Adam Carroll – “Highway Prayer”
Posted on | December 22, 2009 | 2 Comments
1. Ryan Bingham has made sure to let everyone know that the traveling life of a musician is not for the faint of heart. I covered “The Weary Kind” a few weeks back, and it does an able job of warning would-be musicians about the hardships of his occupation. “Highway Prayer”, originally from Adam Carroll’s 2008 release Old Town Rock and Roll, is an inversion of that — offering encouragement and support to those who might find themselves trapped in such a life. The upcoming release Hard Times has Michael O’Connor taking over vocals, with his rasp adding a good bit of weariness to the song.
2. “Highway Prayer” begins by specifying the groups to whom the song is written: those who “the road is all that matters”, that “live on borrowed time”, whose “seeds in life are scattered”. It takes a subtle personal turn, as Carroll dedicates the song to “those who have lived on next to nothing/ playing in a bar in Jacksonville”, a town just down the road from his home of Tyler. The chorus warns such people not to “stay too late” or “cry too long”, for soon they will be back home, regaling friends and family with stories of their travel.
3. When Carroll identifies himself with those weary travelers in the second verse, the song gains another layer, functioning as a support message for travelers and an internal mantra, repeated over and over again as the white lines fly by. Gabe Rhodes’ harmonium gives this song the appropriate hymnal feel, as it salutes traveling musicians that have gone by and ones to come. “Highway Prayer” is a stunning song, delivered simply enough for everyone to understand it, but with implied weight well beyond its verses.
Michael O’Connor – Highway Prayer
Adam Carroll & Michael O’Connor – Hard Times
Posted on | December 8, 2009 | 1 Comment
1. In case you have forgotten the power of an album, in this age of 30 second audio samples, digital only singles, and increasingly short attention spans, Adam Carroll and Michael O’Connor would like to refresh your memory. Hard Times, the new collaborative effort between the two, stands as a complete song cycle about one thing: Gulf Coast losers. Carroll has made a career of writing about wretched people who live off the beaten path, while O’Connor is better known for being a sideman for Slaid Cleaves and Susan Gibson, among others. This record finds them writing together on most of the songs, revealing the intricacies of those who live on the south coast of Texas and Louisiana.
2. “New Years Eve” finds Carroll sketching the figure of a hard luck musician “turnin’ water into wine” over O’Connor’s wailing slide guitar, before moving into “Bernadine”. In this tale, a man with slightly better luck becomes a winner, despite being a self proclaimed “run down low rent Gulf Coast loser” and begs a woman to “make [his] hard times shine like gold”. After losing all his money in the second verse, the whore becomes the saint Bernadine, and he promises to “cast his nets into the Galveston Bay” in exchange for a little help. O’Connor’s raspy voice outlines the often simultaneous desire for pleasure and salvation.
3. “Billy Gibbons’ Beard” circles around a drunk with a “bar tab twice as long” as the title who just wishes he had another shot at high school, when he passed up on an opportunity to touch the famed guitarist’s facial hair. O’Connor’ follows it up with “Throw a Nickel”, another character study that traces the money trail from the poor into the hands of the law and the clergy. Carroll uses the title track to follow another down and out loser whose friends seem to be the only ones feeling the effects, until he buys a round for the crowd of one at a bar that turns out to be BYOB.
4. O’Connor’s “Bottle Down” assures that “all the liquor in your veins”, presumably as a result of the recession, “has got you in the devil’s chains,” as he pleads with a loved one to abstain, while Carroll adds a smoldering harmonica, before lightening the mood with the bouncy “Tired Of Myself”, asking “can I be somebody new?”. The pair cover each other on the next two tracks, with Carroll tackling “Sleepy Town”, which follows two fallen stars who contribute a lot of action to their unsuspecting home. O’Connor takes on Carroll’s “Highway Prayer”, which previously appeared on his most recent record Old Town Rock and Roll. A stirring tribute to drifters, road warriors, and “those whose seeds in life are scattered”, all beautifully underscored by producer Gabe Rhodes’ harmonium. After a short harmonica interlude, they finish the record with the thesis statement, “Gulf Coast Losers”, penned with Gordy Quist of the Band of Heathens. The song looks out from the viewpoint of a man who knows his place in the world, “choking down hot boxed wine” but perfectly content with his social standing who enters an ill-fated battle of the bands (against some out-of-towners named “Billy Gibbons’ Beard”).
5. Carroll and O’Connor have crafted a complete record about a slice of life where there is little to do but laugh. Managing to realize the effects of an economic recession and combine it with a healthy dose of absurdity, they create a song cycle that entertains from beginning to end and reads like the best Larry Brown novel he never wrote. However simple life may seem in this part of the world, it is no less complex, and these two approach it with reverence. This is more than a collection of songs — it is a true album, full of inside jokes, references, and carrying themes from song to song. Releasing on the first day of 2010, Hard Times sets a standard for craftsmanship that is going to be tough to top.
Michael O’Connor – Highway Prayer
Owen Temple – “Memphis”
Posted on | October 19, 2009 | No Comments
1. It might be an understatement to say that “Memphis is not what it used to be”, as Owen Temple repeatedly does in “Memphis”, from his recent release Dollars and Dimes. In fact, most of America is not what it used to be. Dollars and Dimes is not a nostalgic record, rather, it delves into the small stories that inhabit the forgotten areas between our big cities, and in doing so, finds the stories that make America what it is: land of freedom, land of hope, land of failure, land of dreams, and on and on and on.
2. Opening with a flurry of producer Gabe Rhodes’ chiming guitars, Temple encapsulates the experience of leaving Arkansas and heading across that glorious bridge over the Mississippi in search of a better opportunity. His female protagonist leaves after her “mom’s boyfriend and a tornado tore up her home”. She “left behind her old clothes”, and dumps pictures along the highway, symbolically shedding her identity and seeking to reinvent herself. Unfortunately, few jobs are available and she is forced to use her body, which she had “learned how to use”, at a seedy club in order to make ends meet. There is a commentary here on the moral degradation of the city, but the same words ring true: “Memphis is not what it used to be.” Regardless of the nature of her work, his lead character makes “three thousand a week” before the government shuts it down in a drug raid, and things get tight again. After she makes plans to move to Houston, Temple reveals his interaction with her — asking “what else in town” he should see, before she shuts him down with the same caveat heard so many other times: “Memphis is not what it used to be”.
3. I don’t think that Owen Temple is picking on Memphis, but rather making a statement about the fading glory of middle America. Over Hunt Sales’ thudding drums (which also graced Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life and David Bowie’s Tin Machine), he tells the story of someone in search of the American dream who finds something entirely different. This might be something that more people can relate to in these times rather than “reality” television or the misleading jargon of politics. Temple finds an America that is personal — one not defined by state lines as much as the people that inhabit them. Things might not be that different in Memphis than they were in Arkansas, or than they will be in Houston if there isn’t personal change. That is a refreshing thought for our country, and I would be glad to hear more songs like this.