PETE KREBS & GOSSAMER WiNGS - ALL MY FRiENDS ARE GHOSTS

ROUTES & BRANCHES 
featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
September 6, 2020
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust

Couple weeks ago, we celebrated the new music and the long career of Portland music legend Jerry Joseph.  This Episode, we're coincidentally shedding light on his fellow Oregon Music Hall of Famer, Pete Krebs.  Krebs' career similarly reaches back to the dawning days of the 1990s, when his band Hazel, signed to Sub Pop, flirted for a time with national renown.  Since those times, Krebs has busied himself alongside acts such as Golden Delicious, Portland Playboys and Gossamer Wings, collaborating with artists such as Elliott Smith, Danny Barnes, David Berman and countless others.  His restless musical attention span has seen him through dabblings with punk, jazz, folk and country.

Nearly twenty years have come and gone since Pete Krebs' last studio recording, a session with Gossamer Wings called I Know It By Heart.  In the meantime, the dedicated instrumentalist traveled through Europe to research disciples of the legendary gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.  He's also faced down his own mortality, being dealt 50-50 odds of staving off a cancer diagnosis.  Now, the trustworthy Cavity Search Records label has shared All My Friends Are Ghosts, a collection that pulls together Krebs' songs from the past twenty years, backed by Gossamer Wings, including members of Decemberists and Richmond Fontaine.

As with Jerry Joseph, you could pass a good afternoon or two developing an appreciation of Krebs' eclectic body of work, a catalog that rarely fits neatly beneath any one genre heading.  His edges and his influences overflow categories, especially when regarded as a whole.  Which makes All My Friends an appropriate way to slide back into public performance.  The sessions are decidedly roots-oriented, but they are restless and eclectic within that basket, sure-footed yet governed by an off-the-cuff spirit.

Make a point of blasting "Faraway, Blue" from an open car window before the close of Summer.  It's the perfect strain of jangle pop for a blue-sky afternoon, with bright guitars and pedal steel glinting off the windshield.  "I'm Just Searching For You" and "Sound + Fury" ring with a similar breezy alt.country tinged accent, with electric guitars up front, and a melodic thread delivered effortlessly by Krebs' band.  Krebs himself sings in a comfortable pocket, his slightly drawled delivery suggesting a hybrid of Elliott Smith and Lloyd Cole.

All My Friends boasts some lyrical eloquence as well.  Krebs lays his heart bare on "My True Love Is a Beautiful Bird" with what strikes the listener as an apt admission: These past couple of years / Left me battered and bruised / And I need you more than I'll show.  The simple folksong is starkly presented, a steady acoustic strum warmed by the heartbeat of a bass.  A raw fiddle opens the sweet and rootsy "Brightest Stars".  Like most of the tunes, it sounds as warm and immediate as though producer Jon Neufeld set the recordings to tape with the players arrayed around him.  Leave your windows open to the threat of rain, Krebs advises.  Leave your doors unlocked to charity and pain / It's hard enough to hold yourself / Still harder to be held sometimes.

The pervasive spirit throughout Pete Krebs' first collection in two decades is simplicity, shot through with joy and gratitude.  The record's title track offers a touch of Bakersfield and a hint of early rock:  All my friends are ghosts / They live in a bar across the road / And they're telling me everything will be alright / Now I'm free.  "Blue Horizon" might serve as the album's most engaging moment, a conjunto arrangement haunted by the ghost of Doug Sahm and his Texas Tornados, replete with accordion and pedal steel.

The pieces populating All My Friends Are Ghosts aren't necessarily career-defining.  It might not even prove the richest place to begin to make an acquaintance with Pete Krebs & co (for that, you might want to try Cavity Search's 2016 retrospective, Hey Pete Krebs!).  Instead, the artist's first collection in nearly two decades is nothing less than a signpost, a reminder (or an introduction) to another Northwest music icon whose hard-earned stint in the spotlight is long overdue.  Enjoy yourself.  It would seem that Krebs is doing just that. 


