C Is For...

Songs A to Z

My 26-day challenge to myself -- write about a different band every day, working from A to Z. And lest we get stuck in the 80s...

Commander Cody & 
His Lost Planet Airmen / 
"Wine Do Yer Stuff"

Mea culpa, mea culpa. I didn't know about these guys in 1971, when this track was released on their debut LP Lost in the Ozone.  The best I can figure out is that, even though they'd started at the University of Michigan in 1967 or so, they'd moved to San Francisco by the time they landed this recording contract. Just as I was migrating from the Midwest to the East Coast, they headed in the other direction and established themselves as a West Coast band. Which, in those pre-Internet days, meant it was easy to miss them altogether.

But even if it wasn't actually in my dorm room vinyl collection, spinning on my trusty pack-n-play turntable, this one brings back college days quite nicely all the same.

I will admit, as a kid I hated country music (I was probably forced to watch Midwestern Hayride a few too many times), but the genius of this band was to ramp up the twang, ditch the slickness, and replace cornball humor with stoner humor.  (I can't imagine Chet Atkins ever singing a song like "Down to Seeds and Stems Again.") I guess if they'd been willing to dumb it down, they could have gone the soft country-rock route of the Eagles.  Respect must be paid to them for never selling out like that.

What I love about their stuff is that the musicianship is so topnotch. There's that witty roadhouse boogie-woogie piano, played by the Commander himself, George Frayne; the counterpointed pedal steel (Steve Davis) and lead guitar (the inestimable rockbilly guitarist Bill Kirchen); and especially on this track, the nimble fiddle of the brilliant Andy Stein (who years later I'd meet in a New York City playground while our kids played together, who modestly told me "I'm a musician" without ever 'fessing up to just what a musician he is*).

True, that opening line is vintage George Jones lament, right down to the pregnant pauses: "Today was the last day / You played me for a fool / So I stopped in here like I always do /Before I lose my cool."

But things drift into irony mode as he woefully continues, in a hangdog voice: "Now the color of this warm red wine / Is the color of her hair / And as I stare into my glass / I see her face in there." Forgive me my English major tendencies, but he has now descended into what we call bathos -- mixed metaphors and all that stuff.  And so we're allowed to distance ourselves; he becomes a character, a meme, and we notice he's getting sloppy in his cups.

We can distance ourselves, AND AT THE SAME TIME kick back and enjoy the buzz. Feel free to chime in ever more raucously on the chorus, "Wine, wine, wine / Do yer stuff."

We can be dumb and smart at the same time. And high. Low culture, high culture.

Noam Chomsky would approve.

* More recently Andy's been playing with Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion house band, which is no mean notch on the resume. 

Summer Shuffle June 2016

First of all, I'm freaked out that it's 2016. But I'm moving past that, truly. And offering a panoply of tunes to make your June celebratory to the nth degree. 

1. I'm On an Island / The Kinks
From Kink Kontroversy (1965)
Oh, my man Ray Davies, the presiding genius behind the Kinks. And here, even as early as 1965, he was sectioning off the experiences.  I've heard that he will only ever sing this song on Iceland, the island for which he wrote this tune. Damn, I have a whole cabinet of Icelandic experiences, but Lord if I don't want to go to Iceland ONLY to hear Ray sing it.

2. Wake Up / Alan Price
From Rising Sun (1980)
Alan, you'll never know how much of my life was devoted to chasing you down, But here's a taste -- and a pretty good tune to connect to your iPhone alarm.

3. Man in the Bottom of the Well / Bill Kirchen with Elvis Costello
From Word to the Wise (2010)
Elvis, Nick, Bill. Need I say more? I cannot help but dig those majestic riffs, climbing out of the depths of whatevs..

4. Mondays / Killer Tuesday / Black Uhuru
From Liberation: The Island Anthology (1993)
I do love the random logic of the shuffle. Because how else would we get this exTREMEly copasetic track, which does go on and on, but hey, what else did you have to do with your time?

