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Johnny Irion
Unity Lodge
Yep Roc Records YEP 2035
By Marianne Ebertowski
 "An album
that gets stolen from my mailbox twice cannot be bad" I
thought when I finally held a copy of Johnny Irion's Unity Lodge
in my hands. I was right: somewhere between Amsterdam and Brussels,
there must be a mail(wo)man with pretty good musical taste.
Johnny Irion had impressed me when playing the Blue Highways
festival in Utrecht just a few weeks ago with his wife Sarah
Lee Guthrie. Together they were sheer magic. To describe Unity
Lodge as "magical" would be exaggerated. It would
also be unfair to judge Johnny Irion's debut album on the basis
of Johnny and Sarah Lee's live performance. So, if Unity
Lodge is not "magical," what is it? To start with:
it is hard evidence for a young artist's talents as a musician
as well as a lyricist. Irion plays acoustic and electric guitars,
dobro, piano, and harmonica on the album and has managed to find
a pretty awesome crew of country musicians to accompany him (including
Drew Lile on bass, Zeke Hutchins on drums and Greg Readling on
pedal steel). And then, of course, there is his voice: a high,
piercing but pleasant tenor, not unlike Gram Parsons'. But as
flattering as comparisons like these may be, they are also misleading
and create wrong expectations. Let's put it this way: Johnny
Irion from Columbia, South Carolina will probably never be a
pivotal figure in country/rock history as Gram Parsons turned
out to be, simply because Johnny lives in different times. In
that he may be lucky or unlucky: at least he doesn't have to
carry the history of Southern music on his shoulders and can
just get on with his business and his life. Sounds like a good
thing to me.
Irion, who comes from a musical family and is related to John
Steinbeck through his uncle, started playing in rock bands when
he was 15. But what he really wanted to do was write and perform
acoustic music, and on Unity Lodge he has earned himself
the occasion to prove his point. The album consists of ten songs,
all written and performed in a late sixties/early seventies mood,
all dealing with being on the road one way or the other, most
of them written in minor keys. The breathtaking 35-minute journey
starts with "Stationary Woman," a rather Gram-like
memory, indeed, of some woman's "white lines" and other
lessons she's taught her, followed by "DC Niner," a
worried coming home honky tonk song featuring Sarah Lee Guthrie
(Arlo's daughter). Sarah Lee is present on most songs, and is
one of the many pleasurable aspects of the album.
"Think Tank" puts Johnny in a rather isolated situation
in Los Angeles, the city where he met his future wife or - in
the words of the song- where he "came to the City of Angels/Found
an angel." From L.A. a Greyhound bus takes Johnny to "Any
Ol Where," a wonderfully melancholy song featuring Johnny
on dobro. Descending from public transport, Johnny takes the
steering wheel himself developing a "Trucker's Tan"
in the process. Greg Readling on pedal steel and Ron Snuggs on
lead guitar do a really good job here to keep the half fried
Johnny on the road. "Frontage Road" is as close as
country music can come to the Beatles, I guess, thanks to great
harmonies by Sarah Lee and producer Ryan Pickett.
Things get more serious with Johnny's interpretation of the
mine worker's traditional "Thirty Inch Coal," a song
I found particularly impressive performed live. The studio version,
with Tao Rodriguez-Seeger on 12 string guitar and back ground
vocals, does not quite achieve the goosebumps effect Irion can
produce on stage. A very blues-rocky "Poker Face"
with Greg Readling on organ takes you almost physically back
in time for three decades, which causes a bit of jetlag. I'm
not sure about "Tempest In The Teapot Blues" which
seems to have something to do with the shooting of the Guthrie
family dog. A severe experience, I'm sure, but I can't really
make head or tail of it. The album finishes with "Pilot
Light," an optimistic up-tempo alt.country song about coming
home to a loved one. With that the circle has come round. Unity
Lodge is as good as a debut album can be. The best thing
is that everybody who has seen Johnny Irion perform live knows
that he can do a lot better.
One day Johnny Irion will make a truly "magical"
album - it could be his next one. In the meantime: let Unity
Lodge take you down memory lane, and enjoy the scenery.
www.johnnyirion.com
www.yeproc.com
Contact Marianne Ebertowski at ebertowski-at-rockzilla.net
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