Kevin Gordon
Down to the Well
Shanachie Records 6049



by William Michael Smith

About a week ago at dinner, my wife asked, "Who is that guy who sounds like John Hiatt in slot 3 in my CD player?" It may not seem like it, but this is high praise indeed from a woman who isn't shy at all when it comes to criticizing music. While she doesn't limit herself to one style or genre, if it ain't got that swing it just ain't her thing.

Every now and then, in an effort to shrink my workload, I slip a couple of CDs into the 10-disc changer in her car unannounced. By doing this, I get the benefit of having a filter to separate some of the chaff from the wheat and a free second opinion to either reinforce or challenge my own. My wife is a tough, no nonsense critic with very firm ideas about what is musically worthy. I calculate that 75% of the CDs I sneak into her player make their way back into the house within 48 hours (that would include 98% of the sensitive singer-songwriter types). Being compared to John Hiatt is indeed high praise coming from her.

I tried to look innocent, noncommittal and said, "I don't remember. What are some of the songs?" But she wasn't about to be trapped into humming a few lines or any of that, so after dinner I went out to the garage and popped the changer open and there was Kevin Gordon's Down To the Well. With a twinge of guilt I realized it had been in her player a month and that I was a couple of weeks late in publishing the review. In fact, I had only listened to the CD once and it had been in her car ever since.

Understand that my wife keeping a CD in rotation in her car for a month, particularly when she doesn't know who the artist is, is a five star recommendation. And guess what? As usual, she was right. Gordon does sound a lot like John Hiatt and Down To the Well is a five star record.

Like Hiatt, Gordon's East Nashville roots rock approach borrows heavily from the blues and Southern rock and roll. His songs are little folk art paintings, pictures of commonality turned into high art through Gordon's exacting eye and humane conscience. With Lucinda Williams' cohort Bo Ramsey assisting in the production as well as on guitar occasionally, much of Down to the Well has that laid-back Southern lope that Williams' rockier tracks have, a no-hurry, just-let-it-come-when-it-comes feel.

Williams duets with Gordon on the title track, which would have fit perfectly on her Car Wheels On A Gravel Road album. The too-real lyric, written with Colin Linden, one of the premier roots/blues players and songwriters on the Canadian scene, is top-of-the-line East Nashville Americana.

You played that dive twenty some-odd years
With the faith and the whiskey you killed your fear
I remember the night you broke down to the core
Threw that black Stratocaster through a plate-glass door

The track that sounds most like Hiatt in his late '80s heyday or as a member of the roots rock super group Little Village is the funky twanger "Burning the Church House Down." With Gordon and co-producer Joe McMahan doing some ground-crawling, sneaky-snake guitar work, this track is as Southern gothic as dirt track racing or buttermilk cornbread. Written with the prolific Gwil Owens, this is the music the Rolling Stones would make if they'd been born in the South.

I didn't mean no harm
I was just a shit-faced kid
Police called my mama
Told her what I did
She said your body is a temple built by the Lord
Keep on drinking, you'll be damned for sure
Hey, mama
I'm burnin' the church house down

On the Gordon-Linden tune "Promise Road," Gordon again strikes a chord somewhere near Hiatt or Bruce Cockburn. Gordon's voice has that wistful, world-weary, working man's quality that is ideally suited for roots rockers about the risky side of life. An accomplished student of poetry, Gordon chooses his words carefully yet the common touch is always at hand. If you can't relate to "Promise Road," get the silver spoon out of your mouth and listen again.

Every blushing bride walking down the aisle
Thinks she knows the guy hiding behind the smile
You can raise a glass, you can ring those bells
Out on the promise road, only time will tell

On the promise road, you can't read the signs
There's no destinations, no arrival times
You can do what you want
You can do what you're told
But you keep on walking up that promise road

Undoubtedly the high point of Gordon's songwriting career so far has been the selection of his and Owen's "Deuce and a Quarter" by former Elvis sidemen D.J Fontana and Scotty Moore for inclusion on the 1999 All The King's Men album (which they performed with help from Rolling Stone Keith Richards and Levon Helm of The Band). "Deuce and a Quarter" got lots of radio airplay and VH-1 video exposure. Gordon delivers the tune as a roadhouse blaster and he and McMahan demonstrate more of their high-octane East Nashville guitar prowess. The same goes for the smoldering "Water or Gasoline," another back alley roadhouse philosophy verse with more of the Hiatt feel and barbeque joint guitar.

She looks good in a cheap straw hat
With her long hair hangin' down
She used to smile a lot more at me
Before I brought her down to this town
I ain't lookin' for no strange angel
No faith healer's fainting bliss
I'm just searchin' for a gap in the traffic
Something simple as a kiss
Oh baby, I can't see you through the steam
Oh baby, do you bring me water or gasoline?

Hardly one-dimensional, Gordon can leave the rock groove and work in quieter bluesy tones. In fact, Gordon's soulful, slow-moving treatment of Earl King Johnson's "Time For the Sun To Rise" features some wonderful slide guitar work and is reminiscent of Hiatt's "Lipstick Sunset." On "Jimmy Reed is the King of Rock and Roll," Gordon pays homage to one of the masters of the craft, but rather than rock his vehicle is a wispy southern country blues with Bo Ramsey adding the subtlest of slide guitar colorings.

On "Great Southern" and "Oil City Girl" we get the full blast of the furnace that is Kevin Gordon's talent. Gordon's poetic eye is sharp and unblinking yet 100% humanistic, and he makes the connections that give great significance to conditions and circumstances that we take for granted or ignore. As with the rest of Gordon's lyrical work, "Great Southern" is full of the commonplace turned poetic as he makes us party to the inevitable decay occurring all around us.

Fire ants crawl on creosote
Grackle squawks a single note
Rusted rails like the ribs of a skeleton

Where you gonna go
On that Great Southern Road
Wheels ain't turning like before
Where you gonna go
On that Great Southern Road
When you can't go home no more

In a story that is absolutely and uncompromisingly American, Gordon catches the simultaneous magic and pathos that boomtowns hold for hopeful working class migrants on the stomping roadhouse rocker "Oil City Girl."

Her daddy found work, down in Louisiana
Pretty soon they were boomtown bound
Threw a big old trunk on top of that beater
Full of hope and hand-me-downs, hope and hand-me-downs
Staring out of that backseat, dreaming of diamonds and pearls
She was an Okie baby, now she's an Oil City girl

A native of Northeast Louisiana and a former student of poetry at the prestigious University of Iowa creative writing program, Kevin Gordon is one of the brightest triple threat talents on the left-side-of-Nashville scene. Like an old timer sitting on the town square in the heat of the afternoon, Gordon carefully and painstakingly whittles life-like songs filled with images that recall and recreate the Southern blue-collar milieu. His music is soulful, intensely real, and always based on the Southern experience, but there is nothing prissy or cute about Gordon's approach to his lyrics or his music, no calculated sucking up to the artsy crowd. Down To The Well isn't some soft rock background pleasantry meant for the dentist's office intercom. It is filled with music and songs crafted for roadhouses and jukeboxes and house parties and late night radio, music by the people, for the people, from the people. It's as Americana as Steve Earle.

Or maybe John Hiatt.

* If you are an avid fan of rocking Americana music, Kevin Gordon is one of those artists that we absolutely have to support financially. Buy Down To The Well directly from Kevin Gordon at http://keller.clarke.edu/~rgehl/kevingordon/albums.htm
or the usual commercial outlets.




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

 
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