned into a savage declamation of Olney’s baby as a train wreck.

 

Olney covers a lot of ground, culturally as well as geographically. Artists such as Durer and Vermeer and characters ranging from Edith Piaf to John ‘Public Enemy No 1’ Dillinger get his mojo working and there’s even a song about the Titanic – written menacingly from the iceberg’s point of view.

 

All the while Webb, looking like an inscrutable extra from the Magnificent Seven, conjures brooding slide guitar patterns, raucous Telecaster licks and sustained, cello-like acoustic swells before, as Olney celebrates his girl in Sweet Potato’s western swing-style cook off, producing an improbably articulate chords and solo sequence with his left hand fingering the strings from above the guitar neck, piano style.

 

His little piece of showmanship, Webb calls this. It’s hardly little. But as Olney immediately afterwards lends his weathered voice to a hellfire preacher-like reading of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan in introducing the murky Way Down Deep, it’s just one further ingredient in a show packed with incident, amusement, contrast and fine, fine songsmithery.

 

From The Herald, May 26, 2010.

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Randy Newman, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow

 

No-one’s retiring from rock ‘n’ roll. This observation from Randy Newman may not be everybody’s idea of good news and everyone will have their own candidates for the little home in Florida that one of Newman’s lyrics maps out for when the time comes. But now into his bus pass years, Newman certainly isn’t ready for the rocking chair.

 

In a generous two-set performance, the man responsible for some of the wittiest and most poignant songs of the rock era reaffirmed that he arrived on the scene as an exceptional songwriting talent and that he’s kept up the standard all the way up to his latest album, Harps & Angels, and doubtless beyond.

 

A music scene without Newman would deprive us of a man who can mock himself as readily as his targets to piano accompaniments that hint at Scott Joplin, player pianos and the rolling Mississippi, who can open a concert with six classic songs in fifteen  minutes, all telling very different stories, and who can shine a mirthful light into the world of movie soundtracks where – dammit – bits of Toy Story are unwatchable because they have no music from our self-deprecating hero.

 

Newman may not be able to reach all the notes that Nina Simone put into his Oh Baltimore or even Alan Price sang as Simon Smith. He probably never could. But that matters not a jot. As the drinker in Guilty or the star directing his riposte to We Are the World or any other of a host of vignettes, seated alone at that piano, he’s a politician’s scourge, sometimes soul-bearer but mostly just great company.

 

From The Herald, May 18, 2010.

 

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Cam Penner, Trouble & Mercy (Prairie Boy)

 

Cam Penner isn’t the first Canadian songwriter whose words have been perfectly suited to Levon Helm’s Southern farm boy tones but since Helm is doing okay, thank you, with his late career resurgence, any musical partnership between the two will have to wait. Besides, Penner has a voice of his own that’s appealingly careworn and confiding on these eleven songs that reek of realism, cheap motels and life on the margins. His hero on Roam details his meagre assets with one eye on the bank around the corner before hitting the road and Thirteen finds us sharing a cell with a condemned prisoner brooding on his unlucky number. Occasionally reminiscent of Sam Baker in his spare storytelling and hurt, breathy delivery, Penner has an ear for simple poetry whose stark power is enhanced by arrangements that add sparely used accordion, piano, banjo, organ and strings to his own gentle acoustic guitar picking, harmonica, foot stomps and knee slaps to create compelling American folk dramas. 

                 

From The Sunday Herald, April 25, 2010.

 

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Bruce Molsky, Edinburgh Folk Club

 

It’s tempting to describe Bruce Molsky as a human iPod but while that would convey his ability to draw, at random, from a repertoire as large as it is impressively diverse, it fails to appreciate how all that music got into his memory without the luxury of downloads.

 

Just how a city boy from the Bronx became so fluent in old time Appalachian fiddling as to sound like a North Carolina native who’s never set foot beyond Surry County would be a story worth telling in itself. Molsky, though, has assimilated much more of American – and Scandinavian, and Balkan – folklore in developing into the twenty-first century equivalent of those Southern States roadhouse players who could make people dance to any one instrument.

 

If no-one was doing any steps here, that’s no reflection on Molsky’s musicianship. His opening pair of fiddle tunes had vigour, drive and wild Virginia flavour enough to make any joint jump and his Johnson City Rag, played on his newly restored guitar, probably had too much style and note-bending subtlety to be reduced to a mere vehicle for lost inhibitions. 

 

Across a panorama of empathetically observed cowboy ballads, honestly delivered a cappella gospel song, exuberant dance tunes magically transposed from Balkan brass band onto just six strings and – you don’t read this phrase very often – soothing banjo rounds, Molsky cast his self-effacing spell. I particularly enjoyed his celebration of Bahamian guitarist Joseph Spence, whose relaxed, calypso-imbued blues sounds like Big Bill Broonzy reclining in a hammock, but that was the apple pie in a gig that, as a whole, justified the notion of music as soul food.

