Cooder Graw
Shifting Gears
Three-to-One Records

by William Michael Smith

One blustery West Texas winter day early in 1999 I sat in The Blue Light on Buddy Holly Avenue in Lubbock imbibing a cold Coors, avoiding the wind and my job. There was band rehearsing a new song and they kept getting it slightly wrong (which is why they were rehearsing it!). The drummer was getting crossed up by having to pick up a backup harmony part and then be ready to play a tricky little fill and change the beat as the song turned around. Later that night during their show, the lead singer said, "We're leaving right after the show tonight for Austin, where we'll be recording our first album tomorrow. We're gonna try to put this one on the album -- if we don't screw it up."

A few months later the band's first album, Cooder Graw, hit the streets and I bought one. Between my wife's car and mine, we've worn that little record out the past two years. Nowadays, anytime I get depressed about the state of this Texas music thing, pissed off about the inconceivable popularity of the Pat Greens and the Kevin Fowlers, it always helps to pop in a Cooder Graw CD. As usual, the new Cooder Graw album, Shifting Gears, is filled with crisp playing that is deeply connected to the country music traditions of Texas and with intelligent lyrics that are actually about something a mature, thoughtful person who can think beyond tonight's frat party and the deep concept of "a burrito and a Shiner Bock" can relate to. What can these guys be thinking? This is no way to get ahead in this business.

Cooder Graw continues to tour from the unlikely base of Amarillo, Texas. The isolation seems to insulate the band somewhat from the popular trends, to provide them with a way to stay in touch with non-urban life and concerns. They keep reaching into Matt Martindale's overloaded subconscious to come forth with sophisticated, humanistic songs about folks in small towns, folks whose lives don't fit the modern fantasy, folks who somehow missed the gravy train or the beauty pageant, the free ride to the prosperity and easily obtained happiness modern life is supposed to automatically guarantee. And as always, Martindale's earthy songs about marginals and the dispossessed are backed with some of the tightest country arrangements and playing to be found. While Martindale may be the brainy songwriter and vocal front man, his supporting cast of players - drummer/backup vocalist Joe Ammons, bassist Paul Baker, super-cool steel guitarist Jim Whisenhunt and lead guitarist Kelly Turner - have been there, done that and could be playing in any band on the scene or in the studios of Nashville. They are one slick machine as a band.

While Cooder Graw can "burn it down" with the best, song quality is always central to their act. Martindale, a former assistant district attorney, often draws heavily on his experiences in the legal field for characters and situations. Shifting Gears opens with a chilling jailhouse cautionary tale about law enforcement in rural Texas where the country sheriff continues to be a law unto himself. Details like Martindale stuffs into his songs don't just "occur" to you. No doubt working around the courthouse and the justice system, Martindale has seen it and lived it. This is the kind of song about wrong and injustice that Jimmie Rodgers or Woody Guthrie would be writing if they were still living and still "ridin' the rails" or "thumbing the roads." This is Steve Earle territory.

Hell's down 152 East out of town
You can scream and no one hears a sound
Yeah, and the sheriff and his boys know every road out of here
And they'll kick you right out in the middle of shifting gears

Cooder Graw's first album was such an underground classic that they now find the deck stacked against them in a way. I've heard any number of people say, "Their new one's not as good as the first one," usually followed by something like "there just isn't a song like 'West Texas Wind' on the new one." I say that's hogwash. While the first album was definitely a keeper filled with memorable lyrics and sharp performances, Shifting Gears is a natural extension and illustrative of the band's growing maturity, ability, and cohesiveness. I've also had people tell me, "I like the new album, but there's none of those real pretty songs like 'Two More Tears in Texas.'" Oh, yeah? Wash the beer out of your ears and check out "God Only Knows" or "Any Old Girl" if you need pretty.