5. I Swear I Saw Christopher Reeve / Jill Sobule   
From Dottie's Charms (2014)
A Midwestern interlude, courtesy of my girl Jill. Who seriously I just. I've never been there but I know the place like the back of my hand. Check it out.

6. Staten Island Baby / Black 47
How much do we love Larry Kirwan's celebration of the Irish-American  experience?

7. Islands in the Stream /Bonnie Raitt and Nick Lowe
Oh, Bonnie my girl. I so love you. And yet -- you sang this with Nick? I can't even.

8. Birds in Perspex Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians
Quirky -- yeah, that's the RH thing.

9. Fire Island / Fountains of Wayne
How much do I love this deeply resonant, yet laidback track? This sums up summer to me.

10. House of the Rising Sun / The Animals
Lord. So much began here. Honor paid to Eric Burdon's iconic voice, but also to the rest of the Animals (including oh yes my hero Alan Price.)

R.I.P Dan Hicks (1941-2016)

Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks / 
"Walkin' One and Only"

Sad news indeed.

As a kid growing up in the Midwest, I never heard of Dan Hicks. At college in New England, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band did float onto my musical radar -- a retro kind of folk-swing-jazz-vaudeville hybrid that was just weird enough for pot-smoking hippies to embrace it.

But I had to move to England before I discovered the Hot Licks. (Who'd a thunk?) There, huddled on a lumpy couch in a half-heated student flat, my friend Craig, who'd gone to college in the Bay Area, spun Hot Licks LPs for me late at night. I was homesick and hungering for a taste of America; who knew that Dan Hicks would so perfectly fit the bill?

Dan Hicks -- an army brat born in Arkansas, who moved to San Francisco when he was five -- formed the Hot Licks in 1967, when Kweskin's outfit was practically at the end of their run, so I suppose Hicks can't be credited with inventing the genre. Still, his offbeat humor quickly took it to new heights.

And as San Francisco briefly became the apogee of the music universe during the Summer of Love, there were the Hot Licks, fiddling and harmonizing and harking back to a between-the-wars sound that may have only existed in Hicks' fertile mind. Sid Page fiddled like Stephane Grappelli while Maryann Price and Naomi Eisenberg sang like the Andrews Sisters, and in the middle of it all was the wry figure of Dan Hicks.

Dig that peppy tempo, the gossipy close harmonies. that little touch of Django Reinhardt in the bridge. This cool dude is out on the town, strutting his stuff, and all the ladies are paying attention. He's more about style than substance -- which, at first glance, was the Dan Hicks thing as well.

But don't be so quick to jump to conclusions. Dan Hicks could plug into existential angst as well.

And that retro thing? Well, what were San Francisco hippies about if not escaping middle-class Eisenhower-Nixon-era values? (And pointing the way for the rest of us.) Dan Hicks served it up with a healthy blast from what was then the past -- and it was just too appealing to resist.

These songs are now, for better or worse, hot-wired into my musical DNA.  I'm incredibly sad that Dan Hicks the man is no more. But Dan Hicks the musical escapist?  His fantasy world lives on and on and on. 

PS: Dan Hicks with the amazing guitarist Bill Kirchen, from Bill's delicious 2010 album Word to the Wise.  This song makes me laugh out loud every time I listen to it. Enjoy!

52 GIRLS

Two Shelleys:
A Nick Lowe Two-Fer

"Shelley My Love" / Nick Lowe

This track, from Nick's great 1994 album The Impossible Bird, is a perpetual mystery to me. On a album full of heartbreak gems like "The Beast In Me," "Where's My Everything?," "Lover Don't Go," and "I Live On a Battlefield," how does this one song of perfect love and harmony fit in? Frankly, it's not one of my favorite Nick Lowe songs, and not only because I wish he were singing it with my name instead.

You see, one of the things I most love about Nick Lowe is his clever storytelling lyrics, and those seem to have deserted him here. I tell myself it's all part of the song's scenario -- he's inarticulate, resorting to clichés, because he's so much in love, safe within the cocoon of simple happiness. But there's no room in there for me. 