- Zephaniah Ohora, "Living Too Long" Listening To the Music  (Last Roundup, 20)
- Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, "All the Good Times Are Past and Gone" All the Good Times  (Acony, 20)
- Will Johnson, "Goodbye Absecon" El Capitan  (Keeled Scales, 20)
- Bill Callahan, "Mackenzies" Gold Record  (Drag City, 20)
- Wilco, "Summer Teeth (Slow Rhodes Version)" Summer Teeth Deluxe Edition  (Rhino, Nov 6)  D
- Angel Olsen, "(We Are All Mirrors)" Whole New Mess  (Jagjaguwar, 20)
- Kevin Morby, "Campfire" Sundowner  (Dead Oceans, Oct 16)  D
- Cut Worms, "Every Once In a While" Nobody Lives Here Anymore  (Jagjaguwar, Oct 9)
- Jerry David DeCicca, "Texas Toad" Unlikely Optimist & His Domestic Adventures  (DeCicca, Oct 16)
- John Calvin Abney, "Shine Like a Friend" Familiar Ground  (Black Mesa, Nov 20)  D
- Becky Warren, "Me and These Jeans" Sick Season  (Warren, Oct 23)  D
- Nude Party, "Lonely Heather" Midnight Manor  (New West, Oct 2)
- JD McPherson, "Head Over Heels" Let the Good Times Roll  (Rounder, 15)
- Grant-Lee Phillips, "Leave a Light On" Lightning Show Us Your Stuff  (Yep Roc, 20)
- Cordovas, "Rain On the Rail" Destiny Hotel  (Anti, Oct 16)
- Molly Tuttle, "A Little Lost" ... but i'd rather be with you  (Compass, 20)
- William Elliott Whitmore, "My Mind Can Be Cruel To Me" I'm With You  (Bloodshot, Oct 16)  D
- Cave Singers, "Distant Sures" No Witch  (Jagjaguwar, 11)
- Justin Wells, "It'll All Work Out" United State  (Singular, 20)
- Matt Woods, "Sunshine" Mornings After EP  (Lonely Ones, 20)
- Bella White, "Not To Blame" Just Like Leaving  (Bella White, Sep 25)
- Hayes Carll, "Arkansas Blues (Alone Together Sessions)" Alone Together Sessions  (Dualtone, 20)
- Gasoline Lollipops, "Flesh and Bone" All the Misery Money Can Buy  (GasPops, Sep 11)
- Tennessee Jet, "Hands On You" The Country  (TN Jet, 20)
- Arlo McKinley, "Bag of Pills" Die Midwestern  (Oh Boy, 20)
- Elliott BROOD, "Bird Dog" Keeper  (Six Shooter, Sep 18)
- Great Peacock, "Heavy Load" Forever Worse Better  (Soundly, Oct 9)
- Jim White, "Sum Of What We've Been" Misfit's Jamboree  (Fluff & Gravy, Oct 23)  D
- Ruston Kelly, "Clean" Shape & Destroy  (Rounder, 20)
- Fire Mountain, "Be Your Eyes" All Dies Down  (This is American Music, 14)


Pull back the cover of A Routes & Branches Guide To Feeding Your Monster and you'll find a year's worth of roots music releases.  This week, we added Sundowner, an October 16 full-length from Kevin Morby and Dead Oceans.  The enigmatic Jim White has drifted onto Fluff & Gravy Records for his next offering.  Expect Misfit's Jubilee wherever music matters on October 23.  Wilco is planning a sprawling deluxe edition of their Summer Teeth classic via Rhino Records on November 6, and New West is gifting us with a box set celebrating the music of the underappreciated band Pylon that same day.  Finally, one of our favorite singer-songwriters, John Calvin Abney is bringing us Familiar Ground come November 20 (Black Mesa).  Your weekly ROUTES-cast:

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