I've been staying home, I've been staying true
You've been out undoing all of your "I do's"
But where are your vows now that I could use
One hint of hope
I'm not going to lose you

The heart is quicker than the eye, they say
And when the reason's gone, hearts will play
Play a little long, forget how to get home
And leave me loving you all alone

God only knows where the hell you've been
What the devil's gotten into your pretty head
God only knows

I've given up trying to persuade these the-first-album-was-best people that it's not really necessary to say one album is "better" than another, that it's OK to like them both.

Cooder Graw is a double threat band. Some of their material, like the ironic "Willie's Guitar," the hardcore honky tonker "This Hurt," or the cynical portrait of the small town stud, "King of the Dairy Queen," are in a light enough vein to appeal to the how-drunk-can-I-get crowd who "just want to have a good time." But most of Cooder Graw's work has considerable depth and genuine emotional impact, which takes their songs to a level above "good time." Like the works of the best novelists, Cooder Graw stories don't always end with "lived happily ever after" (or "the sun set on me in Mexico as I recuperated from my hangover with Chiquita Bonita"). The best example of their lyrical depth is the poignant and bullseye true portrait of a Vietnam veteran, "Junior's In the Yard." There's a special place for writers like Martindale who can do work like this. He doesn't make any attempt to pretty up this tragic still-life, delivering the tune with a matter-of-fact vocal that fits the realism of the lyric. In this day of jingoistic posturing, you'll never hear this one on the radio.

Charlie was a vet
A drunk just the same
Cared for his Mom, carried his Daddy's name
The war was long over but the fight was still there
He's still proving things, still nobody cares

Look out, Junior's in the yard
Loading his gun; he never thought it would be this hard
Look out, Junior's in the yard
Pointing that gun straight at his Purple Heart

Cooder Graw can put considerable tension and edge on a hardscrabble Texas story and they've never recorded anything with a sharper edge than "The Legend of Millie Stacey." Baker's bass and Whisenhunt's steel paint a dark and stormy background on this tale of hard luck and small town evil.

She waits in dread beside her bed
And she knows what the evening brings
Knocks on the door of the local whore
Mean it's time for her to sing
Her songs are written every night behind a parlor door
Sung to a crowd of one until it's done
Words slung across the floor

Millie never had a future
She always had a past
Millie always had a lover
Just as long, long as the money would last

On the other end of the spectrum from the all-to-familiar "King of the Dairy Queen" is Martindale's chilling story of a friend who commits a murder, "County Colors." Like some of Chris Knight's songs, Martindale's story isn't pretty, but that doesn't make it ring any less true.

We used to wahoo beer together
Every now and again
When I caught him holding my girlfriend's hand
I shoulda known right then

They caught him getting drunk and reading the Bible
Just a month or so before
He tried to roll a friend of mine
In a bar just down the road
Well, they say they found that poor girl's body
Rolled up in a ditch in a rug
Now he's goin' to Hell in a county jail
Wonderin' what he's done

Now he's got three squares a day
Visits once a week
And the county colors to keep him warm
When he sleeps

If I have a complaint about Cooder Graw (and it's only a tiny one), it's that the studio records don't reflect the intensity of their live shows. With great lyrics and the solid backbeat of Ammons and Baker, the drop-dead, couldn't-miss-a-note picking of Turner and Whisenhunt, and the magnetic stage presence of Martindale, this is a band that can set a club on fire. In contrast, their studio albums are heavy on danceable, mid-tempo shufflers delivered with considerable precision and control but leaving the impression that the band seems to come at the work like they are making "singles." While their recorded sound is professional and polished, it can come across a little on the "cool" or "reserved" side. I've seen enough Cooder Graw shows to know the kind of reaction they get when they step on the gas and I hope they will open up the carburetors more often as they continue their recording career. But meanwhile, every time I get depressed about the state of Texas music, I'm going to pop Shifting Gears into my player. Honest, well-considered, mature country music like this beats a handful of Prozac any day.

*Buy Shifting Gears from the 2000 Rockzillaworld Band of the Year, Cooder Graw, at www.coodergraw.com Tell 'em Rockzilla hisownself sent you.




Contact William Michael Smith at: wms-at-rockzilla.net

 
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