Country-influenced Rock: The Good Sons and Michael Weston King

The Good Sons’ Cosmic Fireworks
Nick Dalton’s liner notes to the two-disc Good Sons retrospective, Cosmic Fireworks: The Best of the Good Sons, 1994-2001, overstate the case of the Good Sons being pioneers of Americana and AltCountry. With the band’s first release coming in 1995, there’s just too many others ahead of them to call the Good Sons pioneers. Were they influential, though? That is more clear, especially from a European perspective.

This retrospective collection released this year by Phantasmagoria gives the listener a good taste of the range of Country-influenced Rock created by Michael Weston King, Phil Abram, Sean McFetride, and Ben Jackson. They can rock when they want, too, but they always keep the traditional, acoustic sound close at hand. There’s some slide guitar and organ, there’s some typical Country chord progressions, but nothing as obvious as the Country radio of the 1990’s. The Good Sons show how they were developing the Country-influenced Rock, passing on the baton that had been handed to them from many different directions.

Hear all of those batons in the Good Sons: Bruce Springsteen, Townes Van Zandt, the Jayhawks, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, John Hiatt, Little Village, Nick Cave, the Byrds, and the Band. You see, there’s too many previous runners to call the Good Sons the lead off men. However, on Cosmic Fireworks, there’s no missing the hand off, the carrying on of this Americana sound. . .coming from England.

When I traveled to Great Britain in the late 80’s, I took along my Walkman and cassette tapes, a select few tapes in my small backpack. I chose from my collection all of the UK bands, the UK sounding bands, the music that made me imagine those foggy, green hills, those lorries and double-decker buses. Yet, what I didn’t even realize then in my Smiths tunnel vision was that Americana was a growing art in Europe. To find musicians taking Country Rock to new heights you didn’t travel West, young man, as one might expect; you had to travel East from the United States, east across the Atlantic to Europe where artists are still producing some of the best Americana. Even this fine Good Sons collection comes on Phantasmagoria, a German label.

Just as I’ve mentioned before how I feel like the Byrds sound much more like English Rock than purely American Rock, so there’s Americana like the Good Sons which puts Country Rock through that European filter. That doesn’t keep me from putting the Good Sons near Lone Justice/Maria McKee and the Raindogs in the much more American section of Country-influenced Rock. This is based more on the rockier bits; much of the earlier album finds more twang than strum, more warble than buzz.

The rockier bits:
“Angles in the End” jams like a combination of the BoDeans and the Alarm. “Mathilda” wears a bluesy blouse, a late in the show, smoke hanging in the air, not-wanting-this-feeling-to-end kind of song. “Both Sides of the Faith” has a dance beat found on some of Jim Keltner’s work with Little Village. “Reason to Live” is Buddy Holly rock by a country bar band. “Sad Sad Truth” (demo version) pulls all of these rock bits together with tons of energy.


Michael Weston King’s A Decent Man
We’ll jump to the rockier bits on Michael Weston King’s most recent solo effort too. The album opens with “Celestial City,” a Springsteen-dipped-harmonica from The River era. The title track begins with a nod to the horns of the Band while also surrounding itself with the Britpop approach to Country Rock. Led by Steve Jackson’s pounding drums, “High Days Holy Days” rocks the most on A Decent Man, the building introduction having much in common with the Byrds’ “Feels a Whole Lot Better.” Finally, rocking in its own Country Blues way, “The Englisman’s Obsession with America (Part 2)” (a.k.a. “The Backyard of my Mind”) is a gem.

King’s lyrics could be plumbed for all of the spiritual themes—and possibly traps. It’s a little hard to tell whether the spiritual references come from King really exploring these issues or do they more act like metaphors, vehicles for his actual topics. Given the music’s genre, they’re the right metaphors to grab, invoking those Christian images prevalent in the Old West, the South, Country music, Blues, and Gospel tunes. However, even in the Old West, those Christian images were like window dressing, like a façade which decorated Manifest Destiny with a spiritual gravitas while spiritually it was rather vacant. That’s my fear here; the spiritual dimension doesn’t travel to heart of the matter when Jesus is invoked.

Yet, when an album doesn’t make clear statements about the faith, that often makes it all the more appropriate for SongDevotions. Down the road, “A Decent Man” might make a rather decent study exploring the struggle with sin and humility. “Celestial City” might draw on the Celestial Kingdom idea in Mormonism, a fine lead-in to a discussion about whether the Church of Jesus Christ—Latter Day Saints have a Scriptural view of eternal life and God’s grace.

King walks a very fine line between being a rock warbler and just a country warbler, which is a line between rock artistry and parody. I’m afraid at times King falls onto the side of a country singer parody. However, when he’s on the other side, he’s on. He takes all of the sweetness of country ballads but holds them closer to the rock edge. He takes the full-throated warble but adds that rock singer punch. He’s a folk singer doing a country song while hitting some bluesy chords with some fitful distortion coming around the bend.

Thanks to Michael Weston King, Phantasmagoria, and Twah! for the review copies.