Americana Music Reviews

 

Hayes Carll
Flowers and Liquor
Compadre Records

by Jud Block

I've always had a penchant for anything outlaw. Pirates, highwaymen, Old West gunslingers, and most of their evolutionary tangents appeal to me much more than, say, the supposed hero whose only real purpose seems to be upholding procrustean standards. In other words, I'll take a Diogenes over Tom Hanks everytime. This also applies to anything artistic, but especially when it comes to singer-songwriters. Give me someone who not only pushes the envelope but tears the damn thing to shreds and then burns the shreds. What I want to hear in a singer-songwriter is someone who speaks their mind without the least concern about what might or might not be fashionable at the moment, who looks at the world and themselves with a smirk and not through a guise of pseudo-Romantic or hipster posturing, and who makes music, not a product. Unfortunately, in this prefabricated musical wasteland of an age where people are led to believe that David Gray and John Mayer actually have some deeper meaning beyond profit margins to impart, it seems style has yet again won out over substance. So, where are the new Kinky Friedmans or Blaze Foleys or Todd Sniders? More than likely out there tonight playing to a capacity crowd of six in some dive where the people are more concerned with anesthetizing themselves from their surroundings than they are about what the guy or girl with the guitar is doing. Or maybe like what just happened to me with Hayes Carll's debut CD, Flowers and Liquor, the music's sitting right there in front of you waiting for you to develop enough sense to push the damn play button.

Flowers and Liquor is my nominee for CD of the year and Hayes Carll my nominee for best new artist. Sounding like a combination of Jerry Jeff Walker in his prime, Steve Earle pre-clean and sober, and Todd Snider, Hayes Carll has made one of the most mature neo-outlaw discs to come along in years. With a tendency toward drinking references and an easy-going sense of humor that bears the mark of experience, Hayes Carll makes the kind of music that masks deeper sentiments behind a good-time façade. He comes across as a guy who's spent ample time in bars but hasn't let much of life pass him by, and he has the stories to prove it.

The opening track, "Highway 87," has the kind of slow train beat and hiccuping guitar line that you'd expect to hear coming straight out of a 1970s Tompall Glaser engineered recording session. This is a return to the kind of sound that the original Outlaws made popular, and the near-drunk weariness of Hayes Carll's vocals as he sings about hard living - - both self-inflicted and inherited - - along the Gulf Coast brings to mind the insouciance of early Jerry Jeff.

Highway 87 is a dangerous place to be
When you pissed off all the local boys
And your back's against the sea
The cops all know your number
Bars all know your name
After six straight months of drinkin' boy,
You're never gonna be the same
And I ain't seen the sunshine
Since I don't remember when
I may not know where I'm goin'
But I sure know where I've been

"Heaven Above" has that lilting Gulf Coast country feel to it, thanks in no small part to David Spencer's dobro that brings to mind swaying in a hammock that's being rocked by a gentle ocean breeze. Either that or the slightly disconnected feeling you get by nursing a hangover with another beer. It's all about taking life easy, and the sacrifices necessary to accomplish such a task.

Six pack of somethin', bottle of pills
Got to be a better way to get my thrills
Lord, you know sometime livin' ain't hardly enough
Not when you're waitin' on a sign from heaven above

Now we come to the Steve Earle portion of Hayes Carll. I know, I know, comparing people to Steve Earle has become just about as trite and meaningless as comparing them to Dylan, but this is different. "Arkansas Blues" has the sound and feel of Steve Earle from his Guitar Town and Exit 0 days, before he started dressing, acting, and sounding like an Ivy League poetaster. It's just Hayes Carll's weary voice, his guitar, and a case of the blues so bad it's damn near black.

So I took to drinkin' liquor on the other side of town
Way up in those woods beside the moon
Where every graceful dream I had got lost without a sound
Tell you what, I can't leave this place too soon

And it don't take no rhyme or reason
It don't make no sense at all
Just one of those things that you don't choose
It's the same old scene
Borrowed love and faded dreams
And you just can't run from those Arkansas blues

"It's a Shame" sounds as though it could have fit in seamlessly on Robert Earl Keen's West Textures album with its lamentation over a non-romantic pairing, "And it's a shame/That we ain't lovers/We could have been somethin' so big and grand/Just kissin' for hours/ Underneath that sweet magnolia/Beggin' for answers, tryin' to make a stand." And "Live Free or Die," a song written by Bill Morrissey and Trigger Cook, about the pain inflicted on an inmate by the mottos on the license plates he has to make, is actually receiving a little airplay way out here in Charlotte, NC, so there's hope for the place yet.

"Flowers and Liquor," the title track of the disc, is also its Todd Snider-like song. It's a sly look at the impediments to the mating ritual complete with tuba accompaniment. As Hayes writes himself in the liner notes to the song, "It shouldn't be that hard to go home with someone."

Well you like flowers and I like liquor
Your way's nice but my way's quicker
I been watchin' you all night long
And I gotta say somethin', don't care if it's wrong
I'm feeling outrageous
Hope it's contagious
I want to spend the night with you

Hayes Carll's Flowers and Liquor, as far as I'm concerned, has all the makings of a classic debut album, displaying an outlaw's attitude and, at times, a poet's soul. This is the kind of music many claim to make, but few, if any, rarely achieve. So surprise yourself tonight by picking up Flowers and Liquor; you'll thank yourself in the morning.

Go to www.hayescarll.com for a biography of Mr. Carll as well as to find out if he's coming to your town anytime soon, and then head on over to www.compadrerecords.com to pick up the soon-to-be-classic Flowers and Liquor.


Contact Jud Block at jud-at-rockzilla.net

 
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