Shelving 2005: The Southern Rock Shelf

When Robert McCutheon’s voice greets you singing, “Walk on,” on American Minor’s debut self-titled album (Jive Records), and then Bud Carroll and Josh Gragg’s guitars do their Mississippi burn, it’s got all of the punch of AC/DC while blending that with heavy doses of Lynyrd Skynrd and the Allman Brothers Band. Play a little air guitar while you jam out to the first track, and then when the second track, “Break,” comes, the realization hits you: this is what the Black Crowes could’ve sounded like if they weren’t so busy being the Black Crowes. It’s Southern Rock dragged through a mess of blues—country blues, 60’s blues rock, 70’s blues rock, Stones, and Zeppelin. It’s Z.Z. Top without the long beards while being armed with stories from the trails like the Band. A world-weary, watch-yourself blues sings about “Cheaters & Non-Believers” set to guitar twangs that rise so high. “Mr. Queen,” as elsewhere, is a blues built around big heavy rock drum breaks from Josh Knox. Those drums smash down to lead Carroll and Gragg to do their own smashing, low chords without forgetting to let the blues loose. While the rest of the discs on the 2005 Southern Rock Shelf will go spine out, American Minor’s deserves to be cover out—drawing my attention every time I’m looking to wallow in the blues of the world and conquer them armed with incredible guitar.

Earlier this year, the live album that I couldn’t stop talking about was Darrell Scott’s Live in NC. Another live album that fully takes you inside the club that you probably weren’t at is Roy Rogers & the Delta Rhythm Kings’ Live! at the Sierra Nevada Brewery Big Room (Chops Not Chaps Music). Listen to the beginning of “Mellow Apples,” and Rogers’ slide guitar could be enough; he’s a one-man band every range of sound of that guitar. However, then the Delta Rhythm Kings enter, taking cues from the slide ‘n’ wail of Rogers, punctuating his guitar dance like a crowd’s dancing enlivens the visual effect of a song. While the album was recorded in Chico, California, we’re down south with these blues at the end of the Mississippi in the Atlantis that was New Orleans. “Gertie Ruth” could be possibly be one of the finest pints pulled at the Brewery Room with its playful, chicken scratch blues, Shana Morrison’s harmony vocals, and Tom Rigney’s fiddle.

He’s the one who helped create swamp rock, a Southern Rock sound cooked up for bayous, jambalayas, and sweat-drenched nights. It’s such a raw sound, but over the years, the sound of John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival has gotten dusty. Every track on both volumes of Chronicles deserves accolades, but years of repetition as a greatest hits collection—whether on an album or on a Classic Rock radio station—has let the swamp dry out. Now, though, with The Long Road Home: The Ultimate John Fogerty – Creedence Collection (Fantasy Jazz), there’s new found crawdad walking, boiled up, and served with hot sauce. Many of the tracks from Chronicles are here (“Bad Moon Rising,” “Fortunate Son,” etc.), but some of the dust gets blown off by adding in Fogerty’s solo releases, such as “The Old Man Down the Road.” I remember watching the video in 1985 for this song, a long, winding shot following a cord through the woods to find it connected to an amp, Fogerty standing out there making his guitar talk those Southern Rock blues. Yet, more than just giving this new collection a dust off, what makes The Long Road Home shine are the live tracks thrown in. “Bootleg,” recorded in 2005, jams with a fast train click-clack, the instrumental bridge coming on like a sudden rush of buildings past the train windows. Satriani-like guitar greets you on “Keep On Chooglin’,” also recorded in 2005, showing that Fogerty’s clearing not the old man down the road. The swamp ain’t dried up due to him. You better look again, because you’re about to sink in that dirty blues rock and suck on some spicy Southern soul.

Elizabethtown. E-town. That Kentucky hamlet sitting outside of Louisville now made center of another Cameron Crowe story for fans of music and mix tapes. Elizabethtown was another masterpiece of telling a story through a soundtrack with the film as background, the way many of the Walkman generation spent their days imagining they were living in the midst of the tunes that were playing in their ears as they rode the bus, wallowed in the backseat of the family car, or hid away under the covers with the forbidden headphones at camp. Elizabethtown, though, takes place nearly as much in the big city, Louisville, which brings us to the Louisville band, My Morning Jacket. Appearing in Elizabethtown as fictional band Ruckus (playing “Freebird) didn’t mean that MMJ had quit their day job—being the real band. Releasing Z (ATO Records) in 2005, it’s no surprise to find MMJ on the Southern Rock shelf, but “Freebird” is a far stretch from what you find when unbuttoning this jacket. You can still hear Neil Young in Jim James’ “sung in a silo” vocals, but that’s no cause for dismissing him. As he sings on “Wordless Chorus,” “We are the innovators,/They are the imitators.” Others may just try to do the Neil Young-thing, but MMJ pick Neil Young from a palette of many colors, adding tones and hues from many places. Perhaps closer to the Jam Band sound than rocked out Southern Rock, Z bounces along on keyboards, beats, and effects tagged like what the Wallflowers did with Red Letter Days, an electronic augmentation to an organic sound. The result for MMJ is Southern atmospheric rock which leads to more musing than honky-tonk burning down.

