Big Smith
Gig
MayApple 0103
by Reid Mitchell

Big Smith's Big Rock was the first cd I reviewed (www.rockzilla.net/mitchell1) for Rockzillaorld. It is a brilliant album, one that despite its rowdiness is reflective, even philsophic.

Gig is just mainly rowdy.

Big Smith recorded themselves in concert in front of a highly appreciative and probably highly fucked-up audience. There's a lot of whooping -- whether the song calls for it or not. It's kinda odd hearing "Backwater," a melancholic, hilarious mediation on the past, race, and rural squalor with people yelling "whoop!" all through it.

She took a long tall drink out of this backwater (Whoo! Yeep yeep!)

This is a high-octane performance and you know what -- the Big Rock songs work just fine. They don't exactly feel the same but they sound fine.

Jody Bilyeu and Mark Bilyeu share the principal songwriting/singing duties for Big Smith. The Ozark Lennon-McCartney. Big Rock struck me as a little more Mark's cd. Gig is Jody's.

For example, there's his mock-hymn "His Eye Is On the Baptist." It might offend some Southern Baptists. But Jody himself is a Baptist -- or at least he sings with his father's gospel group at South Haven Baptist Church. (I was raised Southern Baptist too, but somehow it didn't take. Baptist mamas, don't raise your babies up in New Orleans.)  Mickey Newberry's "Why You Been So Long" gives Jody a chance to shine on piano. Ain't nothin I wanna do Lord so I guess I could get stoned/Let the past paint pictures in my mind Big Smith does pure honky-tonky on this one; it's good for dancing and for crying in your beer.

And while we're talking honky-tonk, the highest form of country music and the highest form of Texas music, let's not leave out this live recording of Mark's "Fickle-Hearted Man." If you're ever cheated or been with a cheater -- a woman once asked me all serious "If you're married, does that mean I'm an adulterer too or just you?" -- you'll appreciate this one:

If you're not supposed to be here
I guess then neither am I
But who are we to say so
We won't know until we try
Well I don't know
I just don't understand
Why you go home to your fickle-hearted man

Now let me wax pretentious if not poetic. I pronounce Big Smith the first anti-bluegrass bluegrass band. Big Smith has mastered bluegrass music and, more soulfully, country gospel music. They know their music inside and out; they ain't some lame-ass rock band propping up their popularity by tossing in some musical and rhetorical country cliches. They also know that Eden isn't -- that we have no way back to before the fall and that bluegrass music, rural life, the simple values, and old-time religion doesn't return you to Eden, Arcadia, or even Mayberry.

So in the midst of the rowdiness, let me pick Jody's "Mockingbird Song" as the centerpiece of Gig. A mockingbird mocks nobody; it's all in our heads. But when Jody goes to nature for some Wordsworth-wise communion with nature, the mocking bird and the rest of pitiless creation destroys his dream of rest.

Walked along the creek bank--
Had to kick the brambles down.
Stopped to watch a plane fly by
That was towing the sky around
It was towing the sky around.

Grabbed a snake from the water
But his mouth opened cotton white.
I took his head and his skin from his long white flesh
But his coils wrapped my wrist so tight--
His coils wrapped my wrist so tight.

I reached up in a golden branch
To shake the fox grapes down.
A sacred song was in my mouth
But the mockingbird shouted me down--
That old mockingbird shouted me down.

Lay back in a bed of last year's leaves
The whole sky cotton white.
And the crow that coughed his terrible names
Flapped his way out of sight--
He flapped his way out of sight.

The highway back to the city
Just as blank as it could be
And I forgot the snake and the birds
For you waited in town for me--
At least I hoped that you waited for me.

Stood at your bathroom mirror
Knocked your wine glass in the sink
Red wine, red wine everywhere
But not a drop to drink
There was nary a drop to drink

So I went back to that golden branch
But all had been rained down
A sacred song was in my mouth
But the mockingbird shouted me down--
That old mockingbird shouted me down.

You don't suppose Jody was thinking of Ambrose Bierce's short story "The Mocking Bird" where one brother kills another ... nah. But in case you think I'm getting too academic, check the website -- these Big Smith fellows have degrees. Besides Jody teaches creative lying.

And, no, I don't really think Big Smith is the first anti-bluegrass bluegrass band. I don't think Bill Monroe ever meant for bluegrass to get all gummed up with nostalgia. Bluegrass will always have bands like Big Smith to lick it clean again and remind us that bluegrass can always be as modern as the 7 o'clock news. It just has to take a look around the world and tell us the truth.

*Big Smith lives at www.bigsmithband.com



Contact Reid Mitchell at: reid-at-rockzilla.net

 
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