(
Checkered Past / Munich Records )
*****
(probably more)
The Canadian
singer/writer James Keelaghan recently made the point
that a lot of the artists who are currently in their
forties are making some of their finest works.
Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Tom Russell, Tom
Waits, Dave Alvin –all fit into the category of
‘born in the fifties’ yet it is only now
that their voices can be truly heard at full power.
Well take a jump back a generation and you find one
J. Dowd who though from the same period as Dylan and
the Stones got attention for his first widely
available disc at the tender age of fifty! Whatever
he’s been up to in the past few decades, and if
some of this disc’s narratives are based on
experience then it wasn’t all a bed of roses,
he’s sprung a fantastic surprise with this
record. Imagine an Okie Tom Waits out of Fort Worth,
Texas. Spitting out preacher blues backed by the
ghosts of old Ed Wood soundtracks and held together
by musical knowledge gained by years of local gigs
and a genuine deep respect and love for the real
roots of rock and blues. Indeed the original
self-released tape version of Memphis contained one
track where Johnny played warped slide over an
interview with the great Son House just ‘cos it
sounded neat! Johnny ‘wears long-sleeved shirts
all winter and short-sleeved shirts all summer ‘
(Average Guy) but how many average guys would sustain
the degree of enthusiasm and love of music for its
own sake to come up with a record to stand comparison
with his heroes – Robert Pete Williams,
Lightnin’ Hopkins, Hank Williams, John Lee
Hooker, Bobby Blue Bland, Harmonica Frank–that
whole pre-Beatles do it yourself –back porch
world of real folk blues. He’s talked about that
era before people had music careers –when it was
still connected to the old beating heart of the
folk-oral tradition. Even Dylan has tried to go back
to that well recently but our Johnny seems to have
put his finger right on the slit pulse of the wound.
This disc is morbid, depressive and taps right into a
tradition that goes back to the Gaelic folk sources
where a song could talk about an aborted foetus
hanging on a thorn tree. This is folk narrative of a
high order and in this case it ain’t a pose. He
comes out of Ithaca, New York, where he moves
furniture for a living, and is a working person,
something most rock stars, however small, see only
from a tour bus. There’s a degree of
self-mythologising here – Wages of Sin- follows
a great impression of an old blues ’78 that
conjures up the dust on Blind Lemon’s cane.
There’s the old Jerry Lee Lewis rock n roll or
devilry dilemma in there too –again as old as
the blues itself. It’s the devil’s music
Johnny’s tapping into but he’s righteous so
what’s he to do –‘salvation can’t
be bought’.
He’s joined live
by the players on this sinner’s confession
– ( not the ) Brian Wilson on drums- Kim
Sherwood-Caso on ethereal vocal harmonies and Jay
Mendelson. Live he blows up a storm around his lyrics
on a lectern like a hell-fire preacher backed by a
demented amalgamation of the Doors, Beefheart and an
early rocker like Charlie Feathers – once seen
never forgotten. With anybody else this might appear
a bit suspect but then you realise that he would have
been doing the self same set in 1965 –it
ain’t revivalism- it’s real. As he himself
says – ain’t many people doing what
he’s doing. Tom Waits skirts the territory but
don’t have that pure rock n’ roll take on
things. ‘Be content with your life it might not
get any better’ he sings on Thanksgiving Day and
the devotional side rings as true as Hank himself on
The Heavenly Feast – make up your bed, make up
your mind. Saint or sinner –ain’t no shades
of grey here. There’s a genuinely unsettlingly
honest quality to the soul-searching here that makes
even Waits appear more like an arranger and producer
as much as a performer. This is domestic – porch
sized working-class blues – has the same
eloquence as those old pre-war race and country
78’s he’s pulled out of old wardrobes.
‘That old pair of Beatle boots didn’t cost
me too much..’ from
First There Was leaks
out like whispers from a confession booth. It’s
cemented by a devotion to the religion of Rock N Roll
that is straightforward and intense. If you’re
looking for one disc from the last ten years that
captures the magic of those old Little Willie John or
Bucka White sides this is it – on a scale of
five it merits ten. How it got transferred from
4-track to 8-track in that Ithaca home studio on some
dark evening as sirens wailed and the chain-link
rattled god only knows. That it did is a tribute to
Johnny Guitar and his partner and the persistence of
the folk impulse. Urban blues with a cigarette in one
hand and a passport to the real mythical Memphis in
the other – truly on the righteous side. Dam it
first track conjures up the Excello label and John
Lee, and Muddy Waters – now how many discs can
you say that of these days. Pray. We’re all
carrying coffins on our backs.
