Jakob Dylan – “Everybody’s Hurting”

With a set of music that T-Bone Burnett calls “the best batch of songs he’s ever brought to me”, Jakob Dylan takes a more intimate turn from the roots rock of the Wallflowers into a sound that evokes the mystery and mythology of the most rural parts of America. One of three songs from the Women and Country EP, which previews the full length of the same name, “Everybody’s Hurting” takes a common feeling of America and sets it in the musical context of its past.

Opening with an ominous rumble, followed by Dennis Crouch’s upright bass and rolling drums, a woozy fiddle introduces Dylan’s familiar rasp. He admits to worriedly pacing, asking God where he has gone, or “have we just left you bored?”. He continues the biblical imagery, referencing the “milk and honey” that he and his companions lack. Neko Case and Kelly Hogan join him for the chorus, which give a sonic lift to counter the lyrics of despair.

Dylan’s America is similar to the country that his father and The Band mined on The Basement Tapes, as well as the people that inhabited O Brother, Where Art Thou, another T-Bone Burnett vehicle — a land unforgiving (“the evenings are cold enough to pluck your feathers out”) and barren (“we’ve hunted these hills dry/we’ve long outlasted the winter and our last wood pile”). This image of “country” isn’t the commonly heard caricature of rural people, but a realistic portrayal of the hard times that Stephen Foster famously recalled. The parallel to our current recession culture is apparent, as Dylan remarks that “we’d sell this valley if we could”. His outlook isn’t without hope, as he understands that faith asks him to believe what he cannot see, but the reality of his surroundings makes that difficult.

Musically, Burnett envelops Dylan’s voice with his now-trademark sound, using his same band from both the Crazy Heart soundtrack and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ Raising Sand. The layers of acoustic, organic sound and perfectly placed harmonies make the song as musically compelling as the subject matter.

Jakob Dylan deserves to be judged on his own merit, ignoring the large shoes he has been expected to fill since birth. With “Everybody’s Hurting” (and the rest of this fantastic EP), he furthers his already-proven ability to make compelling music that stands on its own.

Jakob Dylan – Everybody’s Hurting

Ryan Bingham – “I Don’t Know”

1. As music industry pundit Bob Lefsetz said (paraphrased), its a crazy world we live in when fake country music created for a movie is better than most real country music out there. I find that there is still a lot of good country music being made today, but I agree that the Crazy Heart soundtrack has some great vintage sounding numbers. Maybe this should be a Throwback Thursday post, since Ryan Bingham’s version of “I Don’t Know” sounds so much like a Waylon outtake — and that’s not a bad thing.

2. Ryan’s voice accompanies a trebly guitar over spare sounding drums to great effect, creating a live feel with a bit of Sun Records brightness. Bingham finds himself in limbo, wondering what to make of a relationship, noting that he could “write a book” about what he doesn’t know. Truth be told, there isn’t a lot more to this song, lyrically speaking. Its strengths lie in its heavy backbeat and simple feel. Once upon a time, music didn’t have to reach climactic emotional peaks with string sections and boys choirs to have an impact. In turn, Bingham is able to capture a simple feeling of uncertainty and let that be enough.

3. This track, written by T-Bone Burnett and Stephen Bruton, has its roots in the 70’s outlaw country movement that produced Jeff Bridges’ fictional character. In the film, Bingham and his band back up Bridges at a stop in New Mexico, taking over when Bridges is racked by sickness. In the real world, Bingham is a perfect candidate to continue blazing the outlaw trail, with his latest offering being a great blend of 60’s rock and troubadour country (read my review of “Country Roads”). Burnett and Bruton have produced a soundtrack that fits seamlessly with the music from that time period, and with enough musical integrity to stand alone, apart from the film. Bingham’s personal style fits well enough to make this track a success.

Ryan Bingham – I Don’t Know

Ryan Bingham – “The Weary Kind”

1. Funny that Ryan Bingham would write a song with “weary” in the title, since most of his reviews mention that word in relation to his raspy drawl. In fact, Bingham is creating quite the brand for himself — the whiskey drunk, sweat soaked troubadour with miles of highway behind him. He reinforces this ethic on nearly every song, which might become cumbersome if his music wasn’t growing by leaps and bounds. From his raw debut Mescalito to the more focused, yet still cheerily irreverent Roadhouse Sun, Bingham has grown his sound to include both a healthy dose of the Byrds and an harder rocking sound. With this new song “The Weary Kind”, from the forthcoming movie Crazy Heart, Ryan takes a haunting tone, warning the listener that the life he lives (and he really lives it) is not for the faint of heart. The film, a story about a wayward country singer, which Bingham’s own story weaves closely enough with that the song manages to be both autobiographical and fictional.

2.  T Bone Burnett produced “The Weary Kind”, layering it with an appropriate cinematic drama, like gathering storm clouds. The backing track is murkier than anything Bingham has approached before, but he manages to make it work. Layering woozy pump organ and pedal steel over spry fingerpicking, Bingham lays out a few situations typical to the lifestyle of Jeff Bridges’ main character: playing poker, shooting 8 ball at a truck stop. After a quick, somewhat cliched chorus, he goes a bit deeper, as his character is “sweating out the hate” with the “whiskey…a thorn in [his] side.” The song strings together the life of this wanderer to a point that is almost too much — revisiting lines heard often in Bingham’s songs. The third verse is completely unflinching, with Ryan blaming the character (or himself) for lost love, being so direct as to assert that “you are the man who ruined her world.”

3. A key item to remember is that this song was written for a film, in which Bingham and his Dead Horses serve as Bridges’ backing band. I can see how the song happened, with Burnett stumbling across Bingham’s work and asking him to contribute a song. This sounds more hastily written than his album tracks, with a few clumsy rhymes that seem a little too easy. What makes this work is the way Bingham sells it — he doesn’t have to stretch to know the lyrical territory, and he sounds at home in the arrangement. Last time I checked there was nothing wrong with an artist wearing a song too well, and that point is proven here.

Ryan Bingham – The Weary Kind