Tom Russell The Man from God Knows Where by Richard CuccaroSome of us of baby boomers have rounded the bend of the half-century mark and some have crossed the threshold of their sixth decade, heading into the gale force wind of old age. Our memories of a rough-and-tumble homeland that gave birth to the best of human aspirations grows dimmer and dimmer. We are now a country overrun by consumer-crazed mall-crawlers, living on a diet of junk food, junk TV and junk religion. As the time runs out on the America we knew as kids, like dirty water down a sewer, the voices that help us remember what it was like grow fewer and fewer. But hold on a minute. Like one of the western legends he sings of, in a barrel-chested, steel-backboned voice, a man strides through the figurative door of the saloon - John Wayne as gunslinger turned folksinger. He brings with him the visions of the lost outsiders. Pilgrim…meet Tom Russell.
"I was born in the City of Angels… down on Hope Street near Pershing Square and Clifton's Cafeteria and the Pantry… and all those old strip joints on Fifth and Main… y'know, 'Tonight,White Fury and her twin 44's…' Charles Bukowski territory… Beat outsider music on the radio and the America that's been lost from that time… taken off the radio. You had to have been there. The backdrop is MacArthur Park and Hollywood Court Apartments and racetracks… the old America where the big guilt and political correctness and the chain stores hadn't sunk in so deep…"
The above is quoted from his CD Hotwalker, a sound and music collage masterpiece released in 2005. Tom brings us voices of fierce individualists from the past who came from the streets and the working class, free of the rules and the niceties of university "training." He knows what a marvelous instrument his voice is and he plays it like a Stradivarius. His songs and commentary are interspersed with recorded work from Lenny Bruce, Jack Kerouac, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Harry Partch, Edward Abbey and Charles Bukowski. The most important outsider voice is that of the"Hotwalker" of the title, a circus midget, Little Jack Horton. Dubbed the "king of the carnival," he sounds like "Ukelele Ike on laughing gas." A recording of his laugh was used in funhouses. Little Jack once drank with Bukowski who then set him up with a job walking racehorses to cool them off after their morning run, thus a "hotwalker." Russell was amazed to find him, still alive, down in Florida and asked him to read commentary into a tape recorder. As the king of the outsiders, Horton, who passed away in 2004, has the biggest role, serving as a focal point, appearing at the beginning, middle and finale. Sounding like a child on helium, he recalls:
"I drank with Charles Bukowski down by the old L.A. Stockyards, must've been 1956… The Ringling Brothers train was in… I was just a goddam kid, animal wrangler, circus clown… they let me drink beer at this L.A. chippie bar.All the little people were into amyl nitrate poppers back then. Scary shit. Makes ya feel bigger, I guess. Same thing that liquor does…"
His story about how he and Bukowski steal a train is priceless and unforgettable. Everything he has to say about America, from the very informed view of a little person and side show attraction, ever wary of his audience, is pertinent and dead on. In the beginning Russell speaks of how he was affected by life back then:
"I discovered Buck Owens and Bob Dylan on the same night on an old wooden tube-driven radio that belonged to my uncle George Molloy. I thought Buck and Bob were some new form of hillbilly beat folk music… Buck Owens pushed the treble up on the glittering telecast- ers and steel guitars and shredded the jukebox speakers to give it that West coast Okie sound. The sound of twang cutting through smoky barrooms and joints along the old Oakdale highway where Okies and Mexicans fought with homemade knives in the Hoover camps. It was the end of the world. It was country western. It was the other side of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath mixed with nudie suits and women in push-up bras and it was real gone. It was gone hillbilly music too rude for polite middle-class white boy ears and it was all gone by 1985…"
When asked to expand on his early influences he responded:
"The Beats. Early cowboy songs.Tex Ritter. Marty Robbins. Then the discovery of old folk music. Then the Kingston Trio, who were pushed aside when I discovered Ian and Sylvia (very strong influences on me - later I co-wrote with both of them - many songs) ....I was listening to Ian and Sylvia last night. To me they were like the Beatles. That music stands up. Great writers and performers who didn't cop out to any political trip or contemporary sell out. They both remain active. Then came Dylan. I was blown away. The Scorsese movie [No Direction Home] really cemented in my mind how strong an artist he was and is. He exploded folk and pop music. I saw him sing "Desolation Row' at the Hollywood Bowl in 64 and was affected for all time. That was forty years ago and nothing much has happened since in the art of song writing. I think most contemporary songwriters are scared to death and they're lying and treading water. Unsuccessfully."
