ROUTES & BRANCHES
featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
April 22, 2021
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
Readers of a certain age will admit that nearly everything they know about the Constitution can be traced back to a three minute Schoolhouse Rock short from Saturday morning. Same could be said for our knowledge of conjunctions, our solar system, and the number 3. More recently, Hamilton: An American Musical has reminded us that, in addition to charting the course for our Great American Experiment, the Founding Fathers had mad flow.
Of course, roots music is no stranger to songs and albums informed by history. For instance, the band Have Gun Will Travel released a 2015 album about Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated Antarctic exploration of 1914. The most recent entry into this lottery comes from an outfit called The Rose Petals. Their debut project, American Grenadine (Envoy) is built around stories of the final days of US Presidents.
Rose Petals are a collaboration between lyricist Peter Donovan and songwriter Elijah Ocean. From the Seattle area, Donovan has served most recently as frontman for All the Real Girls (a band to whom I really should have paid more attention). Ocean is a multi-instrumentalist whose five solo LPs explore a wide range of the roots music spectrum. Under the guise of this new act, their music favors a classic, alt.country sound, evocative of predecessors from Jayhawks to Green on Red or the Long Ryders. The Rose Petals call their music post-americana.
American Grenadine opens with the only song I know about Warren G Harding. "Welcome To the Big Top" drops an immediately familiar guitar line alongside Ocean and Donovan's harmonies, close as the classic years of Olson and Louris. Donovan shows his work, and packs each song with impressive historical references, here referencing Harding campaigning from his porch and the pennies kids saved towards the construction of his Ohio memorial. On another racing jangle pop track, "The Man Who Sold Hats" references Harry S Truman's questionably successful pre-presidential career as a haberdasher, as well as his fondness for drink: So give 'em hell, the way you used to do / Make 'em pray like they're supposed to / Enjoy the glass of bourbon in your hands.
Donovan and Ocean share vocals between songs, and even alternate verses on some songs. With Ocean's chiming guitars and Zach Jones' occasional organ, it's impossible to avoid comparisons to some of the genre's formative artists. A eulogy for George Washington, "Gentleman Farmer" rings like a Byrds classic. There's also a rich pop vein running through songs like "My Dearest Friend", an epistolary number about the relationship between John Adams and co-signer of the Declaration Thomas Jefferson. "Military Man" sets the story of Dwight Eisenhower to a roots pop ramble: They lay across the beach like flies; they lay you in a church / They lay across the dirt roadside, like a straw man on his perch.
Peter Donovan took to the roads in researching each of these stories, but Rose Petals assure that the history never takes precedence over the music. It's not necessary to understand James Madison to appreciate the tuneful chorus and rousing percussion of "Chesapeake Leopard". The loping pop of "They Say You Loved a Good Man" is a sweet song even without prior knowledge of Calvin Coolidge's marital story. The lyrics are contemporary enough that sometimes it's only a glance at the liner notes that will betray the origin of a tune.
Nevertheless, I was so impressed with Rose Petals' historical sleight-of-hand that I did some further reading of my own into these stories of deeply human and often profoundly flawed men. American Grenadine isn't a history lesson set to music, and it doesn't drag the musty stories of our elementary textbooks into an updated setting. The abiding appeal is in the partnership of Elijah Ocean and Peter Donovan, a dialog that betrays as much knowledge of roots music history as presidential trivia. After repeated listens, you'll be thinking more of those guitars and harmonies, the psychedelic departures and sharp hooks than you will be thinking of Rutherford B Hayes.
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Summer releases are finding their place on A Routes & Branches Guide To Feeding Your Monster, our masterfully curated account of what's on the horizon for our kind of music. This week, Rod Picott announced a double record featuring songs he has cowritten with long time collaborator Slaid Cleaves. Expect a May 21 release date for Wood Steel Dust & Dreams (Welding Rod). JP Harris is teaming with former Old Crow Medicine Showman Chance McCoy for their next project. 'Neath the moniker of JP Harris' Dreadful Wind & Rain, Don't You Marry No Railroad Man will make its debut on June 25 (Free Dirt). Yola's 2019 Walk Through Fire earned the top spot for our Favorite Record of the Year. She's announced a followup set for July 30. Stand For Myself will be available via the Easy Eye Sound label. As Oh Susanna, Suzie Ungerleider has released several strong roots records. This week, she's announced the appropriately titled My Name Is, her first project under her birth name, in stores August 13 (Stella). Finally, the prolific Malcolm Holcombe returns August 20 with Tricks of the Trade (Gypsy Eyes).
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