Shelving 2005: The Roots Shelf

Having adeptly avoided any performer pigeonholed among in Country genre while in the formative years of my musical tastes, I only knew Rodney Crowell from his two tracks on the late 80’s Hitchhiker Exampler compilation tape that I bought because of a Shawn Colvin song. More twang than I knew what to do with, yet Crowell’s songs of Christian faith lived out in the real world were more than I could simply ignore. Yet, somehow I let my knowledge of this songwriter’s skills remain locked in on those two tracks for more than 15 years. Therefore, when Crowell’s The Outsider (Sony Music Nashville) arrived in 2005, I knew I was going to be impressed, and that I had been waiting too long to hear Crowell’s crooning, Country-leaning, singer/songwriter, harking back to the rockabilly days sound. The Outsider proves to come at the Christian faith through Country music without all of that flag waving, “I found Jesus” stuff. Instead, Crowell can take on the voice of our selfish, sinful side in “The Obscenity Prayer (Give It to Me).” Crowell brings the spirit of a folk singer to his songs about God, allowing room for protest, questions, and challenges, as much as room for celebration and praise. Given the chance, I’d gladly write a devotional companion for this album. It’s got all of the marks of a work that can send you back to Scripture and searching for faith.

Pop vocal harmonies are laid like fresh sod over the rocky ground of the Country-influenced Rock on the Nadas’ Listen Through the Static (Authentic Records). The title track will warm the radio tubes of any radio enthusiast (“I drive, thought I might, but I can’t find/A frequency to change my mind”), while also championing indie radio over clear channel conglomerations (“I drive, tune the dial every mile/I search for a song that suits my style”), while also being a metaphor for searching for love, life, hope, and direction. The Nadas comes out of the static with a signal that strongly resembles something from the past while clearly coming from a new tower.

Sweet Baby (of) James. Ben Taylor (yes, son of James Taylor and Carly Simon) released Another Run Around the Sun (Iris Records), and you could take a cheap shot and say the album is just “another run around the father’s sound.” Young Taylor does have the hallmark jazzy toned folk singer style of his father, and at times, you could imagine that these songs were culled from the cutting room floors during the Elder Taylor’s later albums such as Never Die Young. However, like I said, that’d be a cheap shot, because that would ignore the truth of the matter: Ben Taylor dusts off the thick clouds of dust that have formed on his father’s sound. James Taylor songs once rang with a warm challenge, a folk wit, a jazzy turn, and an energy that didn’t get the 70’s airbrushed treatment. However, since then, the Elder Taylor’s songs have been relegated to coming out of bad speakers on office desk radio listening to the Soft Rock or Lite FM stations. Ben Taylor reaches back into the original language of his father’s music, grabbing the sensitive warmth that envelopes you like a sunspot through the window urges you to take a nap, and yet, the songs sneak up on you while you nap, causing your heart to race, your imagination to dream realities, and putting you on your feet with a direction to walk. Besides James Taylor, Ben Taylor also shows some hints of the 70’s folk of troubadour Gordon Lightfoot, the jazz-flavored guitar of John Mayer, and a dash of folky blues. The walking line of “I’ll Be Fine” grows on the distant sounds of the toms that break into the marching, horn-accompanied chorus, a groove that shows that really we should be calling him Sweet Baby Ben instead.

Prairie Wind (Reprise Records) has blown through my speakers a lot since the Neil Young album arrived. More than any of the disc’s other strengths, I keep coming back to track 2, “No Wonder,” an epic tale that grows with each verse without a true chorus. Like on Freedom with the epic “Crime in the City” as the second track, “No Wonder” could be an odd choice for so high a spot in the album order, because the song is nearly six minutes, doesn’t rock the free world, and begins in a fairly similar way to track 1 (“The Painter”)—acoustic picking on the guitar, a breeze coming up out of the tall grasses in the evening sun. However, with “No Wonder,” that’s just how the track begins. The song gets its intensity from the drum breaks leading to 8-bar blues electric guitar solos that shove you up one more level on the silo ladder, giving you more and more of a view of Young’s prophetic tale about America. The apocalyptic language here is sending me to find a way to parallel Young’s warning call to the United States and the warning cry of the Secomd Coming of Christ. Another glimpse of genius in Young’s songwriting is “He Was the King.” It could’ve just been another song about Elvis, but instead, the story is told backwards, singing “the last time I saw Elvis” on each verse that take us from his tragic last days to the early days. When Young gets to stanza 5 saying, “The last time I saw Elvis/He was fronting a three-piece band,”), we’ve arrived back at the Elvis that everyone should know in order to erase the overgrown, 70’s jumpsuit Elvis. It’s the Elvis of the great documentary, Elvis ‘56. It’s the Elvis who’s hanging around with Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, playing up that rockabilly which Young and the boys vamp on for their song. Two other comments: 1) Young leaves some studio talk on the front of this track, giving you a look into how these bluesmen find the way to lay down that opening F-chord line, and 2) stanza two says, “[Elvis] was singing that Gospel song/You could tell he had the feeling/And the whole world sang along/He was the king,” and you have to wonder—did Elvis think that he was the king or could you always tell that Elvis thought that Jesus was the king?

This Roots Shelf doesn’t lack for talented, veteran singer/songwriters. Rodney Crowell, Neil Young, and now John Hiatt. I’ve never understood professional wrestling, but Hiatt’s Master of Disaster (New West Records) recalls 60’s wrestling for the title track, the wrestling-like name Master of Disaster applied to a blues man who “gets tangled in his Telecaster” rather than the turnbuckle. Hiatt does it again—weaves a character-driven tale where it could be Hiatt himself (“Now he’s just a mean old bastard when he plays the blues”) but if it is autobiographical, certainly the song has a heavy dose of extreme self-deprecation. After all, besides the disaster of Hiatt’s early solo albums in the 80’s being tainted by goofy electronic drums and keyboards, his songwriting has never been a disaster. The title track calls back the 50’s rockabilly, complete with the fat-toned saxophone of Jim Spake. Elsewhere, like on “Howlin’ Down the Cumberland,” Hiatt is still pairing down the song to the rootsy folk blues and Appalachia which he explored on the previous album, Crossing Muddy Waters. “When My Love Crosses Over” takes up a rocking, driving blues throwdown which Hiatt hasn’t really revisited since Perfectly Good Guitar.

Looking at Fins, Chrome, and the Open Road: A Tribute to the Cadillac, you’d think that the Cadillac might come close to outdoing women as the inspiration for songwriters. This collection, licensed by General Motors, packs in 21 tracks dedicated to the Caddy. While I’ve never personally thought I’d want to own a Cadillac, there’s something about the name and mystique that makes it perfect for Roots sounds, a little rockabilly, blues, and country. Whether you’re driving a Cadillac, a General Motors cousin, or even some efficient, non-U.S. car, this compilation makes for great driving music. It’s also a fine introduction to some current Americana artists, such as Music Spectrum favorites Tom Gillam and Todd Thibaud. There’s one copy of the tribute to the Caddy in the Music Spectrum Giveaway Closet (see sidebar). Thanks to (95North Records).