Considerations: "After Awhile" by Jimmie Dale Gilmore

I bought Jimmie Dale Gilmore's "After Awhile" back when it first came out, in 1991, and keep going back to it.

At the time, I was just sorta getting into the various albums by musicians who had been in the Lubbock mob known as the Flatlanders. Had purchased Joe Ely's "Live from Liberty Lunch" with its great rollicking acoustic version of "Me and Billy the Kid" in college and had seen Joe open for Little Feat some time that year. He was larger-than-life on stage, a Texas gunslinger who had to make do with a guitar. So when I heard he had a bunch of confreres, and that Elektra was issuing a bunch of "American Explorer" roots albums featuring mavericks such as Charlie Feathers and Jimmie Dale, I immediately picked it up.

What a great album - from a new version of the meditative Austin classics, "Tonight I Think I'm Gonna Go Downtown" and "Treat Me Like A Saturday Night" to a cover of Butch Hancock's wordy "My Mind's Got A Mind Of Its Own" to the Western-swing stylings of "Go To Sleep Alone" and the lovely "Story Of You" and "Don't Be A Stranger To Your Heart," this is just song for song, a beautfiul album.

Where Ely utilizes a crack rock band to spin yarns of Western desperadoes, and fellow Flatlander Butch Hancock relies heavily on Dylanesqe wordplay, Gilmore tells simple contemplative tales in a high lonesome voice that helps carry the day. Like Guy Clark, Gilmore is not a prolific writer, but you can tell that just like Guy, Gilmore seems to really hone his lyrics making sure that each word counts. He has put out lots of other discs, but "After Awhile," I'd suggest, feature more of Gilmore's own writing, rather than depending more on covers of songs by contemporaries or classics. It's well worth seeking out.

Melody Where There Is None

I'm getting more and more into a group known as the Heartless Bastards (not to be confused with the two guys who back up James McMurtry and who are known by the same touchy-feely sobriquet).

Power trio with a female singer-songwriter at the helm and who blast out guitar riffs carved from stone - in other words, they seem to create something melodic out of guitar blasts and drum beats. No backup vocals, no annoying synths (although there is some piano once in a while). Even singer Erika Wennerstrom yelps it out with the best of them, rather than going the Sheryl Crow doo-da-doo-da-how-dya-like-our-catchy-chorus route. Not sure how much the band can evolve from its premise, but the White Stripes seem to be doing just fine with a lot less at their center. I'll be curious to hear more from these Bastards (as well as McMurtry's).

A Creaky Classic

Greg Brown's pipes aren't the most melifluous. Put him in a boxing ring with Leonard Cohen and they could have a croak-off. But a chance spin of Brown's "'Cept You and Me Babe" on the radio reminded me of how much I always liked this tune.

The lyrics paint a tough picture: "it's raining sheets of rain / everything is cold and wet /nobody's going out of doors / they're all at home living it up on the internet /so i guess nobody's lonely any more /'cept you and me babe / 'cept you and me." It's the last couplet that blows the whole thing up.

Add to the stew Brown's deep, rumbling voice, which reminds me of (as noted) Leonard Cohen holding forth on the misery of life on songs like "Everybody Knows," and the effect is pretty devastating.

Let's just say "Cept You And Me" is not a tune to load into the iPod for a workout at the gym.

How'd I Miss This?

Didja ever buy an album, give it a few listens, just say "Ehhh!" and then put the thing aside. Well, I did that with a disc from one of my perennial favorites, and I guess I must've made a mistake.

When Tom Petty released "Echo" in 1999, I had grown less enchanted with the band. They had gotten a new drummer, had ridden off the rails with a disc produced by Jeff Lynne and come up with an oddball soundtrack album. So I was probably a little biased when "Echo" came out and I didn't like a few of the songs and that was it.

Upon recent listens, however, I've really come to love some of the defiant, underdog-gets-revenge scenarios on these tunes. Petty has always been able to express a little raised-middle-finger attitude in nearly everything he does, from "I Won't Back Down" to "Refugee" to "You Got Lucky." Well, just take a listen to "Billy The Kid," Swingin'" or "Counting On You" for more not-so-subtle rebellion. But this time it's tinged with the knowledge that the narrator is taking a pretty hard fall.

Word is Petty wrote this songs for this disc after his divorce from Jane, his longstanding wife (who had been with him even before he made it big). You can definitely hear it in many of the tunes, such as "Counting On You" (Cuz there's a rumor going 'round / Somebody's gonna let me down / And I don't know what it's all about / Or if it's true / I'm counting on you). I mean, that's pretty rough stuff, to be telling your girlfriend or whoever that you know it's her who's about to put the knife in your back.

Or the phrase "Oh, mama I'm about to give out /I'm Davey Crockett in a coonskin town" from "About To Give Out." How can you be the hero when everyone is gunning for what's on your head?

There are some missteps here - guitarist Mike Campbell shows us why he's never sung lead vocal before on a Heartbreakers disc on "I Don't Want To Fight" (not the best work of Campbell, who helped write Don Henley's "Boys of Summer."