 

From The Herald, April 23, 2010.

 

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Music, Ben Bedford, The Village, Leith

 

Ben Bedford has a handy rule of thumb for defining what qualifies as a folk song. If the protagonist dies, it’s folk; if not, it’s just pop music. By his own yardstick, then, the Springfield, Illinois native is a folk singer. But if the body count during his set was sizeable, the overall mood was anything but mournful.

 

Bedford is a serious student of American history. The Civil War looms large in his repertoire and his well developed reportage style of writing puts the listener right in the heart of the action, be it in Lincoln’s Man, where a soldier from the south joins the Union army, much to his family’s understandable pain, or in Fisher’s Hill, where the hero rues the loss of his wedding ring, left behind on the arm he had amputated.

 

These, along with harrowing tales of life on the frontier and the unforgiveable treatment meted out to Emmett Till in one of the civil rights movement’s defining incidents, may be far from cheery topics. Yet Bedford has a way of introducing them that’s light without trivialising and informative without preaching.

 

His presentation is complemented by his wife, Kari, adding harmonies to his strong, clear singing - shades of Emmylou Harris flanking Gram Parsons, with a role reversal on Townes Van Zandt’s Tecumseh Valley allowing Bedford to focus on his natural talent for guitar accompaniments. If occasional songs strayed into slightly over sentimental territory, these were generally outweighed by Bedford’s ability to approach even subjects as much-visited as Amelia Earhart and mining disasters and offer the fresh perspective of one of the most promising storytelling songwriters of his generation.

 

From The Herald, Monday, March 22, 2010.

 

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Furnace Mountain, Fields of Fescue (Shepherds Ford Records)

The American roots music motherlode just keeps producing treasure, none more winsome and exciting than this quartet who take their name from one of Virginia’s most prominent peaks and their repertoire largely from the old time, bluegrass and folk ballad traditions. Combining unadorned, honest singing with fiddle tunes that evoke both keening bagpipes and lonesome train whistles interlaced with brilliantly audacious mandolin breaks, Furnace Mountain sound like a marriage between the Be-Good Tanyas and the best bits of Nickel Creek - except with true Appalachian soil caked onto their boots.
 
From The Herald, January 9, 2010.

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Sam Baker, Cotton (Music Road)

Cotton completes a trilogy that Sam Baker began with the harshly beautiful Mercy in 2004. You don’t really need to know that Baker suffered a near-death experience at the hands of Peruvian terrorists to appreciate the finely chiselled, struggle-to-survive poetry of his songs, although it may help. What emerges from these tales of tenant farmers, teenage rites of passage and serving girls is a kind of radio play, set to an understated soundtrack by Baker’s hand-picked band, full of real-life characters and told by a parched, honest voice that makes their situations all the more compelling.
 
From The Herald, September 5, 2009.
 
You can read more about Sam Baker in the Americana features section.
 
 

James McMurtry & the Heartless Bastards, Bongo Club, Edinburgh

Storytelling runs in James McMurtry’s blood. His father is Larry McMurtry, author of Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show and a shelf-load of other great tales, and try as I might not to saddle the son with chip off the old block references, there’s strong evidence of a literary talent being handed down in his songs.
 
It’s there in his characterisation. Delivered in a suitably weathered voice, McMurtry’s songs are peopled by men and women who live real, tough lives from which there appears to be little escape and their stories are set to music that chugs and rocks with a precise determination that almost makes you feel guilty for feeling so good while the dark stuff’s happening in the lyrics.
 
McMurtry has a dry wit. The space between the front row and the stage is not a security zone, he notes in trying to coax the good people of Edinburgh up for a Monday night boogie. Truth be told, most of us are paying too much attention to storylines about drunken fathers causing havoc and characters who’ll “maybe get lucky, maybe get shot” or the solo acoustic, out west epic of Ruby and Carlos to get to our feet as well as stamp them.
 
There’s humour in the songs, too – Red Dress borrows Winston Churchill’s famous line about being sober in the morning while the object of his scorn will still be ugly – and for a guitar, bass and drums line-up, augmented later by the admirable Tim Holt’s searing, understated guitar solos, there’s great variety in the arrangements to match McMurtry’s talent for a memorable melodic hook.
 
From The Herald, October 14, 2009.
 

Pierce Pettis, City Halls, Glasgow

 
Pierce Pettis has a nice line about how it feels for a songwriter to hear his songs being covered by someone famous. Prefacing You Move Me, which Garth Brooks took into millions of cars, Pettis remarked that hearing the country star singing words he’d written was like having the furniture suddenly talking.
 
