Hunting Down The Heart-Worn Highways HUGH DELLAR hunts down 10 country-rock gems that can make a grown man cry. EASTFIELD MEADOWS


Eastfield Meadows (VMC, 1968)


In an age in which it seems that every single second of Byrds and Buffalo Springfield studio material has been excavated and re-


issued on 180g vinyl in a deluxe gatefold sleeve, the fact that this lovely record continues to languish in utter obscurity is one of life’s many mysteries. Emerging from the embryonic Californian roots and branches scene, the LP kicks off with ‘Travelin’ Salesman’, which manages to distill cheeky nods in the direction of ‘Drive My Car’, gorgeous lush harmonies and a shit-kicking fiddle/harmonica breakdown into three minutes of country pop perfection. Elsewhere, ‘Cowboy Song’ could almost be a Mike Nesmith track, ‘Love’s Gone’ aches and scars like a lost Flying Burritos track and ‘Silent Night’ veers off slightly into fuzzy psych terrain.


JERRY JEFF WALKER


Five Years Gone (ATCO, 1969)


Fresh out of the paisley circus whirl of Circus Maximus, and looking like a young Joe Strummer on the enigmatic cover


of this, his third solo LP, Jerry Jeff Walker turns in a set of hushed and intimate song poems that arrive all dusted and shimmering with post-psychedelic sunset afterglow. On the drowsy, dreamlike lope of ‘About Her Eyes’ for instance, the pedal steel drifts off into the ambient ether, whilst ‘Help Me Now’ drips and oozes rich, full-fat fuzz across its twilight canvas. Also featured is the deftly understated original of the oft-covered ‘Mr. Bojangles’, the song which would give The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band a Top Ten hit two years later, and would propel Jerry Jeff onto subsequent fame and fortune. Quiet, but cumulatively devastating, this is 3AM comedown music for down-home Nashville heads.


MICKEY NEWBURY


Looks Like Rain (Mercury, 1969)


If sad were an official genre of music, Looks Like Rain would be its insurmountable pinnacle for it truly is the saddest record ever


made. A prolific writer perhaps best remembered for penning both ‘An American Trilogy’ and ‘Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)‘, here, the late great Mr. Newbury gives full voice to the lovelorn, lost and lonesome. Inter-cut with the distant howl of gales, the clatter of far-off trains, the faint tinkling of wind chimes and persistent drizzling rain, the songs merge together to form a seamless suite of stunned loss. Accompanied by the most minimal of acoustic guitars and with ghostly choirs way back in the mix, this is unearthly, compelling and unique. In its lonesome and understatedly epic way, it demands complete attention. "Just like the dawn, my heart is slowly breaking", indeed.


MORNING


Morning (Vault, 1970)


Morning were an LA-based six- piece featuring Jay Lewis and Jim Hobson, both of whom had done stints with post-Forever Changes


Love, and this is the first of two woozy, mashed and mellow albums they managed. Perhaps most reminiscent of Ronnie


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Lane’s ‘Glad And Sorry’ style of work with The Faces, or The Band –only with better songs –the price of entry gets you beautifully hand-crafted songwriting, richly intertwined harmonies that run closely with the Wilson brothers in places, twists and turns a-plenty and eleven straight winners. The standout track is surely ‘Sleepy Eyes’ –a spectral piano augmented by a keening, lop-sided violin and the small hours vocals then slide you sleepwards faster than a double dose of Donormyl. Elsewhere, Morning exude a whisky warmth that speaks of home cooking on the hearth and heat-haze on the dirt roads home, late-night sneaky smokes under the summer moon and ole’time music playing right through it all.


HOYT AXTON


Less Than The Song (A&M, 1973)


Whilst it is not before time that My Griffin Is Gone is starting to gain recognition as the leftfield cracked country rock classic that


it is, we need to be careful not to overlook Hoyt Axton’s other work of the period. In fact, ’69 saw him in the midst of a decade’s worth of astounding output and almost anything five years either side is worthy of your time and ears. Following the success of covers of his songs ‘The Pusher’ and ‘Joy To The World’, Less Than The Song is the sound of disappearance, and ultimately, some kind of redemption and grace. Infused with plenty of haunted gospel and dark Delta blues, tracks like ‘Nothing To Lose’ and ‘Mexico City Hangover’ take country out to the edge of town at dusk and leave it suspended in the haze, a spooked premonition of the kind of ethereal Americana that would take another 20 years to filter down to the masses.