Not only is there no story, we don't even learn much about this Shelley person (honest, I'm not jealous, I swear). All we see is her effect upon him. As soon as she calls his name, he's "all aflame," and "a passion fills my very soul." Now, I know we humans tend to fall back upon poetic clichés when we're in the grip of strong emotion. But I expect more of Nick Lowe.

Okay, there is some creative songwriting structure -- he picks up the second couplet of his first verse and repeats it as the first couplet of the second verse, adding two new lines about how extra-terrestrial and "supernatural" this love is. But that's hardly a villanelle, and again, it's all about his feelings, nothing about the girl who inspires them.

Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it allows one to imagine that one is oneself the girl Nick is singing to/about. (See, I AM trying here.) That slow two-step tempo is so relaxing, the melody wistful and beautiful as it caresses her name then soars upward. The arrangement is understated and perfect, with just a soft guitar, brushed drums, an exhalation of organ. Nick's singing is exquisitely tender and earnest (though even better is Rod Stewart's surprisingly effective cover version -- who knew?)

I should love it. What's wrong with this picture?

"Shelly's Winter Love" / Nick Lowe, Paul Carrack, and Bill Kirchen

Ah, now this is more like it.

On his 2010 album Word to the Wise, guitar god Bill Kirchen (a.k.a. "Titan of the Telecaster") offers a treasure trove of collaborations. I happen to like Kirchen's singing, but I'll forgive him for tapping ringers when the vocal guest list includes Elvis Costello, Maria Muldaur, Dan Hicks, and these two guys.

There's always a twang in Bill Kirchen's dieselbilly sound, and Nick Lowe needs little encouragement to turn country crooner. Paul Carrack may have played with everyone from Roxy Music to Squeeze to Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band, but after all, he was part of Nick Lowe's Cowboy Outfit in the 1980s. So when these three get together, why not cover a country gem?

And what better than this track from Merle Haggard's 1971 mega-hit LP Hag? It's a fair bet that Bill Kirchen (then in Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen) and Nick (then in Brinsley Schwarz) listened to Hag when it came out. (Could Nick even have been remembering it 20-some years later when he wrote "Shelley My Love"?) They sing this with all the fondness of a long-familiar song.

In this song, powerful love doesn't render the singer speechless; what it does do is fool him into accepting a less-than-ideal situation. "I know I'm only Shelly's winter love / She only seems to need me now and then. / I know I'm only Shelly's winter love / But she's mine alone till springtime comes again." Apparently a little bit of Shelley is worth the frustration, and he's making the most of the time he does have with her. That easy-ticking tempo is anything but mournful, and both Nick and Paul -- who trade lead vocals -- instinctively revert to the Haggard yodel on that brief triumphant boast "she's mine alone."

So is Shelley a fickle slut? Loyal to the core, that's not how he sees it. She leaves in the spring, it's true, but only when outside forces tempt her -- "When those friends of hers start callin' her from town." (In country terms, "town" is an evil force; in verse two it's her "painted world.") She's just a free spirit, country-music-style. But our hero waits patiently for "Shelly's winter season / When her troubled moments bring her back around." It's not just about the calendar, but the seasons of the heart. It's a weird kind of schadenfreude -- he's secretly happy when she's unhappy, because it drives her back to him.       

 

And who wouldn't return to such a faithful, understanding lover? "These arms of mine she knows are always waiting" -- how comforting that sounds. Yet he's no fool -- he's fully aware, in the second verse's last line, that "she'll leave when love has thawed the winter ground." 

 

I'm bursting with questions about this scenario. Is Shelly just using him? Will there be a day when she stops coming back? Will he finally get fed up? Will she finally realize he's the best thing that ever happened to her?  We'll never know, of course. But for four minutes or so, I'm living in the push-and-pull of their relationship, and registering every break of the singer's voice, every plangent guitar riff and piano fill.

 

That's a song that works.

23 DOWN, 29 TO GO

SATURDAY SHUFFLE

Here's a slightly different twist -- this shuffle is not from my full music library, but my huge Vacation playlist, designed to provide road tunes for the July 4th exodus.  Pop it in the car's music player and enjoy!