Sparse blues in a spacious, warehouse Southern Rock. That’s Backyard Tire Fire and their 2005 release, Bar Room Semantics (O.I.E. Records). Ed Anderson sings with a white boy bluesman Jam Band whine while finding time to plunk the barroom piano, lay down some slide guitar, and just about anything else. Matt Anderson lets his bass be the clicking on the rails. Tim Kramp keeps the rhythm trapped. “The Daze” rocks along on a bluesy rock acousticism with harmony vocals while telling the story about the rise and fall of a band. “The Ones Who Surround You” begins with a dirty piano vamp like Elton John’s “Benny and the Jets.” With the blues of Bonnie Riatt which were Country-influenced through John Hiatt’s pen, “Ready to Go” hits a woodblock strut. Backyard Tire Fire keep that Southern Rock blaze contained for the most part, never really letting go of the blues groove in favor of a straight-ahead rock. Yet, that’s what makes this album fun—it’s like peeling off the Southern Rock wallpaper to reveal the blues plaster that’s been holding up the walls all along.

Canadians John Allaire and the Campistas land on the Southern Rock Shelf due to the amped-up braweler “Shut Your Mouth,” which has that throw down feel of Cracker’s “The Good Life.” Yet, on Allaire’s Thank You Waitress! (Flat Black Records/Spin Communications), the lead track is the gem. “Punkrocktown” ambles in, pulls up a stool, swings a country folk acoustic guitar into action, and tells a break up story of clearing your mind from the memories of a girl by going to find all of the Punk Rock site in New York City. It’s a search for the Chelsea Hotel and the place where Sid and Nancy died, much like Chuck Klostermann’s search in Killing Yourself to Live. However, the song also namechecks current punk-attituded rocker, Jesse Malin. Yet, the chorus is all about the Church. Allaire sings, “And I dream here in my hotel room,” with a similar melodic flavor as when Steve Kilbey sang “Hotel Womb” (Starfish). While that’s the main flavor here—acoustic country folk, Allaire’s got plenty of punked up Southern Rock in his kit. “Halton Country Inn” starts off with a disco beat and harmonica before jumping into a pogoing X country punk that’d make John Doe and Exene proud.
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For anyone who lives in North America east of the Rockies and is a DX-er (scanning the AM radio dial for distant stations), 700 WLW out of Cincinnati, Ohio, is one of the constants. A 50,000 watt clear channel powerhouse, old enough to have a three-letter call sign, WLW switches from local broadcast to America’s Truckin’ Network at midnight (Eastern Time). I know there’s other stations that carry the network or trucking music, but WLW typifies the power of the airwaves to connect those big rigs on the wide open plains. The network program is a mix of truck talk, late night talk radio talk, and Trucker music.

To my sleepy ear, most of this Trucker music remains locked into a sound patterned after C.W. McCall’s “Convoy”. It’s rhythmically limited country that would like to flex its big ol’ diesel rock engines but never gets there.

Enter now the Road Hammers. This is truckin’ music to make truckers cruise, rockers jam, country joints jump, and has enough power for a piggy back, triple, or even those Aussie truck trains.

Songs like “I’m a Road Hammer” groove and ignite even though I’ve never even set foot in a rig. This isn’t insider music. Whatever your vocation, there’s shared experience in hearing the tales of the road. It’s a song that rocks on the backs of Jason Mcoy and Clayton Bellamy’s twin guitars and Chris Byrne’s bass, all combining on great vocal harmonies. The video included on the enhanced CD finds the band doing more than some rock posing over a country song; these guys are ready to swing those guitars with full rock force. While there’s lots of other good tracks, skip all the way to the end to find “Flat Tires (Bloopers, Out-Takes ‘n’ Such) which is fun and grooving in its own way, splicing outtakes, studio voices, and false starts with truck horn segues.

Much like Gene Edward Veith and Thomas Wimelth’s Honky-Tonk Gospel: The Story of Sin and Salvation in Country Music, you’ve got to wade through objectionable content in the murky morals of Trucker music—proclaiming that you just want to get home to your family while also singing about the “Girl on the Billboard” wearing nothing but a towel and a smile. The song, originally recorded in 1965 by the Del Reeves, wouldn’t even normally appeal to me—not matter the content—due to its quick two-step rhythm that feels a bit like a trap to my rock ‘n’ roll ears. However, remembering how awkward it was driving with our youth group in Florida as mile after mile the strip club billboards declared “We Bare All!” I’m even less inclined to like “Girl on a Billboard.” Yet, this song points to how shallow and visually wired men are. We’re idiots. The speaker in the song falls in love with this girl, because of seeing her on the billboard. Then his heart breaks when he finds out that she’s not real—just the creation of an artist. Men are idiots, ogling over women, while somewhere inside we’re aware of our true need for a real woman, a real relationship. As Veith and Wilmeth point out in their fine book (which is unfortunately out of print but available at used booksellers online), there’s messages of redemption even in the Country songs that celebrate our sinful passions.
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Free CD!
If you’re interested in getting your hands on something Southern music, there’s two copies of Ten in Texas available in the Music Spectrum Giveaway Closet (see sidebar). Featuring 10 great Texan artists covering songs by 10 great Texan songwriters, such as Guy Clark, Buddy Holly, and Kris Kristofferson, it’s a tribute the music of the Lone Star State. Thanks to the not-very-Texan-sounding Icehouse Music for the giveaway copies.