Country-influenced Rock: Hayes Carll's Little Rock

When newcomer Hayes Carll teamed up with Ray Wylie Hubbard to write a couple of songs for Carll’s album, Little Rock, they decided to help the world realize that even chickens have the blues. “Chickens” closes out the album with a country blues stomp about chickens in the front yard scratching and pecking. Meanwhile, a hungry Carll sings, “It ain’t meanness ya’ll/it’s just hungry’s what I am/There ain’t nothin’ in this world better than fried chicken yes ma’am.” Some jump blues percussion and country-fried steel guitar bring that chicken dance to life, as the Man sits on the porch choosing which one to wring by the neck first.

Carll’s Country-influenced Rock-abilly blues album has got its share of humor, jams, passion, and stories. It’s one of those Country albums that makes me want to like Country. In “Wish I Hadn’t Stayed So Long,” Carll ponders coming to the music city to follow his career, wondering about other country bands, “Do they do it for the money/Do they do it for the love?”

Carll “did of all that for song.” Carll does it for the music, the love of music, which makes Little Rock sound so different than Country Pop. It’s the kind of country music that could be embraced by fans of Americana, AltCountry, folk, and blues. There’s more twang here, but a John Hiatt fan wouldn’t feel out of place. As I had to admit with Tom Gillam, Country isn’t my bag, so I throw these guys into the Country-influenced Rock category of the Spectrum just to fool myself a little bit. Really, Carll is as country as they get, just that he’s the kind of country you can be proud of. There’s no fake twang, hollow pop tune lurking behind a ten-gallon hat. He’s got what we need in Country Music USA.

“Down the Road Tonight” is the kind of poem I used to write, just lumping together all of the disparate images and thoughts I was having. Carll brings this all together in a fine Country Rock sound. This is Carll’s “It’s the End of the World (As We Know It,” a bit of a rap-sing as the list goes on. It’s fun to find all of the connections, or at least make them up. So many of the things in the list you find resonating with you, because they’re things like Michael Jackson, holy rollers, high-school heroes, etc. Finally, the lyrics collapse into “da, da, da, da,” as Carll says, “I’m out of words people. That’s all I got. Americana woman, hip shake with me, baby.”

Speaking of Americana woman, Allison Moorer adds some achingly beautiful harmony vocals on the country folk blues of “Take Me Away,” which features some guitar embellishments like you might find on a Cliff Eberhardt recording. Moorer also playfully joins in on the country swing of “Good Friends.”

Guy Clark helped co-write “Rivertown,” a plaintive ballad which evokes that feeling of sitting on a warm day next to a river flowing past the broken down mills and loading depots. Carll’s liner notes say it’s a song about “a man wandering the earth looking for redemption before he dies.” The river could serve to wash away the man’s sins, but the rivertown also means the dark, shadowy life where no one asks too many questions about the past. Just like one of those river towns that has become just a collection of crumbling buildings on the banks of a town skipped by the almighty Interstate, so this man seems to have a crumbled life, wondering if he should just stay hiding out in the rubble of the past or if there’s renovation available.

Carll spells out the dream in the country stomp blues of “Sit it With the Band,” singing, “Just one time before I die I want to sit in with the band.” You hear the song, and you know the dream he’s talking about—getting called up to sit in for a set, getting to be on stage for just one small moment. Yet, with Little Rock Carll has assured himself of being the band on the stage. It’s you and me who listen who will have that dream to sit in with Carll and the band.

Thanks to Hayes Carll for the review copy.