By the time you get to track nine, you'll be exhausted.
Weak.
Vulnerable.
Looking back, it's possible I was over caffeinated as well. I hadn't slept much in the days previous. Nerves were frayed after a difficult work week. The weekend wasn't looking to bring much of a respite.
Suddenly Randy Houser started singing about life "South of Memphis."
Track nine is the least personal of Houser's eleven on his new album "They Call Me Cadillac," but it's a chance to let everything you've been through to that point settle some. It's a moment to try to understand what you're listening to. If this album were a football game, and Houser the coach, every song would be a 12 man blitz. When he hurts, we bleed. If he's celebrating, we're buying the first round. It's life on the edges, "one of those sink or swim things, and I'm okay either way," Houser said.
"They Call Me Cadillac" is as much of a blues album as it is a country album. The harp wails on tracks like "Lowdown And Lonesome" and the title track. Two naked ballads are more traditional country, but it's clear Houser isn't making up stories when he speaks of the Mississippi hill country just below the Tennessee line. I've never been, but I know the music from that area well. Take a guitar lick and twist, bend, and shape it every which way but the wrong way, and there is no wrong way. Pound your foot through the beer soaked juke joint floorboards and then pound some more.
"And the music there, ain't turned into business," he shouts.
The speakers of my truck stereo begged for relief but would get none for another two minutes. I thought of my wife, and what it's like when she steps out of the bedroom looking her best for a night out on the town. There is so much to appreciate I feel both overjoyed, and ashamed that as a man, I'm incapable of taking it all in. That's a cruel reality in art and life. Sometimes things are simply above you.
Then a big ol' guitar lick screams into a solo that sounds like something Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page would mastermind. Slowly, things settle down and the CD clicks to track 10.
The final two cuts are the cigarette after the ceremony, ending with "Lead Me Home." Here, it's just Randy and an acoustic guitar. It's the song a generation of Houser fans will want played at their funerals. Every bit as good as Vince Gill's "Go Rest High on the Mountain." As it fades away you want thank him. You want to call him "Cadillac." But mostly you want to do it all over again.
Weak.
Vulnerable.
Looking back, it's possible I was over caffeinated as well. I hadn't slept much in the days previous. Nerves were frayed after a difficult work week. The weekend wasn't looking to bring much of a respite.
Suddenly Randy Houser started singing about life "South of Memphis."
Track nine is the least personal of Houser's eleven on his new album "They Call Me Cadillac," but it's a chance to let everything you've been through to that point settle some. It's a moment to try to understand what you're listening to. If this album were a football game, and Houser the coach, every song would be a 12 man blitz. When he hurts, we bleed. If he's celebrating, we're buying the first round. It's life on the edges, "one of those sink or swim things, and I'm okay either way," Houser said.
"They Call Me Cadillac" is as much of a blues album as it is a country album. The harp wails on tracks like "Lowdown And Lonesome" and the title track. Two naked ballads are more traditional country, but it's clear Houser isn't making up stories when he speaks of the Mississippi hill country just below the Tennessee line. I've never been, but I know the music from that area well. Take a guitar lick and twist, bend, and shape it every which way but the wrong way, and there is no wrong way. Pound your foot through the beer soaked juke joint floorboards and then pound some more.
"And the music there, ain't turned into business," he shouts.
The speakers of my truck stereo begged for relief but would get none for another two minutes. I thought of my wife, and what it's like when she steps out of the bedroom looking her best for a night out on the town. There is so much to appreciate I feel both overjoyed, and ashamed that as a man, I'm incapable of taking it all in. That's a cruel reality in art and life. Sometimes things are simply above you.
Then a big ol' guitar lick screams into a solo that sounds like something Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page would mastermind. Slowly, things settle down and the CD clicks to track 10.
The final two cuts are the cigarette after the ceremony, ending with "Lead Me Home." Here, it's just Randy and an acoustic guitar. It's the song a generation of Houser fans will want played at their funerals. Every bit as good as Vince Gill's "Go Rest High on the Mountain." As it fades away you want thank him. You want to call him "Cadillac." But mostly you want to do it all over again.
No comments:
Post a Comment