FEATURED REVIEW.............................................................14 NOV 2005
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Artist:
KEVIN GORDON |
If the attendance at his October 28, 2005, show in Iowa City is any indicator, then Kevin Gordon remains one of alt.country’s best-kept secrets. It’s a dubious mantle to say the least, but he seems to wear it comfortably enough. With any luck, Roy Kasten’s recent article in No Depression (#60 Nov-Dec 2005) will help get the word out, but that word has yet to reach the burg Gordon called home in the late 80s. By our count, only thirty-odd guests paid the meager $5 cover charge—and it would have been a bargain at twice the price. Those in attendance were treated to a solid, if occasionally laid-back, two hours of bluesy, roots-rock. Dressed in jeans and a blazer—and looking for all the world like a road-weary, slightly haggard Jonathan Franzen (PHOTOS HERE)—Gordon picked and strummed his way through most of the songs from Down to the Well (2000) and his new CD, O Come Look at the Burning (2005).
In one of the half-dozen or so untitled poems in his MFA Thesis, Soliloquy beside a Sleeping Woman’s Face (1989), Gordon poses the question, “What myth am I in, countrymen?” If he were to ask the same question today, we'd have an answer: “The same myth you’ve been working your way through for nigh on twenty years now.” That’s not a critique. When it comes to alt.country, getting yourself born and raised below the Mason and Dixon line doesn’t hurt, and Gordon's best work—be it poetry or the blues—moves masterfully through the mythology of the American South. A native of Louisiana, he offers fresh takes on familiar tropes and figures of Southern regionalism: mud-colored dogs, shotgun shacks, rye whiskey, drunks, preachers, and prostitutes. Gordon’s ethos is so convincing that we don’t even blink when he rhymes “afternoon” with “road-kill coon” on “Great Southern,” one of the finer tracks on Down to the Well. We're more than willing to take the trip with Gordon as his baritone drawl glides steadily over such mainstays of the Southern landscape as boxcars on railroad tracks, fire ants on creosote, and car wheels on steaming asphalt (in deference to Lucinda Williams’s Gravel Road, no doubt).
As with Down to the Well, there’s much to admire on O Come Look at the Burning. Gordon and company tear it up on “Watching the Sun Go Down” and their cover of Willie Dixon’s “Crazy Mixed-Up World.” Gordon slows things down considerably on more meditative tracks like “Make It Good,” “Calhoun,” and “Heart’s Not In It.” The latter—despite its violation of section 3e of the Cheezeball Manifesto—is a slightly mournful but engaging song in which Gordon couples the tale of a lackluster concert performance with the easy but equally uninspiring prospect of sex with the lone, adoring fan at the bar. (Perhaps the signs of being alt.country’s best-kept secret are showing after all.)
Some of the finer
tracks on the CD merge the reflective and critically observant tendencies
of Gordon’s lyrics with the impulsive sounds of blues and rock-n-roll.
On “Find My Way,” “Casino Road,” and “24
Diamonds,” the guitar seems to slither along beneath the lyrics,
and Gordon draws on this undercurrent at opportune moments to emphasize
a key passage or turn of phrase. His ability to plumb the depths of a
mundane scenario and return with something new is evident on “Find
My Way,” a song in which Gordon glosses the creeping suspicion of
having lost one’s way as follows:
"There’s hawks on my fence, snakes in the grass
Change is a burning, blurring line
World’s got me crazy, can you tell me baby
Why the cure’s always the compromise"
Gordon’s observations are not always quite so incisive, however.
We admire the effort to tease a lyrical sense of irony out of those ubiquitous,
flower-adorned, wooden crosses on the sides of America’s back-roads
and two-lane highways, but “Flowers” doesn’t quite work.
It seems a bit too contrived. Or maybe it’s Charles “Wigg”
Walker’s guest vocals. Nothing against this reputable Nashville
bluesman, but his voice seems more intrusive than complementary here.
(That said, Yancey Allison’s black-and-white photograph at the end
of the liner notes should not be overlooked. You find yourself wishing
the song about these wooden crosses had been as stark as the image.)
The CD hits its high point on Gordon’s cover of Eddie Hinton’s
“Something Heavy”—a track that best exemplifies the
kind of energy that bubbles up in his live performances (30
SECOND REAL AUDIO CLIP). In truth, as much as we admire Gordon’s
own writing, we have to admit there is something about a cover track that
seems to free up both his voice and his guitar. Though without the calculated
abstraction of a Richard Buckner, Gordon does infuse his lyrics with a
knowing nod to the literary. When he left behind the pretensions of the
Iowa Writers' Workshop, he opened himself up to the wry and witty side
of blues lyrics, and his best songs work in—and add to—that
rich tradition. Perhaps on some level Gordon still finds those voices
that that inspired his music slightly more capacious than his own.
In summation: O Come Look at the Burning is a very fine effort and a worthy follow-up to Down to the Well. Start listening to Kevin Gordon, folks, and if he’s playing at a bar near you, do yourself a favor and pay what is sure to be a modest cover charge for a highly entertaining night. One-and-a-half cheezeballs for “Flowers” and that drum machine on “Heart’s Not In It."
kw
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A NOTE ON THE RATING SYSTEM:
5 CHEEZEBALLS = UNLISTENABLE SCHLOCK
3 CHEEZEBALLS = A DIFFICULT SLOG
1 CHEEZEBALL = THE ODD FORGIVABLE MISSTEP
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