Short takes on new Americana music

Bill Knight column for 8-29, 30 or 31, 2019

Capsule reviews can be like speed dating in a bouncy house. They risk insulting artists who spent substantial investments of inspiration, energy and time, but such glimpses also are a way to acknowledge their efforts.

(Likewise, excuse the name-dropping comparisons, but they’re efficient, too.)

Anyway, much of the 4th of July was spent listening to American music – not the John Philip Sousa/Kate Smith variety, but the red-white-and-blue roots music from small-label outfits offering that hardscrabble heart, charm and creativity traced to Appalachia and Texas and a heritage of rank-and-file roadhouse/barn dance expressions.

However, there were few fireworks and not enough hooks – those unforgettable melodies that stay with listeners like summer memories – in these four CDS. An exception is Van Dyke Brown (the alter ego of 40-year-old Scott Hone), whose debut CD “Holy Libel” has an acoustic-oriented sound, but with a pedal steel guitar and a pleasant pop feeling, like CSN&Y when they got along or Paul Simon if he were less pretentious.

“The Fair” launches this ride with a narrative becoming a novella (appropriate since Honea is an author as well as a filmmaker and photojournalist). His word play itself tells stories: “The night I dropped acid and went to the fair/ I spent 36 dollars throwing darts through the air/ for a Motley Crue mirror that would soon need repair / and I laid there knowing I'd never leave there.”

“Sycamore” is a memory of visiting a cemetery close to a family home, seeing June bugs and feeling gravel between the toes and reflecting, “You come and you go, you love and you leave.” “Five Miles” has a more indie/country feel, and “Gary” is a sheer thrill, a track of “Magical Mystery Tour” psychedelia that Honea calls “cosmic folk.”

The rest:

* Chuck Hawthorne’s “Fire Out of Stone,” his second record, is a collection of songs about surviving and healing. His vocals aren’t unlike Bob Dylan in his pre-electric period or maybe Roger Whittaker during the height of his ubiquitous TV commercials in the ’70s and ’80s, and “Such is Life” and “Broken Good” stand out, but a strong theme can unfortunately also result in a thread of sameness.

* Meghan Hayes’ “Seen Enough Leavers” CD photos indicate she went for a forlorn waif-with-an-edge look, but despite that choice, her voice is reminiscent of tender Judy Collins, easygoing Linda Ronstadt or rollicking Alison Krauss. Pointed and pouty on “Burley” and “Potholes,” two other cuts are delightfully incongruous and appealing: “A Birthday in the Pawnshop” is as entertaining as Joni Mitchell jamming with Jimmy Page, and “Second to Last,” though somewhat overproduced, has an organ wash like a Springsteen anthem from the ’80s.

* Rod Picott singing on “Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil” sounds like an accessible Tom Waits, less gruff than gravelly. Recovering from health issues, Picott recorded 12 tunes at home alone, so the sound and sense are as private and casual as time in a confessional. Emotionally charged, but not exactly powerful and certainly draining, the gentle, bleak songs range from whispering asides to poetic images. “A 38 Special & A Hermes Purse” describes “another lost soul waiting to be found” and himself as “a train wreck turning Beaujolais into p**s,” “A Guilty Man” features a provocative simile: “Guilt as strong as gasoline.”

Throughout this batch, there’s a repeated tendency for the poignant slipping to somber to abject anger and outright depression: something like what a wrongfully convicted inmate might feel in prison.

Honea escaped such bondage and celebrates freedom.