1. Call Me The Breeze / Alan Price and Rob Hoeke
From Two of a Kind (1977)
Sorry to start out with an obscure one -- even I wouldn't own this album if it hadn't been for my lifelong Alan Price fandom.  Here he pairs with Dutch keyboardist Rob Hoeke (AP has this thing for collaborations with fellow keyboardists, from Georgie Fame to Zoot Money) to make a swinging little album that's actually a ton of fun.  Really, it should be better known.  This J.J. Cale cover is considerably peppier than J.J.'s laidback version; it really lets out the clutch and takes off.

2. Tighten Up Pt. 1  / Archie Bell and the Drells
From Tighten Up (1968)
"Hi everybody, this is Archie Bell and the Drells, of Houston, Texas. We don't only sing, but we dance just as good as we walk!"  Poor Archie Bell was already serving in Vietnam when the record he'd cut just before being drafted hit the charts.  It was all over the airwaves that summer, agitating dancing bodies everywhere, a marvelous melange of irresistible riffs cycling from instrument to instrument.  ("Tighten up on that bass, now....Now look here, we're gonna make it mellow now!")  A long cool drink of pure summer fun(k).

3. Helen Wheels  / Wings
From Band on the Run (1973)
Hang on tight!  Paul McCartney -- determined to prove that he could rock out without the Beatles -- tore into this road song with no brakes whatsoever. The internal combustion of those twin descending guitar riffs, the pavement-pounding drums, the thrumming bass line -- hell on wheels indeed! 

4. If I Had $1,000,000 / Barenaked Ladies
From Gordon (1992)
Barenaked Ladies are right up there with Commander Cody, They Might Be Giants, and Flight of the Concords in my pantheon of comic rockers. I love the call and response on this ambling country rocker, as the singer earnestly offers his riches to his true love -- but as for what he'd buy her with his lottery winnings... 

5. Rango Theme Song  / Los Lobos
From Rango Soundtrack (2011)
Fandango gave me this song for free after I went to see this animated movie last winter. (Okay, so I'll see anything with Johnny Depp in it -- wanna make something of it?)  But it soon earned a permanent spot in the rotation, a campy take on the classic western theme song, mariachi horns and all. 

6. She Loves the Sunset / Old 97s
From Blame it On Gravity (2008)
Throw in a cha-cha beat and some pedal steel twang and what do you have?  This winner by the delightful Old 97s.

7. Shiftless When Idle  / The Replacements
From Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out the Trash! (1981)
Well, this one sure puts the garage in garage rock.  Nobody else has ever stuffed this many car puns into one song, with the possible exception of Little Village's "She Runs Hot."  It only lasts 2:18, but that grinding gear-shift guitar, the relentless bashing drums, and Paul Westerberg's slightly strangled vocals defiantly break the speed limit, cruising with the top down, tossing beer cans out the back as they roar into the night.  


8.  Young Americans  / David Bowie
From Young Americans (1975)
Bowie put on his soul shoes, hauled in a gospel choir and a hot sax (David Sanborn!), and lit up the discos in the summer of '75 with this hectic take on American culture. ("Blacks got respect and whites got Soul Train...")   Bowie himself described it as "plastic soul . . . the squashed remains of ethnic music as it survives in the age of Muzak rock, written and sung by a white limey."  Yep, that pretty much nails it.


9. Gone, Gone, Gone / Colin Farrell
From Crazy Heart: The Soundtrack (2010)
Who knew Colin Farrell could sing country?  As if Jeff Bridges' mesmerizing performance in this film wasn't enough, and all those superb Ryan Bingham-T. Bone Burnett songs too. This song nails the dieselbilly sound perfectly -- "I was born on a flattop two-lane, / Picked up a guitar, and every day I'd sing / Till I was gone, gone, gone..."   You just gotta drive to this one.

