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Rooted in Boston
The Tarbox Ramblers and Mark Erelli
BY TED DROZDOWSKI

Michael Tarbox writes songs that capture the sound of the original Dirty South. Drawing from the well of old blues, country, and mountain music, his band’s recordings evoke a time when most of the region’s population worked in dusty fields connected by unpaved roads — when soil was under men’s fingernails and grit hung in the hot air of sweaty summer nights. But for the second CD by his band the Tarbox Ramblers, the inspiration may have come as much from buds, stems, and seeds as from roots. "I wanted this album to sound really stoned," he says of the just-released A Fix Back East (Rounder) when we meet over plates of seafood at the Dolphin outside Harvard Square. "Little did I know as I was heading into recording that those guys would be stoned all the time."

"Those guys" are A Fix Back East’s producers, Southern music legend Jim Dickinson and the locally based team of Sean Slade and Paul Kolderie. "I swear, there was one day I got high just from being in the same room as Sean and Paul, and Dickinson would just sit there working, smoking, and telling great stories. He’s such a raconteur."

In the case of A Fix Back East, "stoned" is not a euphemism for laid-back. It describes the disc’s richer sonic qualities — mostly the Slade/Kolderie team’s careful mixing and application of effects that make for trippier listening than was afforded by the band’s comparatively dry-sounding homonymous 2000 debut. The disc also has a meaner edge. Part of that’s the nastier guitar tones that Tarbox, who sings and plays six-string, gets out of the little amps that he turns up good and loud. His raw, grainy farmer’s voice is also better recorded. Actually, everything is. And there’s often a dreamy coating of reverb that ups the mystery and drama of his dark lyrics, which ring with death, despair, and desertion at nearly every turn, whether he’s depicting the Crucifixion in "Were You There?" or warning an ex-lover that "the sword of God is swift and cold/It’s gonna cut us down for the lies we told" in "Honey Babe."

Tarbox explains, "I really think of the originators of this sound, old blues guys like Skip James or the Appalachian musician Dock Boggs, who are among my favorites, as making music that’s awesome in the original sense of the word — fierce and commanding. There’s a kind of terrible beauty in it that imparts the cold lessons of life in terms that are often stark. I like that quality in music, so that’s what I aim for."

But in a departure from the just-the-facts narratives that color most rurally based music from the ’20s through ’50s (a spring from which Tarbox drinks deeply), the ambiguity in his new songs sometimes creates a sense of imbalance. Is "The Shining Sun" really the story of a man sinking under the waves for the third time? Is "A Fix Back East" about a broken love and lost passion, or is it about a junkie looking for his connection? Tarbox isn’t telling. "But I will say that I wanted this album to have more original songs, and I wanted to record some new songs and take some chances."

The Tarbox Ramblers headed to Memphis in August to record with Dickinson, who has produced the Replacements and Ry Cooder and played piano for the Rolling Stones and Aretha Franklin, at Sounds Unreel studios. "It was surreal from the moment we arrived at the Holiday Inn," Tarbox recounts. "It was literally the 25th anniversary date of Elvis’s death — ‘Elvis Week’ in Memphis — and there was a Polish Elvis look-alike in the lobby and Italian Elvis freaks walking around with their shirts open. But there was a feeling about being in the South, even then, that made it very easy to work on my music."

Fueled by coffee and a determination to give the recordings an "edgy feel," Tarbox was writing new numbers right up until the sessions. "I aimed to record some things cold, but we played the older material first, recording stuff we knew to make sure we got something usable on tape. Then we switched over to songs the band had never heard before. I wanted to see if having things be pretty shaky would translate to something exciting on tape. ‘Were You There?’ — we were literally trying to learn the song as we played it. I was barely able to get through the guitar part. I was turning the beat around. But I think that approach worked. I’m really happy with the way the album turned out. And Dickinson was up for it. One of the first things he said to me was that he loved recording people who’d just met for the first time playing songs they didn’t know."

The last few numbers were recorded by Slade and Kolderie, who’ve worked with Hole, Radiohead, and a pile of other bands famous and obscure, at Camp Street studio in Cambridge, where they also mixed the album. "Dickinson, Kolderie, and Slade helped me keep the music mesmerizing. There’s something trancy about some of the songs. There’s also another quality — of things moving while at the same time they stand still."