A sometime in-house writer at the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound studio in his native Alabama and a staff writer for Polygram in the 1990s, Pettis, who has also written songs for Joan Baez and Art Garfunkel, is yet another example of the rich seam of singer-songwriters working below the popular acclaim radar in America.
 
His songs are literate, lovingly crafted snapshots, bringing love affairs, teenage exploits and small town parades to vivid, often witty life. With a voice reminiscent at times of Bruces Cockburn and Springfield, and maybe No Other-era Gene Clark, he communicates with his audience on a very personal, ordinary Joe level but with guitar picking ability and harmonica creativity way beyond the workaday.
 
A superb cover of Jesse Winchester’s deeply evocative, bluesy Talk Memphis and an appropriately metered and phrased guitar instrumental for his train engineer grandpa, both introduced with mirthful, self-effacing preambles, complemented a selection of original songs deserving much wider attention.
 
From The Herald, October 9, 2009.
 

 

Sara Watkins, Sara Watkins (Nonesuch)

Sara Watkins emerges from the indefinitely mothballed Nickel Creek as much more than a cog in a scarily accomplished young bluegrass wheel. Produced with masterful restraint by Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, this debut album reveals Watkins as an assured, knowing songwriter in the old-time-country-gospel tradition and a singer-fiddler who’s not only as conversant with mountain music rusticity as she is western swing sophistication but who can also invest Tom Waits’ Pony with lovely vulnerability. A noteworthy cast assists but it’s Watkins’ talent that shines, quietly but emphatically, on a collection that grows with every play.
 
From The Herald, April 4, 2009.
 
 

Gurf Morlix, The Village, Leith

The Village’s modestly proportioned music room was well stuffed on Tuesday. Stuffed with people. Stuffed with music in a bumper, three-set evening. And stuffed with the characters who populate the songs of Texas music all-rounder, record producer, singer, songwriter and musician Gurf Morlix and his opening act, Danny Schmidt.

 

Demonstrating an uncannily close relationship between his voice and his rare Martin guitar, Schmidt sang of bank robbers betrayed by the very people they were procuring money to impress and pet owners found guilty by association with bean-spilling parrots to superbly stylish, gutsy and swinging guitar accompaniments in a set that was over far too soon.

 

If Morlix doesn’t have quite Schmidt’s guitar dexterity, he has a thrilling directness in his playing and a repertoire of stories and declarations that adds an extra dimension to the songs he sings – both his own songs and a catholic collection of others.

 

The bizarre life and death of American Atheists founder, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, with its black humour heightened by a re-ordered chorus from Dry Bones, a scout camp ditty honouring Bonanza’s cast and theme, and recollections of Morlix’s sometime sofa guest, the singular musical poet-cum-hooligan Blaze Foley, formed one mighty trilogy. A stark reworking of Ringo Starr’s Don’t Pass Me By, a terrifically raw Milk Cow Blues and a raging Jelly Roll, driven by Morlix’s penetrating foot percussion, formed another.

 

In two hours he covered vast expanses of American life, geography and culture but Morlix’s ultimate accomplishment is that, whether noting the frighteningly increasing relevance of Bob Dylan’s With God on Our Side, or mourning a personal tragedy in his own Voice of Midnight, what he sings, he means.

 

From The Herald, April 30, 2009 

 

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Eliza Gilkyson, Beautiful World (Red House)

Austin-based Eliza Gilkyson has gathered a loyal Scottish following through the sincerity and sheer attractiveness of her singing and her classy, sharply observed songwriting. These qualities are all reinforced big time on this collection, which also emphasises Gilkyson’s natural ability to change styles from the folky Wildewood Spring and dreamy title track through to Runaway Train’s potent blend of Texan rock and sardonic lyrics. High quality stuff all the way with a masterful parting shot in Unsustainable, which her dad, Bare Necessities author Terry, would have coveted and which could easily become a jazz standard.

From The Herald, July 26, 2008

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Eric Taylor, Hollywood Pocketknife (Blue Ruby)

Eric Taylor may not enjoy as big a profile as Texan singer-songwriter colleagues and contemporaries such as Guy Clark and the late Townes Van Zandt, but he's certainly in the same class. His live performances are routinely spellbinding and his albums are consistently satisfying, showcasing a winning combination of spare storytelling and a voice that always sounds like it's done Taylor's research with him. Standouts here include the calloused, jazzy Jail Widow's Walk, partner Susan Lindfors's country soul singing on her own A Matter of Degrees, and Taylor's weary but determined Better Man.

From The Herald, October 6, 2007

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Darrell Scott, The Invisible Man (Full Light)

The fact that more people recognise Jade Goody than know Darrell Scott is one of the crimes of the 21st century. Scott is an immense talent: a brilliant guitarist, outstanding songwriter and a one-man Smithsonian of American vernacular music. Having confirmed his mastery of classic rock styles - Hank Williams's Ghost is a distant cousin of Sweet Home Alabama; I'm Nobody distant kin to Little Feat's Two Trains, but with deeper roots - Scott goes on to "do" Pat Metheny on the guitar break during And the River Is Me. On top of all that is the voice: Lowell George reborn with sex appeal, warm enough to tak skin, deep enough to swim in. Scrumptious.

