Kevin Welch
Millionaire
Dead Reckoning 2001


by Bonny Holder

Kevin Welch has been around the Americana music scene long enough that, when you mention his name, more likely than not someone in the room will say, "Oh yeah, Kevin Welch, what's he up to now, same old thing?"

The answer, friends, is a resounding "No!"

Consider this: Kevin's newest CD, Millionaire, was recorded in Nashville - and at Feedback Studios in Arhus, Denmark last February. His recording band, the Danes, Frank Birch Pontoppidan (a Dane), Frank Marstokk (from Norway), Gustaf Ljunngren (Swedish) and Fredrik Damsgaard (also Danish), are current residents of Denmark. These Norsemen Welch recorded with seem to be happy sidemen! They have high energy and an understanding of the lyrics that transcends any sort of language gap.

Welch wrote or co-wrote 11 of the 12 tracks on the CD. Co-writers include knowns like Harry Stinson and Welch's songwriter son, Dustin. The only cover tune is a rousing version of Van Morrison's "Queen of the Slip Stream," which Welch did in honor of his significant other, Claudia Scott, who had been flying back and forth from her native Norway to be with Welch in Nashville.

Kevin Welch, one of the first artists to labeled their original music as "western beat," has lived in Nashville for years but is also identified with the Oklahoma and Austin music scenes. Every one of his CD's - from Kevin Welch (1990) to Western Beat (1992) [both on Warner Reprise] to Life Down Here on Earth (1993, on his Dead Reckoning label) to Beneath My Wheels (1999) and 11/12/13 (2000, live with Kieran Kane, who used to be half of the O'Kanes) has been critically acclaimed. Every one!

I became aware of Kevin Welch back in 1993 when I was hosting an all-night free-form radio show on KUNM-Albuquerque. I was looking through a pile of new releases and noticed that Welch's Western Beat had a song called "Early Summer Rain," the same title as a poem Kiowa artist T.C. Cannon had written. Cannon, who died in a wreck in 1978, had written:

All I know is you, my friends,
will not feel my pain
out where it gets lonesome
in the early summer rain.

Cannon's poem had become a premonition of his death, and I wondered if there was a connection between T.C.'s writing and the song on Welch's CD. Sure enough, not only had Kevin put T.C.'s words to music, he also credited T.C.'s father Walter, a friend of mine, in the liner notes.

That alone wasn't enough to win me over, but it caught my attention. I grew to love the album for its own sake. I bought the earlier CD and enjoy it just as much. I sought Kevin Welch out to see live and he never let me down in performance. With his long flowing hair and his round, open face, Welch has a commanding physical presence onstage. He's also a very good guitar player and has a smoky baritone voice, a pleasant difference from all those country tenors. So I'm a major fan of Kevin's, although I don't know him personally. And it's only because I am such a true fan that I have a copy of his new CD, Millionaire.

I heard that Welch had a new album coming out and searched the 'Net for reviews. All I found were in Scandinavian languages. I learned that Millionaire has only been released in Scandinavia. I was only able to get a copy because I drove all the way to Oklahoma City - yeah, well, around ten hours from here - to see Kevin at the Blue Door. He and his friends made up 49 copies of Millionaire on home CD burners to sell to his hometown audience. There were 100 people there (maximum crowd), so 51 of them must have gone home empty-handed. Not me, though! I shoved through the crowd cash in hand, head-butting the people in front of me to get to the wooden counter just to find out exactly what Kevin has spent most of this year producing.

The title cut is embellished with a fuzzy rhythm section that sets off the slight hoarseness of Welch's voice. "Love is more precious than gold," Welch sings, "it can't be bought and it can't be sold/I've got love enough to spare/That makes me a millionaire." There's a cheesy little "nah nah nah nah nah nah nah" at the end proving that, at least in Americana, the age of irony is not over.

"Blanket of Snow," co-written with Gary Scruggs and harmonized by Claudia Scott, would actually make a good single for Kevin and Claudia or for anyone else. "You used to wrap your love all around me/ To keep me warm when the winter wind would blow," they sing. "But now only memories surround me/ like a blanket of snow."

The third track, "Long Cold Train," begins with a foreboding bass echoing the beat of iron wheels on thin track. Written with John Hadley, "Long Cold Train" has been a longtime Welch live favorite. Kevin's vocal has just the right baritone vibrato, the perfect tone in which to tell this story. It's fun how the musicians center the very clever instrumentals here as a counterpoint to the lyric.

All Kevin's CDs have spooky tracks, so "Long Cold Train" works perfectly with the next cut, "Witness," which Welch explains is about someone in the Witness Protection Program, "always a big topic on country talk radio." Welch tends to sing the part of characters, and lots of these guys are a tad wack, the kind to spend a lot of time alone reliving their mistakes and then going right out to make more (as in the powerful "Wilson's Tracks" or "The Assassin" on the Dead Reckoning label's Night of Reckoning CD released in 1996.) This quiet loner "lost everything I had because/I told them where the shooter was" and spills his guts to a beautician one scary evening ("She said she went to beauty school/ I told her I thought that was cool."). The song opens with the memorable lines, "I got a cat named Midnight around here/ I only feed him tuna fish and beer/Once we split a fifth of wine/ And now he wants wine all the time." This song has a haunting melody, skillful percussion, and a very intimate production style. I like how Kevin manages to rhyme "check out line" with "my old name" without a trace of self-consciousness.

Long reviews are hard to absorb, so I'll stop this play-by-play here. I think you get the picture. Each and every song on this gem of an album is worth paying attention to. You'll get a kick out of how he sounds like Tom Petty (that's a good thing) on "Glorious Bounties", and "Sun King and Winter Moon" will be something you might not have expected from the old Kevin.

In a nutshell? This CD is bursting with life from the get-go and deserves to be appreciated. This is not only different from the past Kevin Welch, who deserves a whole lot more respect than he seems to get anyway, but it's an aural delight at a time when delight is in precious reserve.

*Here's the deal. Kevin has a website at www.kevinwelch.com You can read the lyrics and listen to the tracks (MP3) there. You can also contact him and just maybe he knows where you might acquire an actual hard copy. It will be worth your time.




You can contact Bonny Holder at bonny-at-rockzilla.net

 
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