10. One More Day / Bill Kirchen
From Hammer of the Honkytonk Gods (2007)
Well, speaking of dieselbilly -- here's the king himself, pickin' and grinnin' with a fiddle and roadhouse piano.   "Well I reckon we all gotta pay the diagnosis / So I'm turning my two weeks notice / Then I 'scuse myself while I kiss the sky . . . I'm gonna live it up like there's no tomorrow / Crank up the love, turn down the sorrow, / Get my ducks in a row for one more day!"  Hey, a little shot of carpe diem philosophy is just what you need when you're heading out the door for vacation!

My Holiday Album Buying Guide

Nothing I like better Christmas morning than to find neat little 5-by-6-inch wrapped rectangles under the tree.  (Used to be 12-by-12-inch -- but there, I'm dating myself.)  And if you're like me, you don't want to leave the selection of your new holiday tunes up to chance and the questionable tastes of your friends and family -- you want a readymade list of excellent new CDs to request ahead of time. Why, you might even want a list of CDs to buy for other people, while we're at it! Normally I'm not much of a list-maker -- well, not like Uncle E, at least -- but as a public service, herewith is my end-of-year round-up . . . .

1. Imaginary Television
Graham Parker 

I  love this record for many reasons, but mostly because it's the album that got me back into Graham Parker, launching a months-long voyage of discovery.

I first blogged about the track "Always Greener"...


2.  Lonely Avenue

 Ben Folds and Nick Hornby

 Well, technically it's just Ben Folds -- British novelist Nick Hornby
 doesn't perform on the records, he just contributed the lyrics.  Just.

Check out my blog post on "Belinda."

3.  No Better Than This
John Mellencamp 

I won't defend every record John Mellencamp's ever made -- I'll just say that this stripped-down, acoustic, monoaural, back-to-the-roots effort may be the finest thing he's ever done.

Here's my take on "Love At First Sight."

4. The Grand Theater, Volume One
The Old 97s

This Austin-based outfit definitely keeps the alt in alt-country, and I have never yet heard a track by these guys that I didn't like.  This new album is just insanely smart and funny and fun to listen to.

Check out "A State of Texas"... 


5. My Dinosaur Life
Motion City Soundtrack

Neurotic emo-pop is so not my thing -- so why I'm such a fan of this band?  Witty little portraits of slacker angst, amped up with tons o' melody and a mosh-pit tempo.

Exhibit A: "Skin and Bones"

6.  A Word to the Wise
Bill Kirchen

Now for something completely different -- the rumpled musings of veteran musicmaker Bill Kirchen, accompanied by an amazing set of equally experienced guest stars. 

Take a spin with "Shelly's Winter Love" and you'll see what I mean...

7.  ContraVampire Weekend

Okay, so those duelling Subaru and Hilfiger commercials have pretty much ruined the perky world-pop charm of "Holiday." Nevertheless, the fresh sound and lively indie energy of this young band started 2010 out on a very high note for me, and I still grin when any of this album's song rotate up on my shuffle.

Here's where I started, with  . . . yes, I'm afraid it was "Holiday".  But maybe someday we'll be able to enjoy it again!

8. The 88
The 88

I'll admit that Ray Davies' seal of approval gave this L.A. band a huge boost in my estimation.  But there's nothing not to like about this tight, melodic album, which takes pop music back from the schlockmeisters and gives it a good name again. Sorry, I never got around to posting here about this album, but I did review it for Blogcritics.

9. Junky Star
Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses

Bingham's work on the Crazy Heart soundtrack vaulted him onto my alt-country playlist; this album proved to me that was no fluke.  I've only started listening to this one -- haven' t done a blog post on it yet -- but trust me, there are plenty of dark, nuanced, twangy pleasures to be found here. Townes Van Zant would approve, I suspect.

10. Propellor TimeRobyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3

I want to resist -- but I can't.  If Robyn Hitchcock's peculiar psych-folk-punk music is a minority taste, then count me in that minority.  The odder his lyrics get, the more off-kilter the melodies become, the happier I am.Inexplicably, I never got around to reviewing any tracks from this album; in lieu of that, may I provide a link to the weird and wonderful video for "Ordinary Millionaire".


