Throwback Thursday – Keith Gattis – “Down Again”

1. Keith Gattis is one of country music’s best kept secrets. A longtime guitar player for Dwight Yoakam, he also has almost single-handedly kept Charlie Robison’s recent records stocked with great songs. His last release, 2002’s Big City Blues, provided no more than 5 songs for Mr. Robison, though Keith’s versions often trump his more famous friend’s. “Down Again” is one of these, where Gattis’ circular lyrics accurately illustrate a mercurial post-breakup feeling.

2. Beginning and ending his stanzas with the same line, Keith shows how quick the ups and downs can actually happen. He almost plateaus in the second stanza, resolving that “nothing’s changed except you’re gone”, but quickly spirals back into self loathing, commenting that “seems like all I do is wrong”. He also laments the fact that he can’t seem to keep from writing about his lost love, and he might be able to if he could quit writing songs. If there’s one thing he doesn’t lack, it is self awareness, as he seems to be able to simultaneously be in the middle of heartbreak and observe himself from the outside.

3. Gattis’ original, more stripped down version of this song deserves as much attention as Robison’s take, which fits perfectly into his latest record Beautiful Day, a record describing the ups and downs of a divorce. Though this “throwback” is only eight years, Big City Blues is a solid record from front to back, and one that warrants a lot more praise than it has received.

Keith Gattis – Down Again

Throwback Thursday – Steve Earle – “What’s A Simple Man To Do?”

1. Steve Earle hails from Schertz, Texas, just down the road from San Antonio, the home of one Doug Sahm. It is understandable, then, that some of Sahm’s influence might trickle down into Steve’s music. However, Earle chose to pay the man direct tribute on “What’s A Simple Man To Do”, from his 1996 record Jerusalem, which wears Sahm’s influence on its sleeve.

2. The song reveals itself in the form of a letter, read over a pumping Vox organ that would make Augie Meyers double take. A man who has transgressed on his promise to “never cross the border” tries to explain why he finds himself in America. After losing his job in the border factory, he explains that he met a man in Tijuana who gave him a job selling “red balloons”. Though he never meant to stay, he now reveals a little more about his location, saying he “never even saw the police comin’”. At the end of it all, he has few excuses other than being a “simple man” with few options in life, choosing to chase an opportunity.

3. Earle makes a statement (which is not at all unusual) about immigration, surrounding it with Sahm’s unmistakeable Tex-Mex sound. He gets in and out of the song in under two and a half minutes, but the song leaves a musical mark, if not bringing attention to a larger issue. Hard to speak for the man, but I imagine Doug would be proud.

Steve Earle – What’s A Simple Man To Do

Throwback Thursday – Terry Allen/John Hiatt – “I’m Not That Kat Anymore”

1. Doug Sahm had his own way with the blues. Filtering it through his own blend of British Invasion pop and the Tex-Mex he grew up with in San Antonio (a combination mythologized by Bruce Robison’s It Came From San Antonio), the blues became something else entirely. I covered Sahm’s Doug Sahm and Band on an earlier Throwback Thursday, but today, I would like to check out two versions of “I’m Not That Kat Anymore” filtered through a few near-legends, John Hiatt and Terry Allen. The song describes to a man with an identity crisis, who loudly claims not to be his flaky older self, but whose actions show that not a whole lot has changed.

2. Hiatt’s version, from the fantastic Heard it on the X, is closer to Doug’s original style, with the hard charging, Vox organ-fueled rock that Sahm built his name on. His growling voice delivers an earnestness for the listener to believe him, yet the song’s tempo and swirling sound show that life is going by too fast for the narrator to change his wild ways. A fuzzed out baritone guitar pays tribute to the border blaster Mexican radio stations of the early 60’s that broadcast rock and roll into the United States, presumably where Sahm first heard his British heroes.

3. Terry Allen’s version from this year’s Keep Your Soul has his typical (as of late) lurching, David Byrne via west Texas style. More of a recitation than a vocal performance, Allen’s rendition gives the narrator a little more swagger, only revealing a little bit of vulnerability when he admits that after getting his pleasure from “making the pretty girls hot”, he felt “lowdown”. Of course, immediately after, he offers to be on call for a presumed pretty girl, finishing up with the now-ironic declaration that he ain’t who he used to be. Allen’s delivery highlights the more unrepentant side of the narrator

4. Sahm’s original track showed a two-faced man, conflicted about who he wanted to be versus who others thought he should be. While Sahm was noted for his groove, his wry songs were too often overlooked. John Hiatt and Terry Allen show two sides of the same song, showing how much power of interpretation to paint two pictures of the same scene.

John Hiatt – I’m Not That Kat Anymore

Terry Allen – I’m Not That Kat Anymore