Tom was born in Los Angeles in 1950. He graduated from the University of California with a Masters Degree in Criminology and went to Nigeria with his professor to teach Criminology there. It was during the Biafran War. As you might suspect, this had considerable effect:
"Landing in Nigeria in 1969 was a shock. I accepted the job not really knowing where the hell Nigeria WAS. I was arrested getting off the airplane in Ibadan because my wife (at the time) was taking photos and it was a war zone. I believe millions of Ibos died in that war. I ended up learning to carve wood in the marketplace and I read everything written by Graham Greene. I decided over there that academia was bullshit and I began playing my 1946 Martin D-18 a lot and sitting in with High-Life bands like King Sunny Ade. The musicians were stuck inside the country during the war and were stringing their guitars with old motorcycle cables. I discovered African Art. I came home and went to Vancouver and started a skid row country band. Played eight sets a night.
These days, the term "skid row" is used to refer to any area of a town with seedy surroundings and even seedier inhabitants. The original Skid Row is in Vancouver. In the concert film DVD Hearts on the Line, Tom is seen paying a recent return visit. Conditions are still as savage today, maybe more so. This where Tom got his start at the bottom of the music ladder. He says:
"We went to Vancouver to visit friends and stayed. I worked odd jobs 'til I could get a band together. Played Hank Williams songs and Rolling Stones in topless bars. Learned the craft. Some of that is mentioned in my book Tough Company, published by Mystery Island Press. I wrote a novel on a whim and sent it to William Morris (I picked the most famous agent out of the phone book) and they liked it and shopped it for two years. Nothing happened. I moved to New York and wrote manuscripts in the attic of a house in Rockaway Park. On the frozen ocean.Went nuts. Right out of 'The Shining.'"
In one interview, he states, "I'm always working on some prose." This helps to explain the stretches of literary ambition and the excellence of lyrical content in his recorded work.
"I was writing fiction and burnt out on music. Driving cab. Met Andrew Hardin. He was also driving cab. Late one night I picked up Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter in my cab and sang him "Gallo del Cielo" accapella. He loved it and hired me to open some shows for him. That's the short story…it was a long and interesting cab ride and changed my life forever and got me back into music. One of the few people I've met in this business who actually DID something…stuck his neck out. Never have run into him again. He was singing the song for a while…I have a cassette of him in London....he says: "Here's a song I heard from a cab driver in Jamaica, Queens… He got me up on stage to perform some songs at The Bitter End. I was nervous as hell. It was packed and I hadn't touched a guitar in a year. I had to sing my 7-minute song about cockfighting to a packed house full of Grateful Deadheads. But I pulled it off and he had me sing three or four and... bingo... I was back in the music business.Andrew Hardin and I rehearsed and we opened for Hunter at the old Lone Star Cafe on Fifth Ave. I was so scared I drank a half bottle of Jack Daniels, but somehow we pulled it off and then began working in the bars of the Village and also some Italian Bars in Brooklyn. Then we put a country band together during the great "Urban Cowboy" scare and played Jersey and Long Island.Wonderful shit holes. 1981-90."
The meeting of these two cab drivers, and Tom's collaboration with Andrew Hardin -- next to Lennon and McCartney -- ranks as one of the top synchonous events in music history. Andrew is one of the hottest guitar pickers on the planet. Onstage they're like brothers, kibitzing and throwing sarcasm around like frisbees in the park. Andrew's range and command of styles is enormous. As Tom's long-time accompanist, he gives the songs the color and dramatic musical reading they deserve. Pressed for space and time, we'll get to his story in a future issue. The Man from God Knows Where In 1999, when The Man from God Knows Where was released, more than one reviewer referred to it as Tom's best album. The immense scope made it his most critically recognized work at that time. His articulate 26-track rendering of his ancestry -- an immigrant song cycle -- is staggering. Guest appearances by Iris DeMent, Dave Van Ronk, Sondre Bratland, Kari Bremnes and Dolores Keane help to give the ancestry their voices. Their stories are all Tom's writing and research. The production is a sumptuous and moving sonic feast -- a combination of European and American traditional players on Uileann pipes, Norwegian fiddles and other instruments. In the first appearance of the title song on track 1 (there are four), it's essence, and the thrust of the album is in the lines:
"So riseup all you ancestors and dance upon your grave / I've come to hear your voices now, so maybe I'll be saved."
