Tom House
Jesus Doesn't Live Here Anymore
Catamount Records CCR 009


by William Michael Smith

Take equal parts Dust Bowl poet/troubadour Woody Guthrie, early Bob Dylan (the frenetic, poetically hysterical Dylan of say "Another Side of Bob Dylan"), and Ramblin' Jack Elliott (the foot-loose city kid turned cowboy hitch hiker), throw them in a stew pot with a dash of Steve Goodman and Pete Seeger, add heaping teaspoons of simpatico acoustic pickers, Piedmont cynicism, backwoods reticence, and, for spicy flavoring, add a general suspicion of all things modern and popular and you have a recipe for the music on Tom House's joyous new record, Jesus Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

According to the Durham, North Carolina native of Scotch-Irish descent, he grew up "female and church dominated" among stern people and came by his musical leanings and his general suspicions of modernity honestly. "My brother found a great-grandfather on my father's side named Anguish who was listed as being a small man who played the fiddle and was fond of drink." It seems Tom House grew from this branch of a family tree designed for producing lyrical troubadours.

House has considerable background in poetry and his music shows it. There are no easy "went downtown to look around, turned right to see the light" lyrics on Jesus Doesn't Live Here Anymore. House's "Everything Changes" comes across as a young Dylan psycho-drama (possibly cross-pollinated with Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow).

I drove back to Norfolk fully intending
To tell her my mind, I was tired of pretending
Something I never was or ever could be
I was sick of that way she kept looking at me
She's pregnant and pissed and telling me why
She's drinking beer and smoking, said she couldn't stop
I was never really sure, she said I was the father
She could have been lying, so I didn't bother

People fall into patterns of deceit
Life's like an accident waiting to happen
A package tied up with ribbons so neat
I don't think so, the crowd's stomping and clapping
Everyone needs, everyone uses
Everything changes, everyone chooses
Everything comes to a head

The storyline gets worse and the language juicier when her former lover reappears ("back from the navy or jail"). "She's breathing hard in his ear, making it all clear/They're shooting down the whiskey, chasing it with beer/I love him, she shouts out over the crowd, I never did love you/I teller her "hell, that's what I'm waiting to hear.'" I can't think of anyone in the modern era but Dylan who writes songs like this. The song has the Guthrie feel, but the deliciously vicious story details and the salty realism so typical of the mid-60s Dylan.

House has the rare ability to soar in the heavens with his language without coming across as pretentiously literate or as a dainty highbrow. His rhyme on "Toss Your Partner" illustrates how earthy yet brilliant House's lyrics are.

If everyone is as free as you and I are supposed to be
Then tell me why the changing guard
Just stand around and stare so hard
Like they know something maybe I oughta know
Hell, I seen it coming, hate to see it go
But there ain't no looking when there ain't no more
Reasons to be looking for

Both his finely honed lyricism and his Scotch-Irish musical leanings come fully to the fore on "Picking Up and Going." In some of his songs, House sees the good, the light and the hope, but at other times he infuses his lyric with a sense of resignation, a "that's life" fatalism.

In the stillborn crackling of a cold night
For a while I thought I had it but I let it get right by me
I let it slip away, seems there's some things I didn't need to know
Some things I can't say and I guess I've really always been that way

And there's no way I'll be believing there's any other way of knowing
And the only thing left to leaving now is the picking up and going

Mr. House doesn't make his song stories easy to get, but there is a lot of "getting" to do in each one. Some are based on warm, cherishable memories and some, like "Daddy's Dark Eyes," are based on somber but no less vivid residues.

I'm walking haunted, some heartbeat gone crazy
Blood burning hot in my brain, I can't tell
It's that whiskey breath that reminds me of death
I can fell his rough touch like I'm rushing through hell
I remember so much, I remember so well

What I felt, how I'm held I can never escape
I can never forgive what was nothing but hate
As night after night I'd just there and wait
Know he's coming soon

Ray Wylie Hubbard says every singer needs a sing-along and the wickedly ironic "Jesus Didn't Die" is Mr. House's. The song details the guilt of a man who was present at a hate crime against a gay man, realized the terrible wrong that was happening but was too fearful of what people might think to stop it. Now he can't escape that guilt no matter how he turns the events in his mind. The chorus is absolutely chilling and pure Woody Guthrie in its ironic convolution.

Jesus didn't die for faggots like you
So shut up and take what's coming to you
And you're gonna have to do your own suffering too
'Cause Jesus didn't die for faggots like you

While the chorus above is an exception, House's songs aren't the kind to be easily remembered after only a few hearings, but they are so lyrically interesting and melodically catchy that they simply demand the repeated listenings which eventually cause us to digest these songs and make them our own.

House has a great musical ear and his melodies can be delicate and airy ("Isadora's Dancing Tonight") or filled with spirit-lifting bluegrass nuances ("Child of God"). With pickers Tommy Goldsmith (mandolin and guitars), Pat McLaughlin (guitars), Paul Niehaus (steel guitar) and the wonderful backing voice of Tomi Lunsford, House's music is a loose, joyous acoustic chaos, part folk, part Appalachian. The music is entirely natural with a spontaneous, live-performance impression that radiates the feeling musicians get when they sit on the porch, pass the fruit jar and perform in a low-pressure environment for nothing but their own pleasure. The sound is antique but unaffectedly so, and seems grounded in the music of the Great Depression. Although the mandolin generally gives a mountain music feel, the instrumental presentation is often reminiscent of the Dust Bow hillbilly treatment on the great Woody Guthrie recordings that featured Cisco Houston and Sonny Terry. Close your eyes and, if you are familiar with Guthrie's works, you can picture him singing on the infectious "Papa's Dancing With His Daughter."

In his liner notes, we learn a lot about this fellow Tom House, songwriter, when he writes, "It is easy to knock the Nashville that gets out to the world, but for years I could go out anytime and see Townes Van Zandt, Dave Olney, Steve Young, Steve Earle, and I could go on and on. A more immediate circle I've run with including Mark Germino, Rob Stanley, John Allingham, among others are still unknown and in some cases couldn't care less but have spent their whole lives writing songs that defy convention in style and content. It's been a great town to live a life. I'd recommend it to any songwriter who wanted nothing to do with the music industry." Such a refreshing attitude about songwriting, music, and life is a pleasure to stumble upon in this over-commercialized, over-hyped, gotta-get-ahead day. It is similar to the pleasure of stumbling onto a quiet gem of a record like Tom House's Jesus Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

* If you know someone who likes smart music that doesn't fit any of the standard molds, House's album will make a fine gift. Buy Tom House's Jesus Doesn't Live Here Anymore at Catamount Records, the home of such outside-the-box songwriters as Gurf Morlix, Kirk Rundstrom and Dave Schramm, at  www.catamountco.com/ Learn more about Tom House and the likes of Dave Olney, Eric Taylor, and Richard Bicknell at www.mysongwriters.com



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

 
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