Blues Rock: Paul Mark & the Van Dorens' Trick Fiction

Paul Mark & the Van Dorens’ Trick Fiction arrived on the right week, because my wife and sons were gone. I took Mark’s CD out of the mailbox, slapped it into the CD player, cranked the stereo because that’s what you can do when you’re home alone, and then Mark cried out with a blues guitar and a lyric shout that met me perfectly for where I was at: “When my wife went home to her mother/Boys, I turned it up a notch/Seven days living on nothing but/Fritos, BBQ, and Scotch.”

While I’m fully capable of cooking myself some healthy meals, I find that when my family’s gone I tend to be like a bottom-feeder, a catfish sucking up the easy junk that falls from drive-thru windows. I suppose actually I’d have to change Mark’s lyric to “Tostitos, Taco Bell, and Mountain Dew,” as those have been my standbys this week, but the song certainly taps into the gastronomical slumming I sink to when she’s gone.

Mark’s song goes with his wife thinking he’s at home cheating on her; “On day five she shouts, ‘I’m coming home to cleanse our house of sin,’/She found me face down on the couch/With my three special friends/You might call it cheating, call it lying but it’s not/The good book’s got no rules about/Fritos, BBQ, and Scotch.”

Now, of course, the Bible does talk about drinking alcohol in moderation, taking care of the body that God made, and other such rules, but when you’re alone, it’s hard to resist the temptation of just eating and drinking those things that’ll eat a hole in your stomach.

Musically, Mark’s blues comes out of a Chicago blues taken through some factory floors like Tommy Castro (“Fritos”), dragged back to Memphis to pick up some old Jerry Lee Lewis rockabilly (“Never Again”), but then sent down the river to the Louisiana swamp to grab some Creedence Clearwater (“Big Glass Building”). Then there’s “Conspiracy” with the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun” being the sound behind the master plot.

Distorted slide guitar greets you for some “Wholly Rollin’,” like a hint of North Mississippi Allstars, but that gives way to the preacher’s boogie-woogie. The song undoes any concept of divine presence as the chorus declares, “You’re wholly on your own.” With a lyric construction similar to Bob Dylan’s “Everything is Broken,” it’s a song that pulls apart faith, but judging by the liner notes reference to “40 days and 40 nights,” it may just be a perfect reference to what Jesus experienced as He was tempted by Satan in the wilderness.

Finally, let the boys lay down the instrumental jive and wail of “Stake Out,” and you’ll see that you’re in good hands for experiencing a wide-range of blues elements.

Thanks to Paul Mark & the Van Dorens and Radiation Records for the review CD.