Americana Music Reviews

 

Raiford Starke
Speak Me
Seminole Records

by Jud Block

I have a confession to make. Now before you start rolling your eyes and making snide comments about not needing yet another DeQuincy or St. Augustine, hear me out. My confession is neither as lurid nor spiritual as the aforementioned; instead, it serves as a transition. Well, here it goes. While it's true that my formative years were spent in the great Republic of Texas, I was actually born in Florida. I'm not ashamed of it; I'm a seventh generation Floridian and, contrary to many people's perceptions of that state, damned Southern. For anyone out there who may doubt that Florida is actually a Southern state, I dare you to take a detour off of I-10 anywhere along the panhandle between Pensacola and Tallahassee (Go 'Noles!), or if you're feeling particularly intrepid, head on down to the southwest portion of the state around the Everglades, and you'll quickly realize it ain't no Disney World attraction. This is Raiford Starke country, and on his debut release, Speak Me, you can feel it in every note.

Raiford Starke is, technically, Colin Kenny, a Virginia boy who worked in the East Texas oil fields before making his way to the Florida Keys to play music, which led to his becoming the musical director for Seminole singer/songwriter Jim Billie in Big Cypress. His story is interesting enough on its own, but it gets even more intriguing. "Raiford Starke," the musical character, seems to be an amalgam of Mr. Kenny and his musical mentor, songwriter Dicky Wilson, who passed away in 1996; in fact, of the twelve songs on Speak Me, six, including the title track, were written by Dicky Wilson, while five were written by Colin Kenny. And combined, they've made one hell of a good CD.

This is the kind of music you'd expect to hear as you drive into the crushed oyster shell parking lot of a cypress wood bayou roadhouse, or a coastal sailor's dive turned biker bar. It's good, old-fashioned homemade music, worn at the seams and wearing the tattoo of experience prominently on its shoulder. "Speak Me," the lead track of the disc, is street slang for "talk to me" and is used as the conceit in a surprisingly spiritual and compassionate song about the importance of saying what's in your heart to the people close to you while you still have the time. It has a musical similarity at times to Marshall Tucker, but it is also the perfect introduction to the deep baritone of Raiford Starke that sounds like a combination of Townes Van Zandt, Kris Kristofferson, and Tony Joe White.

If you've got a God, well, pray him
For your brother's soul
If you know a God, well, pray him
For your brother's soul, it's a duty of love
It's only right, when it's from your heart
From the depths of you heart

If you've got a truth, well, speak me
Do not let it lie
If you've got truth, well, speak me
Do not let it lie like a broken heart
Grown so cold, Turnin' to stone

"Girl From Immokalee" is the second track on the disc, and easily my favorite on the CD. From its squeeze-box-like harmonica lead-in to its Cajun bounce, this swamp country masterpiece about a boy who loses his heart to a small-town beauty is guaranteed to have even the most vitriolic country music haters singing along midway through the first chorus. Hell, I'm still impressed he wrote a song about a place that will have more than a few people reaching for a map. And, yes, it is an actual town.

I see her ridin' in the rodeo
And down at Miner's Market
I seen her workin' in the orange grove
That's where I'd meet her after dark, yeah

Well, her daddy was from Mexico
He came for the harvest
And her mama is a Seminole
From out of Big Cypress

She's the girl from Immokalee
And the only way I wanna be
Is under a chikee
With the girl from Immokalee

"No Troub Doc" is a foray into calypso music that should leave most Jimmy Buffett fans thinking 'so that's what it's supposed to sound like.' And "Johnny Lee" offers a little bit of swamp blues to back the tale of a condemned man who didn't commit the crime he's going to hang for. Now, don't worry, it's not one of those left-leaning-let's-have-a-celebrity-parade-and-benefit-concert kind of affairs; instead, it has the dark humor and cavalier swagger of a renegade who knew that sooner or later it was going to come to this.

Johnny Lee walk up to the scaffold
Preacher man read him his lines
He said, "Johnny Lee better 'fess to your maker
While you still got time."
Johnny Lee said, "Uh-uh, no,
I ain't got nothin' to say. No, no, lordy, no, no
Cause I didn't shoot that man down in Birmingham.
I was layin' in the arms of the sweet, sweet Rita Mae."

Other highlights on the disc are "Stockbroker Took My Girl," an adrenaline rushing Georgia Satellites style rocker about an obvious subject; "Roughed Up," a rode hard and hung up wet ballad about sincerity and second chances; "Tall Dark Stranger," an Old West tale of an outlaw and one of the, apparently, 50,000 prostitutes that worked the area back then; and, finally, "West Memphis," with its John Hiatt R&B late-night Memphis sound, is a story of hard luck and location.

Raiford Starke's Speak Me is one of those CDs you wished more people could hear because it would definitely assure most cynics out there that good music is, indeed, still being made - - you just sometimes have to look in the most unexpected places, like in the heart of Seminole country, to find it.

* Don't have any reservations about going to www.bigcypressrecords.com to find out a little more about the enigmatic Raiford Starke as well as to buy his debut release, Speak Me.



Contact Jud Block at jud-at-rockzilla.net

 
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