As you read this, the Ramblers themselves are in motion, just a few dates into their first tour behind A Fix Back East. For the road, and for their local CD-release performance at T.T. the Bear’s in Cambridge on February 21, Tarbox is expanding the core trio of Rob Hulsman on drums and either Zack Hickman or Scott McEwen on bass with veteran Boston-scene guitarist Rich Gilbert, formerly of Human Sexual Response and the Zulus and a member of Tanya Donelly’s band and also Frank Black’s. Old-timy fiddler Alan Kaufman will also play the T.T.’s date and a handful of out-of-town performances.

"I’m doing that to open things up," Tarbox says. "I want to play with different people to get different sounds and experiment, which makes me excited, because I know it will reveal new aspects of the music."

FOLKSINGER MARK ERELLI also travels down the dusty back roads on his new Hillbilly Pilgrim (Signature Sounds), but he heads west, toward the Texas roadhouses of the ’30s and ’40s. Although country and blues informed his three earlier albums, this one’s led by his faithful, zesty, funny, highly charged original takes on Western swing. "Let’s Make a Family" and "Brand New Baby" use pedal steel guitar, fiddle, and upright bass to revisit the days of Bob Wills and Ernest Tubb. The steel and bass, by the way, come via Frankie Blandino and Johnny Sciascia of the Cranktones. Sciascia also plays bass on the Tarbox Ramblers CDs, but he left after the A Fix Back East sessions.

Erelli has the right sense of humor for the genre, packing his lyrics with clever wordplay. But some of Hillbilly Pilgrim’s best songs step out of the idiom. If the small-town tribute "A Bend in the River" and the weepy "My Best Wasn’t Good Enough (For You)" have any ties to Texas, it’s with Lubbock-raised songwriter Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s vivid tales of trials, triumphs, and heartbreaks. Erelli even sounds like Gilmore at times, delivering his lines in a buttery tone dappled with subtle vibrato and rise-and-fall melodies. Folk-pop singer Erin McKeown turns up, lending her pipes to "Just Pretend," another comic turn that blithely urges a lover with wandering eyes to "go through the motions of devotion and pretend." And Erelli’s labelmate Kris Delmhorst, along with songwriter Jake Amerding, lend their voices to the acoustic spiritual "Pilgrim Highway."

THE REGENT THEATRE in downtown Arlington leapt onto the local concert map last year by hosting a wide variety of great performances. Willie Alexander, the Real Kids, Lydia Warren, Ronnie Earl, Honeyboy Edwards, Hot Tuna, Beat the Donkey, and a host of other artists took the stage at the old-fashioned, community-oriented movie house and vaudeville palace. A week ago Sunday, the Regent hosted its first benefit of the year, for Project Bread, featuring Dennis and Jake Brennan, Bourbon Princess, Duke Levine, Tom Gearon, David Johnston, and more. The comfortable space’s next big fling for a cause is on February 27, when Johnny Winter, James Montgomery, Badfinger guitarist Joey Molland, Fred Lipsius of Blood Sweat Tears, Jon Butcher, UK rocker Tracie Hunter, Charlie Farren, and Neighborhood/Stardarts frontman David Minehan will get together for a revue-style show to benefit the drug-rehab, shelter, and youth-outreach programs of the Middlesex Human Service Agency. Comedian Steve Sweeney hosts; call the Regent at (781) 646-4849. And if you can’t make that gig but want to hear Molland, Butcher, and Hunter, they’ll be at Formula 1, the combination auto-racing track and entertainment complex in Framingham, the next night. Tickets are available from www.virtuous.com.

ODDS AND ENDS. Venerable local blues veteran Weepin’ Willie has returned to the Good Life in Cambridge’s Central Square on Saturday nights in February. Show time is 9 p.m. . . . Wellesley Hills–based Tone-Cool Records was named Billboard’s top blues album label for 2003, scoring the most titles on the industry news mag’s "Top Blues Albums" chart. Tone-Cool’s latest Susan Tedeschi CD, Wait for Me, was the chart’s top blues album of the year; the disc has also been nominated for a "Best Contemporary Blues" Grammy.

The Tarbox Ramblers play T.T. the Bear’s Place, 10 Brookline Street in Central Square, on February 21; call (617) 492-BEAR. Mark Erelli plays a CD-release date at the Lizard Lounge, 1667 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, this Friday, February 6, with shows at 7 and 10 p.m. Tickets are available through www.virtuous.com., or call (617) 547-0759.


Issue Date: February 6 - 12, 2004
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