A Junkie's Prayer on Michael Powers' Prodigal Son

I associated Michael Powers with the electrified country blues due to his 2004 release, Onyx Root, but the 2006 Prodigal Son comes out of the door with “Goin’ Down,” an Eddie Turner-like, straight-up classic blues rock burner. It’s not until track 2, “Bloody Life,” and elsewhere, that you get those electrified country blues. “White Lightning” has a funk jam that is irresistible, while “Wild Side” is like what could inspire a new Led Zeppelin.

What haunts me most, though, is Powers’ cover of Arthur Lee & Love’s “Signed D.C.” It sent me on a search to discover the story behind the song: Love’s original drummer Don Conka (D.C.) struggled with a severe heroin addiction, and this 1966 song faced that reality head on. The song is strongly recalled by Fishbone’s “Junkies Prayers” and “Praying to the Junkie Maker” (The Reality of My Surroundings). In 1988, Mary Fleener drew a comic strip using the lyrics of the song.

Sometimes I feel so lonely
My comedown I'm scared to face
I've pierced my skin again, Lord
No one cares
For me

My soul belongs to the dealer
He keeps my mind as well
I play the part of the leecher
No one cares
For me, cares for me

Look out Joe, I'm fallin'
I can't unfold my arms
I've got one foot in the graveyard
No one cares
For me, cares for me
Signed, D. C.

Powers unearths all of the emotions of this much more creepy “House of the Rising Sun”-like wallow “Under the Bridge.” It’s a more portent prayer than any pious chapel book might offer. A prayer like this is what gives birth to true piety—as opposed to putting on the spiritual airs. The song works to a heartbreaking signature followed by the hopeful “Compassion” working like soothing Gospel picking us up from our street corner graves.

Note: Lee’s lyrics remind me of how I see the same lonely emotion in Jesus. I once preached a sermon that connected the words of Jesus on the cross to John Clare’s poem, “I Am,” which is centered on the idea of feeling as if “no one cares for me.”

Thanks to Michael Powers and Baryon Records for the review CD. Please check out Mary Fleener’s artwork.