Country-influenced Rock: J.J. Cale's To Tulsa and Back

Like John Hiatt, J.J. Cale’s career as a singer/songwriter took off when his songs covered by other artists. Those cover versions of “After Midnight,” “Call Me the Breeze,” “Magnolia,” and “Cocaine,” became more popular than his own versions. However, like John Hiatt, we’re much blessed to have Cale singing and playing his own songs, producing rich music today and not just working in the Brill building.

Cale (not to be confused with John Cale of the Velvet Underground) has just released a new album on Sanctuary Records called To Tulsa and Back. Originally from Tulsa, Cale returned to Oklahoma to record this album with friends from the Tulsa music scene, performers he had played with in the bars around town some 40 years ago. The result is a Country-influenced Rock album full of country swing, rockabilly, Mississippi River blues, and hometown bar band warmth.

I’ve only been to Oklahoma once, camping in a park just north of the Texas line. Yet, I can really hear Oklahoma in these songs. I can imagine pulling up to an intersection of dirt roads in the arid plain. As the dust settles around the car, there’s J.J. Cale and the band playing at the side of the road. What a band is doing playing in the ditch of an out-of-the-way intersection isn’t clear, but it actually seems like that’s what’s supposed to happen.

Cale’s music is for squinting in the sun, for watching the sun the set while cigarettes and beer bottles line the ground, for seeing the town lights begin to glow in the distance. Cale’s music is for contemplating the loneliness of the landscape while also being the soundtrack of people coming in from the loneliness, gathering at the local watering hole.

The Country-influenced Rock found on To Tulsa and Back finds kinship in Mark Knopfler’s (Dire Straits) solo work, especially Golden Heart. It is country with a blues scale at its disposal, country that’s not afraid to swing with jazzed up horns. Cale’s voice is similar to Knopfler’s, melodic while bordering on spoken chants, sustained tones while also using clipped phrases, deep and reserved with some back-of-the-throat higher notes and out-of-the-corner-of-his-mouth like delivery.

To Tulsa and Back also brings Bob Dylan’s Love and Hate to mind. Dylan’s venture into rockabilly is reserved like Cale’s approach. This isn’t the neo-swing of Brian Setzer or the rockabilly-bordering-on-punk which has become so popular. This is rockabilly of the country sort, the acoustic blues, a laid back, a holding back, a rocking rhythm observing the world as it goes by.

I immediately can see a film version of a song like “Rio.” The salsa beat shows the nightclub scenes in Rio de Janeiro, dancers, musicians, clubbers, bright lights among the night, bright colors and flash, handheld cameras catching it all. Meanwhile, the film keeps coming back to a stationary camera on Cale and the band playing on a street corner in Rio in front of an abandoned storefront. You sense the city moving around them, but they play on, Cale’s drawl-growl-mumble coming with a squint and bedraggled stare. The world is moving at a fast clip around this observer, a chronicler who isn’t caught up by the motion and lights, a storyteller who is at once experiencing the story but also separated from the story. “Rio de Janeiro/This steamy place that you are/Rio de Janeiro/I’ve come to love you from afar/To test the water of your sea/Feel your sensuality/Walk your boulevards.”

Thanks to J.J. Cale and Sanctuary Records Group for the review copy. J.J. Cale Live is available on Backporch Records.