TERRY ALLEN


Juarez (Fate, 1975)


As No Country For Old Men is to Texas, so Juarez is to country music: a sinister, unsettling, darkly amoral sweep through the


underbelly of the great American South and its poor southern cousin, Mexico. Originally conceived as the soundtrack to an exhibit of his own lithographs, Allen’s masterpiece is in essence a concept LP, though it owes not a single debt to fellow mid-70s prog beasts such as ELP or Yes. It is a devil’s brew of stark insistent border ballads, Mariachi music, heat-fried blues and whisky-soaked bar room piano, all overlaid with Allen’s ragged, raw cowboy drawl. Near the start of side one, a spoken word interlude reveals the grisly tragedy at the heart of the tale and from there on in the rest of the songs offer up less a narrative and more a series of fractured perspectives on exile, identity, love, lust, history, blood and land. Stunning.


HARDIN & RUSSELL


Ring Of Bone (Demo, 1976)


Just as The Village Green Preservation Society is instantly evocative of a very particular time and vision of England, so Ring Of


Bone is a Polaroid undimmed by time of the sun-scorched deserts and canyons of the mid-70s deep American South/South-West, filtered through the minds and music of two gone-so-far-back-to-the-country-they-can’t-even-find-the-trail- back-out free souls. Their songs are populated by a throng of snakes and secret streams; hubcap shacks and drunk old men; coyotes, droughts and bleached-out bones. Oblique stories, precise poem tales of life on the fringes, the first side of this record is among the most beautiful things I’ve ever encountered


and was certainly the most played thing in my house the whole of last year.


LAWRENCE HAMMOND


Coyote’s Dream (Takoma, 1976)


My friend Mark Johnson turned me on to this one, and it seems only fitting to let him tell it his way: "This is one of the oddest country


records I know. It is also, in its fashion, powerful and beautiful and haunting. Hammond sang in Mad River, responsible for two wonderful, idiosyncratic psych LPs that should be better known. For this record, put out by John Fahey’sTakoma label, he wrote all the songs and they are straight enough country (though very stripped down sans strings) it’s not that hard to believe he later wrote a song The Judds turned into a big hit. But –there are two ‘buts’ and the second is bigger – the songs are so carefully, stylishly, alarmingly literate, they seem more like a meditation on country music tropes. When Hammond describes a tornado as ‘the devil trying to wring his own neck’, you know you’ve encountered a wordsmith. And then (this is the second ‘but’) there are the harmonies, which are surprising and very strange, obeying some skewed internal aural logic. They give the songs an otherworldly air that would be menacing if the production were not so warm; and because of them, none of these songs could ever have made it on country radio. He never made another record."


DAKOTA SID


Dakota Sid (Lost Dog, 1977)


Dakota Sid Clifford was a Haight- Ashbury veteran, having gigged around the SF scene with Project Hope before settling down in


Nevada Country to raise himself a family. Rising above the mass of mid-to-late ’70s loner rural SSW albums with its lonesome hearthside cosmic-cowboy moves and its stellar dobro and violin backing, Dakota Sid’s debut is possessed of a raw, hard-won honesty and a gritty gift of the gab. ‘Burgundy Easy’, a rueful tale of how wine can fill a hole in the soul is the stone cold killer. Sid’s innate idiosyncratic lyricism telling of how "things get tough and you try a new prescription / Poppin’ ‘em in and draggin’ your body along / It gets to the point where it don’t fit no description / Spittin’ in the gutter and thinkin’ up half a song" and a fuzz solo that could rip the heart out of an ox. Desolation Row divine. And then some.


THE JAYHAWKSTomorrow The Green Grass (American, 1995)


As America shuddered and suffered the after-shocks of the earthquake dubbed grunge, this


ragged, glorious record somehow slipped out under the radar on American Records (home at the time to Danzig and Slayer!) and proceeded to root itself deep inside the hearts of all who really heard it. Pivoted around the axis of guitarists, writers and vocalists Mark Olson and Gary Louris, the album bleeds and burns with equal measure. Ballads like ‘Over My Shoulder’ and ‘Blue’ are plaintive and potent enough to have the ghost of Gram sobbing into his bourbon, while ‘Miss Williams’ Guitar’ and ‘Real Light’ scorch with the fire of Crazy Horse. The harmonies throughout hit with the truth of American ages, voices that echo country churches and back porches, farmsteads and honky-tonk saloons. If there were any justice in this messed-up mad ole’world, this would be lauded as the best release of the ’90s.


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