11. Brothers
The Black Keys

So who says we have to quit at 10? If we did, I wouldn't be able to mention this album -- another fairly new acquisition that I haven't yet written about -- a deeply, deeply funky artifact by a duo that look like standard-issue Williamsburg hipsters.  Go figure.  All I know is, these tracks put me in a souled-out trance, putting the hip in hypnotic.

12. Soulsville
Huey Lewis & the News

Let's make it an even dozen, then, and throw in my old boyfriend Huey Lewis, who delivers a heartfelt tribute to the vintage soul numbers that inspired his own career. A guilty pleasure, perhaps, but it is full of that patented Huey Lewis genial charm, and if it's not a groundbreaking, it is listenable as hell.

I did blog about this one, homing in on "Respect Yourself."


Still got room for a few more stocking stuffers?  Let's throw in Jon Lindsay's Escape From Plaza-Midwoodand Edward O'Connell's Our Little Secret, my two great slush-pile finds of the year.  Of course we're already looking forward to 2011 for the US release of Ray Davies' See My Friends and Greg Trooper's Upside-Down Town (no Amazon link yet but I'll keep you posted). The music never ends!

"Shelly's Winter Love" / Bill Kirchen
with Nick Lowe and Paul Carrack

File this away in my Wish I'd Been A Fly on the Studio Wall folder.

Bill Kirchen's new CD, Words to the Wise, really should be listed as Bill Kirchen and Friends, since just about every track features some "guest artist" who's a longtime musical pal of his. Considering Kirchen's eclectic career -- from the late 60s with Commandy Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen, to the Moonlighters, to the Impossible Birds and countless other sideman gigs -- he's amassed impressive credentials as a triple-threat guitarist, songwriter, and singer. As one of the guys who "invented" Americana, he's been hung with the tag King of Dieselbilly, but in truth he is so much more.

Yet Bill Kirchen is such a generous guy, so modest about his own amazing talent, he graciously stands back and lets his guests take the spotlight on each track. And the line-up of guests reads like my iTunes: Elvis Costello, Paul Carrack, Dan Hicks, Maria Muldaur, Commander Cody (a.k.a. George Frayne), and best of all, the divine Nick Lowe. That roll call, however, doesn't fully convey the best thing about this recording: its mellow vibe. It's clear that everybody Kirchen invited was thrilled to sign on, and they simply had a blast in the studio.

Truth is, it was hard to choose which track to share with you today. (Which means this CD will probably soon make a return appearance on this blog.) The title track, a duet with Dan Hicks, is a delightful romp, as is his reunion with Commander Cody on "I Don't Work that Cheap"; then there's the rueful "Husbands and Wives," a cover of a Roger Miller tune, on which Kirchen duets with Chris O'Donnell, formerly of Asleep at the Wheel. (Kirchen doesn't get enough credit for his poignant numbers; check out my previous post on "Skid Row in My Mind.")

But flesh is weak, and in the end I succumbed to the obvious. C'mon, I haven't written about Nick Lowe in ages! And there's Paul Carrack too! How could I resist?



Considering what longtime collaborators Lowe and Carrack have been, you'd think there'd be more photos of them together on the InterWeb, at the very least group shots of Nick's Cowboy Outfit. No dice. The best I could do with this homemade video is to plug in separate shots of each guy at the point in the song where he's featured -- that's Paul with the shades, Nick in the white shirt, Bill in the blue. I should also add that the shimmering piano accents are courtesy of Austin De Lone, who originally brought them all together. Though De Lone is American, his band Eggs Over Easy launched the 1970s pub rock movement in London, in which Nick (via Brinsley Schwarz) and Paul (via Ace) got their start; later, when Austin and Bill played together in the Moonlighters, trans-Atlantic introductions were made, and lifelong bonds were formed.

As for this track, it's a cover of a Merle Haggard tune, from 1971's Hag. According to Kirchen's wonderful liner notes, "Nick and Paul tell me they had Merle Haggard's "Shelly's Winter Love" by the Osborne Brothers on a tape while touring the US, and would sing it together on the bus. Why reinvent the wheel, I thought? I just let 'em at it, and tried to not get in the way." By stripping away the pedal steel and adding harmonies, Lowe and Carrack give this tender ballad an Everlies-like plangency.