I think it's fair to say the direction of the Heartbreakers has been uncertain in recent years - why are Petty's solo albums always more interesting affairs? Why is his next disc going tobe with his old Gainesville band Mudcrutch? But there's also proof that you can't write the band off -ever. Now I have to go and dust off "The Last DJ."

Mix Tape: "Sweet Virginia" by The Rolling Stones

When you ask someone what their fave Stones song is, chances are you get "Sympathy for the Devil," "Satisfaction" or "Harlem Shuffle" (just kidding on that last one, folks!). My favorite has to be "Gimme Shelter" or "Wild Horses," but coming up fast behind is "Sweet Virginia."

Nestled smack dab in the middle of the band's playing-with-a-hangover (and worse) classic, "Exile on Main Street," Sweet Virginia grabs you quite unexpectedly. It's not as greasy as the rest of the album ("Rocks Off," et. al.) With a quiet start, a harmonica honk and a few guitar strums, it sounds like a breezy paean to one of Mick Jagger's many conquests. Instead, it morphs into a stunning country-blues that picks up speed the more the group and its backup singers repeat the chorus (this song doesn't have that many words to it)

After Mick thanks California for all the wine he has drunk that came from there, and noting the "speed inside my shoe," he moves on to advise young Virginia to follow along "Come on/ Come on down...." and to "scrape the shit right off your shoes...."

I always liked the song cause it quietly urges you to - no matter how strung out or down you may be - to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep on slumping forward. Hey, what more can you try to do when life kicks you a hard one?

I Dream Of Wilco

Had the oddest dream last night, in which the final scene to some imaginary version of one of the Bourne movies began to roll. Matt Damon has completed his mission, saving the world in the process, and unknown figures begin rolling him out in a wheelchair. Dunno why.

In any case, he starts belting out a recent but little-known song from Wilco called "The Thanks I Get". (The first line goes, "Is that the thanks I get/ For loving you?") This is not a song that made it on to the band's most recent album. I only know it as the background to a recent Volkswagen ad and as a download from iTunes (which Ive listened to in full twice). Odd that it has already creeped into my consciousness - though I do have to admit, it sure is a catchy song (despite the fact that the quality of the lyrics sorta fade halfway in...)

Eagles Don't Soar

Thanks to my friend Tom, I have secured a disc containing many of the songs from the Eagles' new disc, and I have to say: Ehhhh.

Too overproduced, not sharp enough in lyrics or melodies. At least that's my initial take from about three listens. Even the Joe Walsh track lacks the guitar-slinger's trademark "can you believe I have to suffer the indignities of being a rock star" type humor.

The Eagles were always a little too meticulous for my taste, but these days the air has just been snatched out of the room in favor of songs that sound just a little too perfect (at least in terms of production). The one song stuck in my head is "Too Busy Being Fabulous," a Don Henley-put down of someone who scotches the relationship in favor of seeking the limelight. It's sort of a middle-aged "Life in the Fast Lane" with some romantic yearning baked in. But it's nowhere near the level of that aforementioned song.

Anyone could have written these songs. Which is why the various members of the Eagles would have been better off keepin' on their sporadic solo work.

Soul Patrol

Don't know why this keeps happening, but I find myself downloading lots more soul than is the norm. Not because I don't like it, but prolly because you can hear any hit soul or R&B song you want on the radio or on the Muzak in a restaurant if you wait long enough.

In any case, my latest two purchases are Bobby Womack's "Across 110th Street" and Arthur Conley's "Sweet Soul Music." I recently heard the former during a viewing of "American Gangster" - not the first movie to make use of this tune (check out "Jackie Brown," too). It's a wonderful tale of striving and struggling, all set to spoken work, a few strings and then a great chorus that might do as much for you as "Gotta Fly Now," the theme from "Rocky" - if that sort of thing gets you jazzed up.

As for Arthur Conley? He's basically a one-hit wonder and some folks may confuse this hall-of-fame call-out (he name-checks Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, among others) for Wicked Pickett's "Land of 1000 Dances" - it's just that kind of a novelty. But I've long enjoyed it, and you only hear it once in a blue moon. So that's a good a reason as any to have it on hand.

Mix Tape: Neil Young's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

A long time favorite of mine has been one of the lesser known tunes on Neil Young's first Crazy Horse disc, "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" -it's the succinct title track, which, for some odd reason, is less well known than the ten-plus minute workout "Cowgirl In The Sand," also on this album.

I've always loved the title track for its hybrid punk/country feeling and its bordering-on-the-metaphysical lyrics:
' I think I'd like to go back home/ And take it easyThere's a woman that I'd like to get to know /Living there...'

As it turns out, however, the narrator really doesn't yearn to be somewhere else (or at least, this is my interpretation of the whole thing). He's really trying to get himself out of a rut, and imagining better days is his way out of it. So when he sings "Everybody seems to wonder /What it's like down here / I gotta get away from this day-to-day running around /Everybody knows this is nowhere...." I think he's just saying that even his life is nothing great and he gets down, too. So his head is not as great a place to be as some might think.

Despite the could-be-depressing lyrics, "Everybody" has a great crunchy guitar sound and enough country twang to keep the cowpunk fans satisifed. I always wished Jason and the Scorchers had covered this one.....It ought to get more credit among the Neil Young die-hards....