We get our first taste of the family history in track 3. "Patrick Russel" contains some lovely slide work and elegant fingerpicking. The story, as always, is riveting:
I sit here in New Hampton,the year is 1910 looking back from Iowa toward Mother Ireland / I was born in Templemore in 1825 Recall a happy boyhood until my mother died Starvation crept across the land, America's our Dream Six cruel weeks on stormy seas aboard the ship Tyreen…"
And so begins the epic saga of the trek westward of Tom's ancestral immigrant relatives from their roots in Ireland and Norway. The particular stories of Mary Clare Malloy, Ambrose Larsen, and Anna Olsen document the trials of life in the new land. As the Outcaste, in one of his last performances, Dave Van Ronk characterizes both the weaker immigrants and those who cheated them. The phrase "I'm an American primitive man, in an American primitive land… American primitive man" recurs overand over, from different characters, lending cohesion to this monumental work. There are many stirring performances on this disc. His song for his father, now deceased, "Throwin' Horseshoes At the Moon," is a study of a gambler and a drinker, but ultimately sympathetic, stating near its end: "How can you be a loser if you never lose your pride?" In the album's finale, "Love Abides," Russell's duet with Iris DeMent is immensely spiritual, a coming home to a place of rest. The production creates a shimmering landscape. Marc Mickelson of soundstage.com states: "Although collections like Poor Man's Dream, Rose of the San Joachin and Hillbilly Voodoo may be better places to start appreciating the music of Tom Russell, The Man From God Knows Where is where you'll end up. And what a trip it will be."Borderland In 2001, Tom released Borderland. The stories here deal with lives gone wrong and they take place mostly along the Texas/Mexico border. Juarez is invoked often and effectively. In track 1, "Touch of Evil," our narrator is nursing a broken romance in a bar on Juarez Avenue thinking about the movie of the title with Orson Welles and Marlene Deitrich. Tom's keen ear for dialogue comes in especially handy in mirroring the narrator's mood. "'Read my future says old Orson, down inside the tea leaves of your cup' / And she says 'You ain't got no future Hank, I believe your future's all used up.'" "Down The Rio Grande" is an achingly beautiful ballad of a man trying to trace his lost love's footsteps along the river. "When Sinatra Played Juarez" foreshadows the theme of Hotwalker in the lament of the narrator's piano-playing uncle who says "Everything's gone straight to hell since Sinatra played Juarez." "Where The Dream Begins" is a memoir piece wherein the narrator regrets his wanderlust. His daughters tell him he could've seen the dream in their eyes. The best forshadowing of Hotwalker occurs in "What Work Is." Between sung verses, Tom narrates scenes from his past as a young man relating to his co-workers and the passing scene in mundane jobs such as butter stripper, tree limb chipper and truck driver. "The Next Thing Smokin'," a favorite of mine, is one of the best expressions of staying upbeat in the face of a failed relationship. It's a fast-paced number with some blistering guitar from Andrew. "This heart ain't made for bein' broken / She ain't my conductor and she ain't my engineer / Put me on the next thing leavin' / the northern or the southern hemisphere / Put me on the next thing smokin' / Put me on the next train outta here" Hearts on the Line This concert film DVD was released in 2005. It documents a scenic trip across Canada playing to a passenger audience while spectacular views abound outside the train's windows. The object of his latest breakup was along on this ride as one ofthe musicians and it results in some poignant moments as well as some memorable renditions of new songs that are found on his upcoming album. The musical accompaniment includes Hot Club of Cowtown, Kristi Rose,Fats Kaplin and of course, Andrew Hardin. Love and Fear As its title suggests, this upcoming album deals with the crash-and-burn aspects of dealing with the opposite sex. Its release date is March 16th "All the Fine Young Ladies" and "It Goes Away" were previewed on the Hearts on Fire tour, as well as "Stealing Electricity." Other new titles include: "The Pugilist at 59," "The Sound of One Heart Breaking," "Ash Wednesday," "K.C. Violin," "Four Chambered Heart," "Stolen Children," and "Beautiful Trouble"… about falling in love with a 25-year-old psychologist from the Swiss Alps. "Trouble will find it's own level," he says. We say, keep finding that trouble, Tom. We'll keep listening to the results. Upcoming Area Appearances: Apr 20 7pm Iron Horse, Center Street, Northampton, MA 21 8pm Passims 47 Palmer, Cambridge, MA 22 7:30pm Roaring Brook 70 Gracey Rd., Canton CT 860-693-0263 23 2pm University Café, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 631-632-6027 www.universitycafe.org 28 7pm Joe's Pub, 425 Lafayette St., NYC 212-539-8778 30 3pm Victorian Mansion Concerts Orange County Community College 115 South Street, Middletown 845-343-3049 www.friendsofmusic.net Tom's Web site: www.tomrussell.com