ROUTES & BRANCHES
featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
July 22, 2018
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust

My mother was an educated woman.  She graduated from nursing school, where she met my father, before she reached the age of eighteen.  Once her children demanded more time from her she stepped away from a career and became a "housewife".  Every day from that point on, my mother would clean the house from top to bottom.  There was not a single day during my childhood that she wouldn't meet my brothers and me at home after school.  Even after we grew away from home, she took it upon herself to create an oasis of peace and comfort for my father, the quietest, cleanest, most removed place I knew.  While I didn't recognize it at the time, there was a streak of agoraphobia behind the bubble she built. Even as a nurse, she hated to visit the hospital, vowing that the next time she set foot in the building she'd never leave.  My mother fulfilled this prophecy mere weeks after convincing my father to retire.


There's a song on Lori McKenna's The Tree called "A Mother Never Rests".  She probably didn't know that she wrote this about my mom:  She's a stubborn believer that time and a clean house is how you heal / So a mother never rests.  When press attention began to gather around McKenna's 1999 Paper Wings & Halo, it was always mentioned that she was a Massachusetts mother of five.  She's written about a lot of things over the space of ten CDs, and garnered plenty of accolades writing for mainstream country sorts like Faith Hill, Sara Evans, Carrie Underwood and more.  Through it all, Lori McKenna's been best known as chronicler of the domestic drama, singer for the unsung.

None of her characters are larger than life.  There are no "Jolenes", no Wandas looking to exact revenge on any Earls.  Matter of fact, the scenarios are drawn from the stuff of every day, folks who would go unheralded were it not for a poet such as McKenna.  There is "The Fixer", the handyman surrounded by bicycle tires and lawnmower parts / Miles of wires and kitchen drawer nobs / Transistor radios, scrap metal / Hand-me-down tools, one of everything.  Like my father, another "fixer" in his own right, he is an imminently capable man brought down to earth at the mercy of his wife's illness: The Fighter says, 'Some things just can't be fixed'.

Following on the heels of 2016's much-deserving Bird & the Rifle, Lori McKenna's new collection is a wise and stirring account of what life's still like well beneath the bustle and noise of what passes for popular dialog.  Like Mary Chapin Carpenter or a more down-to-earth Patty Griffin, her songs are typically cast in acoustic country-leaning folk settings.  With its steady going beat and lyrical flow, there's no reason "Young and Angry Again" couldn't be picked up by any number of famous faces.  Her second consecutive project with producer Dave Cobb features several of these moments, when we recognize that McKenna might be one of the best country writers of her generation.  She's certainly among our most eloquent documenters of small town iconography:  Lighting cigarettes just to hold 'em / Up in the air, singing Never Get Old / Throwing bottles at a high school chainlink fence.

Try "Lot Behind St Mary's" for another poetic dose of nostalgia, this one about facing down the boundaries and taboos we learn at church.  McKenna never clubs us with lessons or easy emotions.  Rather, she simply allows those lyrics to wash over us:  Every now and then you look at me and I know you wonder why / We can't get back to when September was our only adversary / In the lot behind St Mary's.  Only once, on 2007's Unglamorous, did she embrace a more contemporary approach to her songs, ramping up the production and surrounding herself with bigger sound.  More typically, as on The Tree, McKenna applies only the instrumentation merited to deliver her message.  None of these songs are bare bones.  Rather, McKenna and Cobb opt for a full but tasteful arrangement.  She spells out her approach on "Like Patsy Would":

I wanna pray like Jesus is listenin' / I wanna play like I'm made of strings on wood / I wanna write it down like Hemingway / Like it's the last damn thing I'll ever say / And try to sing it like Patsy would

"People Get Old" is my favorite song from The Tree.  Once again, it's about family, about the difference between our parents in our memories and the folks we visit now that we're grown.  While much attention is paid to Lori McKenna's skill as a writer, her new collection reminds us of her grace as an expressive singer as well. As the Pop Matters site put it so aptly, "She impresses by not trying to impress".

Songs on The Tree pull back the curtains on our little lives.  They are patient with our faults and forgiving of our sins, humble in the light of the small good things we do.  We don't look in on our kids before bed or spare a dollar for someone in need because we're saints.  It's just what we know, who we are when nobody is watching.  And it's those moments she captures so perfectly in her music. 

I remember when I visited my mother and father after being away at college for several months.  The house in which I grew up seemed smaller and more run down.  My parents had seemingly retreated into their story, occasionally collecting new wrinkles or signs of age.  I didn't belong there anymore.

Houses need paint / Winters bring snow / Kids growing up and sneaking out the window / Hitting every small town dirt road / And that's how it goes / You live long enough / And people get old

- Kim Richey, "Red Line" Edgeland  (YepRoc, 18)
- Rodney Crowell, "Ain't Living Long Like This" Acoustic Classics  (RC1, 18)
- Alejandro Escovedo, "Sonica USA" The Crossing  (YepRoc, 18)
- Gaslight Anthem, "Patient Ferris Wheel" '59 Sound Sessions  (SideOneDummy, 18)
- Lucero, "Among the Ghosts" Among the Ghosts  (Liberty + Lament, 18)
- William Elliott Whitmore, "Fear of Trains" Kilonova  (Bloodshot, 18)
- Ryan Culwell, "Last American" Last American  (Culwell, 18)
- Lera Lynn, "Almost Persuaded (w/John Paul White)" Plays Well With Others  (Single Lock, 18)
- Brothers Comatose, "These Ways" Ink Dust & Luck  (AntiFragile, 18)
- War & Treaty, "Are You Ready to Love Me" Healing Tide  (Strong World, 18)  D
- Adam Wright, "Dirt Poor" Dust  (Carnival, 18)
- Kevin Galloway, "Hands on the Wheel" The Change  (Nine Mile, 18)
- Rayland Baxter, "Strange American Dream" Wide Awake  (ATO, 18)  D
- Blackberrry Smoke, "Ain't Got the Blues" Whippoorwill  (3 Legged, 12)
- Cody Jinks, "Somewhere Between I Love You & I'm Leavin'" Lifers  (Rounder, 18)
- Amanda Shires, "Eve's Daughter" To the Sunset  (Silver Knife, 18)
- Willy Tea Taylor & River Arkansas, "Lazy Third Eye"  Damn Good Dog  (Taylor, 18)  D
- I See Hawks in LA, "Live and Never Learn" Live and Never Learn  (ISHiLA, 18)
- Dillon Carmichael, "Dancing Away With My Heart" Hell On An Angel  (Riser House, 18)
^ Lori McKenna, "Like Patsy Would" The Tree  (CN, 18)
- Richard Thompson, "Storm Won't Come" 13 Rivers  (New West, 18)  D
- Aaron Lee Tasjan, "Heart Slows Down" Karma for Cheap  (New West, 18)
- Marc Ribot, "Srinivas (w/Steve Earle, Tift Merritt)" Songs of Resistance 1942-2018  (Anti, 18)
- Glorieta, "Hard Way" Glorieta  (Nine Mile, 18)
- Eric Bachmann, "No Recover" No Recover  (Merge, 18)
- Ben Danaher, "Jesus Can See You" Still Feel Lucky  (Soundly, 18)
- Alynda Segarra & Special Men, "Don't Tell Me That It's Over" single  (Special Man, 18)  D
- Kendl Winter, "Stumbler's Business" Stumbler's Business  (Team Love, 18)  D
- Waxahatchee, "Chapel of Pines" Great Thunder EP  (Merge, 18)  D
- Cat Power, "Wanderer" Wanderer  (Domino, 18)  D