Americana Music Reviews

 

Mark David Manders
Highs and Lows
Blind Nello
by David Pilot

Mark David Manders has been turning out solid records for the Texas music fan's consumption since 1994's Headin' Out West. There have been plenty of highlights along the way, and flashes of what could reasonably be termed greatness or at least potential for same. Now, with this year's stellar Highs and Lows, Manders appears poised to grace the big stage and spearhead a return to quality over quantity where the Lone Star state's country offerings are concerned. Hat acts around Texas take note. Jack Ingram took his recent Electric places the other alt.country acts haven't gone. Now Manders is raising the bar for the bands who make their living in the sawdust-scattered dancehalls. What you'll find here is a rousing mix of stone cold traditional country and driving rockabilly, a goulash bursting with flavorful story songs and the ghost of Townes van Zandt's cockeyed way of finding truth in the simplest of things. In short, maybe the record of the year.

As is often the case with worthwhile music, this album was born in a cauldron of emotions that threatened to stop Mark in his tracks. With the viable and well-received Chili Pepper Sunset and its notable predecessor Tales From the Couch Circuit behind and a fortieth birthday looming large ahead, Manders found himself looking at life in all the different ways that particular mile marker can bring. Highs and Lows, he says, was the logical result. "If I were to write a mission statement for this project, it would be that I want to show that I am afraid of nothing and at the same time afraid of everything."

That sentiment accounts well for the striking intro riffs John Inmon uses to kickstart "Clovis Highway," and also for the lyric that takes effective stock of the trail so far and the fork about to be chosen:

I could have been a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer
But I chose instead to make a career
Out of blaming other people for the problems in my life

Give me my freedom, take back your money
Don't you listen to that old wind blow
There's a storm cloud rolling down that Clovis Highway
It's heading my way
And I just might go

Before it's over you're tossed on the storm clouds of a full-blown jam the like of which has become a trademark of Manders' live shows. The tornado of sound abates a bit for "Drive," a quintessential look at the road and the woman that a musician often needs the most, but the optimism and stick-to-it-iveness that permeate the track are perfect illustrations of the core values that keep the author in the spotlight where Texas music is concerned.

One doesn't stay on top with those traits alone, though, even if they might be enough to get him or her there temporarily. Unless we're talking bubble gum pop or Music City country, there has to be a bedrock foundation of substance to make the music resonate over the long haul. Manders, often in step with friend and labelmate Max Stalling, has all along been the sort of artist to display just such a foundation from time to time. But here he's taken a quantum leap toward relevance with songs like "Just Me" and "Suicidal Pigeon." The first, a study in introspection with lines like "Growing up and growing older don't always go hand in hand/And it's not the weight on your shoulders that makes you a man," takes on all the fallout of a rural Christian upbringing clashing with a violent and senseless world and does it with understated aplomb. The pigeon song, on the other hand, covers the same road without the religious angle. This may be the most striking song Manders has recorded to date, combining a rippling acoustic guitar with a spoken word conversation between a hapless passerby and a pigeon with a death wish. By the second verse you've forgotten that it's a pigeon talking, much less that said pigeon is attempting to commit suicide by camping in the middle of the street. The resulting tete-a-tete between narrator and bird mines the intricacies of life and love in a manner we haven't heard since Townes or Blaze Foley. It's impressive that an artist like Mark David Manders, already a favorite for different reasons with the diametrically opposed college set and older fans, can boil existence down to a song this simple and piercing. If anyone else in Texas can do this right this minute, I want their name.

The more expected Manders sound is back in full force with "Sam Houston," a topical exploration of Texas and Texans that holds a significant lyric twist.

Sam Houston crossed the river Red
As an eagle circled overhead
He looked up to the skies and said
"This is my destiny"
Now somewhere down I-45
There's an Eagle rolling through the night
I look in the rearview just to find
Houston's now a memory

Ain't that the truth too often these days, and don't it hurt like the devil? We're fortunate, then, to have artists like Mark David Manders making mythical Texas relevant and finding ways to meld the great state's past with its present and future. The records before this one have tended to include musical Westerns, stories like "Jim Murphy" and "Three Sheets To the Wind" that paint the land and people of the previous two centuries in vivid and sometimes brutal color. Highs and Lows delivers a new entry in that tradition, the dark and open-to-interpretation "Hell's Half Acre." Billy Joe Shaver's bone-rattling introduction, a menacing reading of Jeremiah 17:4, sets the tone, and Manders' band saddles up behind Lloyd Maines' stellar production efforts to infuse a fairly common death in old Fort Worth with a hellish life eternal. This is proof that Manders is capable of telling the real stories of the West that Marty Robbins couldn't touch in the climate that ruled his career. They don't come better than this.

And when you get right down to it, that's true of this record from top to bottom. There's honest love and simple life in "Follow Me," and the opposite end of that spectrum in the haunting and defiantly optimistic "Fat Tuesday." Friendship, loss and courage in the face of death take center stage for "Ward's Song," a co-write by Manders and acoustic guitarist Lance Smith. The only other co-write credit on the disc goes to Mark's wife Kathryn, who helped out on the family-centered and thoughtful "Halloween Costumes and Leftover Pizza."

Halloween costumes and leftover pizza
Are only good for a day
But these memories are backed by a lifetime warranty
Guaranteed not to fade

That's one for the good-timers out there who are still young or dumb enough to believe that being Texan boils down to Shiner Bock and Luckenbach. The young ones will learn that the latter was dear to Waylon and Jerry Jeff for things far more important than a party. The dumb ones will just get drunk on the way. There's room in Texas for both, but with Highs and Lows Mark David Manders has made it clear he's more on the side of Hondo Crouch and Charles Goodnight than Stockyards frat parties and Texas music wannabes. What sets him apart is that, unlike a Guy Clark, for example, Manders has found a musical style and approach that lets him bridge the gap and touch audiences across the generational chasms. Right now in Texas, it's hard to come up with a list of artists besides Jerry Jeff and Robert Earl Keen who can do that. There are plenty of solid acts, but most play exclusively to either the young or the old and like it that way. Manders, on the other hand, plays for Texans period. The college kid who loves Manders now will appreciate him more as he or she grows up. Those of us in middle age hear the same music from a different perspective and can treasure it just the same. And that, when the cows are finally all brought home, might be the one thing that sets Mark David Manders apart.

Find out for yourself, if you haven't met the man and his band already, with Highs and Lows. Mosey over to www.markdavidmanders.com for info. Thank me later.

Contact David Pilot at: tailgunner-at-rockzilla.net

 
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