From The Herald, February 17, 2007

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AJ Roach, Laurie’s Bar, Glasgow

Anyone who thinks that Roots Music has become no more than a handy marketing term for essentially acoustic music with little actual geographical or historical relevance should investigate A J Roach toute suite, the tooter the sweeter. Roach may now have relocated to San Francisco, but his songs and singing are as immovably Virginian as the Blue Ridge Mountains.

From his opening Richmond Town, sung a cappella, Roach took the audience packed into the backroom that serves as home to the estimable Fallen Angels club, on a backwoods travelogue that was virtually a masterclass in illustrating how much sophistication goes into creating so-called primitive music.

The events and characters in Roach's carefully-crafted songs are almost wholly non-time specific. There are dodgy sheriffs and peculiarly rural addictions, coal-mining tragedies and sweethearts tempted away by greater riches. What makes them all so alive and so real in the here and now, though, apart from Roach's slyly humorous onstage manner and invoking of current events, is the gripping quality of his voice and singing.

In a rich vocal timbre that at times recalls the battered but stoic, gospel resonance of No Other-period Gene Clark, Roach shapes every phrase to give maximum, natural impact to the plain-spoken imagery that he mostly sets against a guitar style that can be mesmerising in its miniature orchestrations or deceptively simple banjo patterns. It's his unaccompanied singing, however, that really underlines the long traditions that he draws on – and in the case of his final (or at least pre-encore) riveting hymn, that tradition might even stretch all the way back to the Mayflower.

From The Herald, February 7, 2005.

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Hayes Carll, Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh

An hour in, Hayes Carll decides that his audience is being too polite, so he turns director and suggests that a guy stage right make an improper suggestion to the bloke next to him’s wife. Somebody else should pour a beer over someone’s head and everyone’s invited to yell “play Freebird” at will.

This is all so that Carll and his two-man orchestra will feel more at home, although up to this point they’ve done a terrific job, as the best Texan troubadours do, of making the venue we’re in feel like it’s been transported into the Americana heartlands.

If the audience is attentive that’s because Carll’s words are worth hanging onto, whether they’re the true to life tales that he packages with a direct melodic sensibility and a rough as Sunday morning vocal tone or part of the dry, knowing wit that comes in between the songs.

Sometimes the wit, the authenticity, the voice and a damn fine tune all come together, as in Good Friends’ apparently near factual update of Carll’s high school class. Sometimes the result’s agreeably daft – try Chickens with its breeding for the plate practicality and Scott Davis’ wop-op-a-wop guitar lines. Other examples are quite simply classy, swinging rockabilly, with Davis and dobro player Travis Linville trading apposite mandolin and slide licks between Carll’s potent verses. The piece de resistance for now, though, is She Left Me for Jesus, as clever a tale of faux dumbness as has ever been penned.

From The Herald, September 23, 2008.

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Crosby Tyler, The Village, Leith

Red nose day came early to Leith Folk Club on Tuesday. But then, every day – or at least every gigging day – is a red nose day for Crosby Tyler, who by adding the smallest detail of a clown’s stage gear manages to get deep into the character he portrays in his nostalgic Good Old Circus Days.
 
A guitar and harmonica rack aside, the red nose is Tyler’s only prop in a show that reveals the soft-hatted, careworn voiced Los Angeleno to be as much theatre director as troubadour, marshalling a rich cast of characters, including the clowns, drunkards and crazies of the Tex-Mex flavoured Payasos Borrachos Y Locos, war veterans, fugitives, refugees, hobos, bozos and sundry bluesmen, and making them all come alive.
 
Tyler only inherited this first Scottish tour when his producer and mentor, the marvellously characterful singer-songwriter-guitarist Peter Case, took ill and had to undergo heart bypass surgery. The fact that all proceeds, less travelling expenses, are going towards Case’s hospital bills should, however, allay any suspicions of opportunism. Besides, Tyler’s talent would have earned him a booking here in his own right.
 
A naturally gregarious character, he involves his audience from the moment he sets foot onstage, inviting them into the neighbourhood he lives in, sharing his enthusiasm for Big Bill Broonzy and Leadbelly, getting them to sing along to songs about cotton and, um, other crops, and mixing the light-hearted with the sincerely and movingly personal. If his notion that we might all be speaking “Scotanish” – rather than his Hispanic neighbours’ Spanglish - by the gig’s end proved a mite hopeful, it was a rare misjudgement in an absorbing debut.
 
From The Herald, February 19, 2009
 

 

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