Forget the awful pun on Shelley Winters' name, which must have kickstarted this song in Haggard's imagination; this is no mere novelty tune. The conceit is that Shelly is a restless woman who never stays put for long; the singer hooks up with her every winter, but he knows she'll be flying away by spring. While he accepts that, it's clear from every lovesick yodel in this song that he'd rather have her to himself year-round -- but he'd rather have a little bit of Shelly than nothing.

I happen to love Bill Kirchen's voice, and I'm sorry he didn't take a verse himself, or at least chime in on the chorus. Still, we've got that middle eight, in which Kirchen twangs a lovely solo. If you've ever seen Bill Kirchen in concert, you'll know that he can rip up a guitar solo like nobody's business. Yet that would have been totally out of place in a wistful song like this, and Kirchen has unerring taste in such matters.

That's the virtue of having been in the business for forty-plus years -- Bill Kirchen doesn't have a dang thing to prove. Making a record is just a wonderful excuse to hang out with his friends -- and oh, what friends they are.

"Skid Row in My Mind" / Bill Kirchen

I should have known about Bill Kirchen. After all, he was in Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, a 70s band that set many roots-rockers on the honky-tonk road. But silly me: I thought Commander Cody was a heavy-metal band and I never listened to them. My bad.

Now I'm making up for lost time, and buying Hammer of the Honky-Tonk Gods is my first step. A word of warning: Kirchen's probably best-known for those smokin' Telecaster riffs on "Hot Rod Lincoln," first with the Airmen and again on various solo efforts. Maybe it's a guy thing, this awe of the blistering-fast guitar solo, but if that's what you desire, you may feel let down by this album's laid-back groove. Not me. I'm properly impressed by those truck-driving songs that earned him the nickname King of the Dieselbillies, but I prefer this drive down the blue highways.

Kirchen has said he was trying to focus on songwriting this time around, and I dig all his original songs on this album. But my favorite track was written by Blackie Farrell, a Bay Area songwriter Kirchen's known since the Commander Cody days. "Skid Row In My Mind" fits into a category I call Lovable Loser Songs: sung by a guy whose woman has left him, whose life's comically falling apart. (Check out John Hiatt's "I Don't Even Try" or Nick Lowe's "Lately I've Let Things Slide" for more in this vein.)

"Skid Row In My Mind" starts off with a classic scenario, in a lonely hotel room: he's listening mournfully to the radio, drinking whisky straight from the bottle -- "I'd like this whiskey more / If it was in a real glass on ice / But this bottle feels just right" --- staring out the window at a tantalizing view of his old house. I can just imagine the red on-and-off glow of the Vacancy sign, hear the rattle of ice cubes in the machine down the hall. It's made even more believable by Kirchen's slightly gruff ordinary-guy voice (am I the only one who hears him as Willie Nelson without the whiny quaver?).

But then the song takes a surprising turn into John Cheever country. He may be feeling like a bum, but he's not a bum at all, and the contrast between the two is intriguing. "So I get up, shower, and shave / Buy the USA Today / And on my way to work I slip a bum a five / I've got proof of my success / On my office wall and desk / But in this frame of mind I'm barely half alive." Now he's got my attention all right. And then he adds a poignant detail that Hiatt and Lowe never got to: "Tomorrow I'll run over / Try to see the kids at recess time / Then I'll hide so they don't run to me..." Suddenly I find myself wondering how his wife feels, what went wrong, who was to blame -- the whole drama opens up.

The tempo's appropriately slow and sluggish, almost dazed; the arrangement's country-ish, but uncluttered -- a serviceable drumbeat, a rueful organ sighing here and there, a little piano plinking around. (I'm listening for the bass really hard, since it's Nick Lowe playing, but I can't quite hear it.) But then comes the interval, and Kirchen lets fly with a series of elegant guitar arpeggios that's simply heart-breaking. With that one master stroke, he turns the comedy into wistful tragedy . . . and I'm gobsmacked.

Take a listen: http://www.emusic.com/album/11011/11011472.html?fref=150051