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Blue Highways
& the Highway Blues
Vredenburg, Utecht (The Netherlands)
17th April, 2004
by Marianne Ebertowski
 The fifth edition
of Europe's biggest Americana festival attracted a bigger crowd
then ever. Featuring big names like Tish Hinojosa, Chris Knight,
the Drive-By-Truckers, Chris Hillman & Herb Pedersen, Allison
Moorer, Rodney Crowell, Bobby Bare Jr. and Fred Eaglesmith, this
is hardly a surprise. Nothing could keep me from enjoying my
fourth Blue Highways experience or could it?
The show is opened by North Carolina-born veteran Phil Lee,
accompanied by guitarist Duane Jarvis, Dave Coleman on bass and
Trey Landry on drums. Lee succeeds in no time to annoy many in
the audience with his macho strut behavior and comments. His
aggressively loud and annoying dreary rock and roll drives me
to the small stage after just a couple of songs.
I should be grateful to Lee, because I arrive just in time
to see the dark horse of the festival, New York-based Neil Cleary,
open his enthusiastic set of contagious power pop alt.country.
Cleary, an interesting songwriter with multiple influences from
country over Brit-pop to gospel and a former rap-adherent, turns
out to be a charming entertainer. Together with Mark Spencer
on guitar and lap steel, and Adam Sorensen on drums, he surprises
the audience with a very tight sound. Cleary's cover of the Velvet
Underground's "Pale Blue Eyes," turned into "steel
blue eyes" by Mark Spencer's lap steel, is the highlight
of an excellent European debut of a very promising young singer-songwriter.
 It
gets even better with the youngest and cutest act of the festival:
Ben
Atkins and his band. The 25-year-old mop top from Henrietta,
Texas and his buddies John Philips (bass), Patrick Herzfeld (drums)
and Australian guitarist Jedd Hughes immediately tear into "Mabelle,"
the catchy title song of his excellent first album. I am pleasantly
surprised that his voice sounds a lot less gritty than on the
album. Atkin's heartwarming mixture of rock and country conquers
the crowd's hearts effortlessly. And if he hasn't already, he
certainly earns the audience's respect with a great rocking version
of Gillian Welch's "Time the Revelator." What Ben and
the boys lack in stage routine, they make up easily with their
youthful charm and talent. Once they have tightened their stage
act and Atkins finds a way to avoid strangling himself with his
harmonica support, these guys will be one of the hottest acts
on the circuit and a hard one to follow. As I said already in
my Rockzillaworld review of Mabelle, I will follow the tracks of
this young man's cowboy boots with interest.
With a start like this, not much could go wrong, or so I thought.
Tish Hinojosa is next in line and I like Tish, her voice, her
concern for the underdog, especially her Mexican work. Last but
not least, it's good to see her back on stage after she ran into
trouble with the law for all the wrong reasons a couple of years
ago. I mingle with the friendly, expectant crowd and wait to
be moved. Not only by Tish, but also Mary Cutrufello who is accompanying
her on guitar. Nothing happens. Sure, Hinojosa has a great voice
and she is very charming, but her songs, her interpretation sound
tame, without the expected passion. Cutrufello remains totally
self-effacing and Robert Maurer's electric keyboard does not
help the situation: these things turn me into an Neanderthaler
wanting to club them with a rock. It's all very sweet and neat
and offensively inoffensive. I can't relate at all and leave.
Maybe it's not her. Maybe it's just the way I feel today.
Maybe it is the fact that the person I used to take to Blue
Highways is no longer part of my life. Or it is that sudden intense
sadness about the recent loss of a love I never even had a chance
to earn that does not make me terribly receptive for other people's
miserable-life-and-love-songs. All I know is that when the music
you have loved all your life suddenly does not speak to you anymore,
something inside is badly broken. This is the moment when you
are hoping for Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen
to mend your broken heart. After all, they totally blew me away
on this same stage a couple of years ago. With the unique Al
Perkins on Dobro and the great Laurel Canyon Rambler Bill Bryson
on bass, Hillman and Pedersen are simply wonderful. For a moment,
I feel the old spark rekindle when they take us by the hand and
lead us through the history of country rock: songs from the Byrds,
The Flying Burrito Brothers, Manassas and the Desert Rose Band
drift by. For a moment, it feels like sitting on a cloud, then
the film breaks. Like on a trip turning bad, all I can can feel
is regret and a deep sense of loss about all those times gone
by almost unnoticed, times that are revived by musicians like
Hillman and Pedersen, times that won't come back, musicians that
may not come back.
 It's
Allison
Moorer's turn. I had expected a lot from Moorer,
not being familiar with her work, but
rather with the riveting reviews she was showered with. Her pretty-girl-riding-middle-of-the-road-Nashville
approach disappoints me and, whereas most of the male audience
seems to be carried away by Moorer's low cut T-shirt, I can't
get my eyes off her longhaired guitarist who wears his keyring
on his ass like some sort of grotesque metal tail and, playing
with his back to the audience shaking his hair to the floor and
waving his "tail" at the same time. He looks like some
pathetic runaway from Spinal Tap.
