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
Five Records with… Gordy Quist
Posted on | October 23, 2009 | 2 Comments
I talked to the talented Gordy Quist from the Band of Heathens last week, who recently released One Foot in the Ether, their second studio record and fourth overall. You can read a review of that record’s first single “L.A. County Blues” here. Five Records is an occasional feature of artists talking about the music that inspires them. Read more of these posts here.
“My aunt and uncle sent me a copy of The Jayhawks album Hollywood Town Hall when I was about 13 or 14 and just starting to play in bands. Although most of the music I was playing at the time was much heavier, that album struck me as both a songwriter’s album and a band’s album, which was something I was after.”
“Echo is one of my favorite Tom Petty albums, even though it’s pretty dark and didn’t have the hits that some of his other albums did. He’s an artist who has continued to write great songs, put out great records, and still tours with a great rock ‘n’ roll band.”
Orphans, Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards
“I was listening to a lot of Tom Waits stuff while we were in the studio making One Foot in the Ether. Specifically, the Mule Variations album and the triple album Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards. They’ve both got some amazing songs and interesting sonic textures and arrangements.”
“I wish I had written the song, “The Dirty South”, from the Gary Floater album A Hero Never Learns.”
“The Magpies are a band from Cleveland and they’re great live and they put out great albums”
Band of Heathens – “L.A. County Blues”
Posted on | October 7, 2009 | 2 Comments
1. The impressive thing about the Band of Heathens is the way they are able to assimilate influences and turn it into something else. When “L.A. County Blues”, the first track from their new record One Foot in the Ether first ripped out of my speakers, I did a double-take to make sure I hadn’t slipped in Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. The stomping rhythm and twangy guitar riff sounded familiar, but when I got to Ed Jurdi’s soulful rasp, it felt different — and comfortably new. I must admit that I am somewhat of a purist — I tend to get skeptical when I hear genres like “country-blues-soul-gospel-rock”. I would much rather a band be excellent at one of these than just decent at a mixture of all of them. However, on this track the Heathens reach beyond the sum of their influences and create something that stands on its own.
2. The lyrics, which pay tribute to “gonzo by the 7th grade” legend Hunter S. Thompson, speak of an outcast, struggling to find his fit in the world — from his arrest in Louisville as an accessory to robbery and his fictional alter ego Raoul Duke, “blinded by a quart of rum and a dose of mescaline”. Jurdi manages to sum up Thompson’s blissfully irreverent life with a sound just as freewheeling and distinctly American. I hear a lot of different voices in this track — Richard Manuel, Patterson Hood, Gram Parsons — but none of these outshine the Heathens themselves.
3. The Heathens are first and foremost a live band, and the production on this song actually showcases their chops better than their two previous live albums. Formed as the Good Time Supper Club from the simultaneous sets of the three singers and writers, things congeal for them on “L.A. County Blues” to the point where they create something better than the sum of three good singer-songwriters — a loose, organic feel with a great mix that shows off all the best things about them: Colin Brooks’ nasal, Lowell George-breathed slide, Gordy Quist’s ace high harmony, and Jurdi’s husky tenor. Genres can be analyzed and categorized, and hidden meaning can be found everywhere, but when something works, it works. The simple, well-told story of an American iconoclast,”L.A. County Blues” feels good, and that is sufficient for me.
Band of Heathens – L.A. County Blues