Jon Dee Graham
Hooray for the Moon
New West Records

by William Michael Smith

The stones will bruise your feet
On the road of your retreat

In his early 40s, Jon Dee Graham is already an old warhorse. He's been charging musical fortresses since his early teens and he's won a few battles, lost a few wars. After so many years on the road, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that Graham has chosen to try to live something of a normal family life, at least as normal a family life as a musician of his talent can be allowed to live.

After returning to Austin with his son in 1996, Graham has settled into a routine of playing father as much as of playing guitar. Despite two critically successful made-in-Austin albums, he's kept his touring to a minimum and, to support himself and keep himself sharp as a performer, has been a mid-week mainstay of Austin's rootsy Continental Club the past five years, the regular Wednesday night attraction. In a town like Austin crawling with competent, hungry musicians, this is a choice gig, especially for a guy who'd rather go home when the gig is over than to a motel or the backseat of a van moving down the highway.

But with the release of Hooray For The Moon, Graham has decided to take his band out on the road to support what he considers one of the best recordings of his career. Last Saturday at the Houston branch of the Continental Club, Graham and guitarist Mike Hardwick, backed by consummate pros Mark Andes (Spirit, Jo Jo Gunne, Canned Heat, Heart) on bass and drummer Raphael Gayol (The Bodeans, Flatlanders), put on an ear-ringing display of two-guitar Texas band magic.

There were old fogeys like me scattered through the audience and I could sense they were probably thinking what I was: this is as close as we are ever likely to get to the True Believers live again. Graham helped us along in our fantasy by beginning the show with the first track off the new album, "One Moment," a song from his Trubs' days that was recorded by Patty Smyth in the early '90s. But it wasn't long before Graham laid to rest any ideas that he's clinging to the past, especially not the turbulent period when he was working with Alejandro and Javier Escovedo in True Believers, one of the most bad-ass three-guitar bands ever assembled, the surefire, can't-miss Next Big Thing.

Well, I don't care what came before
Because neither one of us are there no more
Right here we are, right here we are

So much for the brief fantasy of a True Believers' reprise in Houston.

Graham has played in so many bands (The Skunks, True Believers, Lou Ann Barton, The Lift, John Doe, Calvin Russell, Michelle Shocked, Kelly Willis) in so many genres and sub-genres, it is fair to simply say he can play it all. Whether on record or live, these days Graham comes across like a block of granite. He's no wispy, shadowy, dodging-and-ducking frontman, nor does he preen. A scarred veteran of thousands of gigs across the US and Europe, Graham stands center-stage like he owns it, like it is where he belongs, where he'd just as soon be as anywhere. And when he leans into the microphone with the brim of his hipster's hat snapped down over his eyes and that (I'm-sure-he's-sick-of-the-comparison) Tom Waits rasp, there's no doubt this is a pro toiling at his craft, a man of substance, a man to be taken seriously. He's not just doing this to meet women and be cool. He's doing The Work.

As always, his guitar playing is done in bold, solid strokes with little wasted motion and absolutely no hokey show biz flash. His attitude seems to be "this is me, take it or leave it." He's not haughty, but there's no doubt he knows it's good. His backing musicians know it too; they watch Graham perform as though they might never see this again and don't want to miss it.

While it is essentially a rock record, Hooray For The Moon is dotted with thoughtful, existentialist ballads like "Something Moves," "The Huisache Tree," and "I Go Too" that demonstrate Graham's considerable songwriting abilities and his performing range. Couple lyrics like these with his vocals, which seem to be filled with cigarette soul and a lifetime of what-ifs and regrets, and the effect is magnetic, transcendent, even redemptive. There is sentiment but no saccharine, power but no threat, sorrow but no whining.

This is not what I wanted
But this is still what I choose
Who wants to be haunted
Yeah, but who can refuse
Well I do the best I can
With my heart in my throat
My hat in my hand
Here I am
Here I am

Graham masterfully handles rootsy, thoughtful rockers like "The Restraining Order Song" ("I don't wanna see you/And I expect you feel the same/To tell the truth I don't know why I came/Oh, oh, oh/Oh, oh/I passed by your house") or "Tamale House No. 1," a sun-coming-up-after-an-all-nighter track which uplifts the spirit while it breaks the heart ("Coffee cold and bitter in the saucer/We drank the worst and then we spilled the best"). His Spanish cover of "Volver" with Little Joe of Austin's La Familia exhibits an almost religious respect for the song and the culture and heritage it sprang from, and Graham's vocal adds a wonderful, devil-may-care muy boracho Doug Sahm texture to this border classic.

But the bottom line on Graham is that he's a guitar-deity rocker, and he doesn't disappoint on Hooray For The Moon. Graham's rhythm playing has always been powerful, muscular, huge, and his faithful covers of Tom Waits' "Down in the Hole" and the True Believers' standard "Home" are both ground-shakers as he and Hardwick catch the lightning and throw it back and forth at each other. On "Waiting For A Sign," Graham and producer Don Smith (Rolling Stones, Keith Richards, Tom Petty) create a beautiful, layered, multi-tempo mood piece that alternates between airy, spiritual guitar passages with echoing drums and crashing blocks of power rock.

But the track on Hooray For The Moon that will roll back the years for true believers is the stand-back-if-you-know-what's-good-for-you noir rocker, "Laredo (Small Dark Something)." Graham knows club crowds and he wisely held "Laredo" for the final rave-up, announcing it with the sly comment "let's take a little drive" as he fixed his burning cigarette under a string and kicked the tune off. The wall of sound was just what the true believers had come to hear. "Laredo" makes Warren Zevon's "Carmelita" sound like a children's fairy tale. The South Texas border town has always had a reputation for crime and intrigue. With its cast of low-life criminals and lines like "I'm livin' at a motel called "Motel" out on the Refinery Road/The sandman's dead so we walk the floor/The sandman's dead, we don't sleep no more/We shot dope 'til the money run out/We shot dope 'til the money run out/...the money ran out," "Laredo" portrays evil like a Tarrantino film. It is undoubtedly the blackest, grittiest piece Graham has ever recorded, so black it is entirely John Campbellesque, right down to the stunning, frenzied guitar battle. The live version was simply overpowering.

With over half his life invested in music, Jon Dee Graham has nothing left to prove except that he can satisfy himself, meet his own expectations and standards. On Hooray For The Moon, despite its edginess, the occasional purposeful sandpaper roughness and tension, I sense a man who is within himself, who knows his proper vocation is being a musician and a songwriter -- and he can live with that. He doesn't seem adamant or over-bearing about it -- I doubt he wants to talk about it at all -- but the look on Graham's face says "this music matters ­ and it's what I do." There is a mature sense of completeness and wholeness to his latest creation, and above all a sense of calm-in-the-middle-of-the-storm competence. Judging from the guy I saw performing at the Continental Club, I'm willing to bet that's a pretty accurate description of Jon Dee Graham. It looked and sounded to me like he's every bit still the true believer.

*Jon Dee Graham is part of that brilliant stable of talents at New West Records, www.newwestrecords.com

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

 
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