With a singing style that sounds eerily like Lucinda Williams
but with a songwriting voice all her own, Canadian singer-songwriter
Kathleen Edwards gets my vote for Best New
Artist so far this year, her debut album
Failer, released in January by venerable roots
label Rounder, a strong, durable collection of short stories and observations:
“Six O’Clock News” takes a clichéd
scenario and turns it into a killer song, while “Westby” is a May-December
“romance” with fangs. “Hockey Skates” adds
something new to alt-country’s store of concrete images, and “One More Song
the Radio Won’t Like” actually lives up to its title. And even though
Edwards seems to have learned her vocal tricks from Williams, she’s mastered
every mannerism and trope.
Joining Edwards at the Hi-Tone Café Sunday, March 23rd, is
John Eddie. Who the hell is John Eddie? Well, you
must not be the first to ask the question, because that will be the title of Eddie’s
new album, his first in years, which will be released in May on Nashville roots
label Lost Highway. The album was recorded locally at Ardent and produced by
Jim Dickinson. So, who the hell is John Eddie? Eddie was a fixture of New
Jersey’s Asbury Park scene in the early ’80s, his shows at the famous Stone Pony
drawing the attention of favorite son Bruce Springsteen, who would occasionally
join Eddie on stage. This helped Eddie get a major-label deal that didn’t amount
to much. Now he’s back.
— Chris Herrington
Far be it from me to complain about a straight-up
honky-tonk band making Memphis a regular tour stop, but Oklahoma’s hippie cowboys
Jason Boland and The Stragglers, who played the Hi-Tone Café last month
and who will be returning on Wednesday, March 26th, just rub me the wrong
way. Sure, they have an awesome pedal-steel player who can also grab a Telecaster
and pick like Don Rich on speed. The bass and drums are simple and solid,
while Boland, a Junior Brown-inspired baritone, has as expressive a voice as you
are likely to hear in modern country music. But somehow the individual parts manage to
be much greater than the whole. And here’s the other thing: About halfway through their
set, they start singing songs about smoking dope, and they don’t stop. Now, I’ve got no
qualms with the reefer madness, and the occasional song about weed is okay in my book, but,
in the Stragglers’ case, it’s overkill. It’s a gimmick that a band as potentially fine as
the Stragglers just doesn’t need. On the other hand, when they sing lyrics like “If I
ever get back to Oklahoma, gonna nail my feet to the ground,” they capture a kind of
pure country spirit that is at odds with the tie-dyed shirts and backward
baseball caps in the crowd. If you aren’t a country fan as
a rule, but LOVE Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, Jason Boland and
The Stragglers is the band for you.
Of course, the two obvious choices for this week are
B.B. King at B.B. King’s on Thursday, March 20th, and
George Clinton’s Parliament/Funkadelic at
the Lounge on Saturday, March 22nd. Oh sure, as a recording artist, King may
have seen better days, but live he’s still a monster. And the 30-year-old freak show
that is Parliament/Funkadelic is still plenty freaky.
But for my money, there’s not a better show happening this week than the Dirty
Gospel of the Reverend Vince Anderson. This Tom Waits-ish theologian is at the
Hi-Tone on Saturday, March 22nd. — Chris Davis