Mr. Spinal Tap beams me straight away into the really bad
part of a trip, the one before before the bats from hell arrive
Fear-and Loathing-In-Las-Vegas-style. The point is, I'm
totally straight and sober and I'm starting to regret that very
much. If there is one thing one should avoid in that state of
mind, it is going to see Victoria Williams and Mark Olson &
the Creekdippers. Even on a good day, I can take Victoria
Williams' voice only in homeopathic doses. On a day like this,
the sheer sight of her from a distance frightens me. The most
bizzare and irritating thing about Willams is that one moment
you can find her totally endearing and the next her behavior
seems so deranged that you want to empty a bucket of water over
her head. She can do great things with her voice and then spoil
it all by going off like a siren. Another nerve wrecking thing
about the Creek Dippers is their constant urge to hold meetings
about what to play using which instrument. Some people seem to
appreciate the humor of it; I simply find it annoying and unfunny.
What pisses me off most is Victoria's interpretation of "Moon
River," which is - accompanied by a Stan Laurel lookalike
coronet player - so stunningly beautiful at times that it brings
tears to your eyes and then wanders off into musical regions
you do not even want to know exist. I leave the Creekdippers
dazed and thoroughly confused about my sanity and theirs.
Last time I saw Rodney Crowell, he played in Emmylou's
Hot Band. Now he's wearing a silly hat and treats his
audience on a mixture of high powered rock and roll and acoustic
songs. When he rocks with Will Kimbrough on guitar, Denny
Buxby on bass and Trey Landry on drums - Crowell sounds like
the Thirteenth Floor Elevator on a sane day, when he shifts into
a more introvert gear he sounds like, well, Rodney Crowell, the
one and only. Not quite what I expected, but I like his versatility
and his thundering version of Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone"
blows me away. For a moment, I felt almost all right.
What on earth Bobby Bare Jr. is trying to do apart from being
loud and annoying I just don't understand. Bare sings a song
about fat-breasted women, he tortures a tortured Smiths song
and he sounds like Kurt Cobain without the tortured soul. I find
it unb(e)arable: give me his daddy's stuff anytime. Through sticking
with Bare for a while just because my feet aren't smiling anymore,
I almost miss the great surprise of the evening, Elizabeth McQueen
from Austin, Texas; a charming young lady with glasses, an attitude
and a great honky tonk voice. With her band, the Firebrands,
she entertains the audience with a refreshingly unpretentious
brand of honkytonk and rockabilly that really brings the house
down. I only wish I had seen her whole set instead of wasting
my time trying to figure out Bobby Bare.
The fun is over when Chris Knight enters the stage
with guitarist Ty Tyler. There is nothing wrong whatsoever with
Knight's earnest and melancholy songs it's too much for
me to take on a night like this. I just don't feel up to his
level of intensity right now, but that is not his fault, and
I sincerely hope I'll see him some other place soon.
Tired and lost, I finally find a place to sit next to the
stage and wait for Fred Eaglesmith. Eaglesmith, whose mother
was born in Friesland, is a popular guy in the Netherlands. Where
usually the last act on the big stage plays to a half-empty hall
scattered with exhausted and intoxicated punters, this time,
it is still crowded and the audience is ready to rock and listen.
Fred has gotten a girl drummer, which is a pretty cool and still
unusual thing to do even in this millenium. What is even cooler:
young Kori Heppner really keeps the shit together. Not that a
band with Roger Marin (steel guitar, guitar), Dan Walsh (Dobro,
guitar), Dravy Yates (stand-up bass) and veteran mandolin and
harmonica player Willie P. Bennett needs much keeping together,
but she sure adds an extra dimension to the band with her laid-back
way of drumming.
 Eaglesmith's passionate performance
is the miracle cure for my feeling of loss and loneliness. When
I talked to Eaglesmith a couple of years ago, he told me he once
played a church where he was instructed not to talk between the
songs and he didn't. A friend told him afterwards that that was
the most depressing experience he'd ever been through in his
life. Well, I could listen to all Fred Eaglesmith's songs in
a row without a word spoken and I would still feel a lot better
than before. That stocky Canadian farmboy has enough healthy,
honest, rural punk anger and wit in him to turn every disaster
into something uplifting. His band sounds perfect where others
just sounded loud, and his songs hit home hard with a vengeance
and a sense of humor.
He does "Spookin'the Horses"and "Thirty Years
of Farming." He does "I Like Trains"and "49
Tons." He does songs from his new CD Balin, and whatever he does, it's heartfelt
and convincing and his bandmates do all the right things at the
right time. Fred chats with the audience, takes on hecklers and
wins hands down. Fred rules and brings the festival to a worthy
ending. I owe him one, even though my mood sinks again immediately
after his departure.
Well, that's all from Utrecht anno 2004, folks. Europe's "Ultimate
Americana Music Fest" was as good as ever. Fred Eaglesmith
deserves this year's winner's award with Ben Atkins and Elizabeth
McQueen following in his footsteps as promising runners up. Me,
I'm leaving the Blue Highways with the highway blues, but maybe,
just maybe, I'll be back next year. In the meantime, as Hank
used to say:"If the good Lord is willing and the creeks
don't rise, we'll see you soon.
Contact Marianne Ebertowski at ebertowski-at-rockzilla.net
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