featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
March 24, 2024
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
This week's release date has brought us a ridiculous wealth of new stuff - possibly the best batch of the year to date. In parallel universes, we devoted this Episode's appreciation to deserving records by Waxahatchee, or Adrianne Lenker, Cody Jinks, Sierra Ferrell, or Rosali ... But here at R&B HQ, our attention is drawn towards the unexpected, the glittering gem beneath an overturned leaf. We can't ignore a gift. Scott Ballew's Rio Bravo (out March 29, La Honda) is simply too good to let pass without notice.
Scott Ballew didn't grow up honing his songwriting chops. He didn't schlep his craft from bar to bar as a young man, hoping for a break. Ballew is primarily a filmmaker, and he decided to try his hand at songwriting while working on a short film about Texas legend Terry Allen during the pandemic. He's also created a documentary about Tom McGuane, Jim Harrison, Richard Brautigan, and Jimmy Buffett in 1970s Key West. Rio Bravo is Ballew's third full-length, following a 2021 debut and 2022's Leisure Rodeo, records that he created with the help of Erika Wennerstrom, Shane Renfro, Ryan Bingham, Jesse Woods, and other names that matter.
The Rio Bravo sessions were produced with Michael Nau, and engineered by Will Patterson, played alongside a band featuring the suddenly ubiquitous Mat Davidson, Rob Barbato, Bukka Allen, and other essential contributors. As we remarked a number of Episodes ago in appreciation of Nau's own records, he generates such a lovely, loose, rambling setting for songs that arrangements themselves become as important as the instruments. One of the great victories on Rio Bravo is this perfect partnering of Nau's sounds with Scott Ballew's wise, worldly lyrics, songs that deliver such poetic truth wrapped in the leftover stuff of the everyday:
Inside a truck stopOr maybe AAOr outside of DenverI heard someone sayIf you're lonely get a dogIf you're broke get a jobFind religion if you believe in hellFind god if you've already been there
Amen and amen. Coupled with the fact that much of the session was recorded live, Rio Bravo bears a wonderful warmth, a purity and immediacy that brings to mind classic Texas country records from the 70s. Ballew himself has cited influences ranging from Townes Van Zandt and Blaze Foley to more contemporary auteurs like Bill Callahan and Joanna Newsome. He calls "Can You Hear Me Smile" his most Bill Callahan song, a beautiful chamber piece featuring only the playing of Ballew and Nau: With the first cigarette of winter / Everything is possible. Like his producer, Scott Ballew wields an outsider's voice, a rangy and untamed cry that might recall Matthew Houck or Bobby Bare Jr. He emotes with real soul on "Trouble Darling", a tune he attributes to a shared love of Ennio Morricone and Harry Nilsson, backed by a heavenly chorus and Nau's evocative mellotron.
Just on this side of turning thirty, Ballew has already amassed enough lived experience from which to speak. On "Trouble": When I let go of the reins / There's no more suffering. Terry Allen's son Bukka launches "True Love Can't Surf" with a steady harmonium, leading to a slow crescendo with contributors joining piece by piece towards a glorious denouement: People, they don't change / It's like hugging a crashing wave / Expecting it not to break. "Old Fashioned" pinpoints salvation in surrender, as accompanied by a rambling piano: Lord I realize / We've yet to harmonize / But I've been humbled by the flame. Ballew calls "All That Is Sacred" a Leon Helm sort of gospel song, featuring Odessa Jorgensen's sweet violin: All that is sacred / Is between me and you. The songwriter demonstrates a genuinely impressive lyrical expression, a pure and unadorned perspective that is eloquent in its direct simplicity.
Songs are presented patiently on this great sounding collection, never manic or hurried. "Impossible Smile" is typical in its use of tape drag to achieve its Motown swagger. The album's title track rides a labored, bluesy organ, Ballew reflecting on the powerless feeling of watching his father in the ICU and his friend in rehab: Rio Bravo playing again on the TV / So loud the whole world goes quiet. The song is adorned with a gospel backing chorus featuring Angela Miller and Lauren Cervantes from Black Pumas. Among the year's most worthy singles, "Suicide Squeeze" floats gracefully in its watery arrangement. Inspired by Ballew's experience watching Paul Thomas Anderson's Licorice Pizza, the song is a fully satisfying whole composed of terrific parts: Ballew's yearning vocal, Davidson's fiddle and backing, Rob Barbato's electric guitar filigree, and remarkable lyrics: When you're seventeen you got so much left to see / But all I wanted was more.
"Funny Masterpiece" is a nine-minute opus whose steady, repeated progress recalls Van Morrison in his mystical No Guru period: In my final gasp of glory days / Have I missed my window / To do something great / Or is being steady / A greater fate. It's a fitting wrap to Scott Ballew's humble but stunning statement, shimmering with surprise, rich with understated revelation. A contemporary renaissance artist (not unlike Terry Allen, it turns out), Ballew and his cohort have shared one of the year's most rewarding collections, an imminently listenable and endlessly quotable treasure: There's nothing as brave as surrendering ... And you learn how to live / As if you're someone to love.
In the wake of this week's firehose release date, let's risk a look at A Routes & Branches Guide To Feeding Your Monster for what's next. Just in time for its 25th Anniversary, Shelby Lynne will be reissuing a long unavailable I Am Shelby Lynne. An idiosyncratic musical statement, the record will appear courtesy of the Monument label on April 5 (in advance of Lynne's all-new forthcoming collection). Following a rising buzz of attention, Wyatt Flores has finally announced the arrival of his second EP/short LP. Expect Half Life on April 19 (Island). After almost ten years of relative silence, we're happy to announce that Sarah Gayle Meech will return with her forthcoming record. Easin' On arrives courtesy of Good Timin' Woman Records on May 3. Expect something new from the Decemberists as we head into Summer. Titled As It Ever Was So It Will Be Again, the LP drops on June 14 (YABB). Finally,, having rebranded themselves under the Silverada moniker, Mike & the Moonpies have chosen a June 28 release date for their self-titled collection (Prairie Rose).
ROUTES-cast March 24, 2024
- Adrianne Lenker, "Free Treasure (ft Twain)" Bright Future (4AD, 24)
- Erin, Mat & Paul, "Magic Please" single (Tableaux, 24) D
- Son of the Velvet Rat, "Southbound Plane" Ghost Ranch (Fluff & Gravy, 24)
- Staves, "After School" All Now (Nonesuch, 24)
- Waxahatchee, "Ice Cold" Tigers Blood (Anti, 24)
- Lucy Rose, "Over When It's Over" This Ain' the Way You Go Out (Communion, Apr 19)
- Pernice Brothers, "Purple Rain" Who Will You Believe (New West, Apr 5)
- Rosali, "Hills On Fire" Bite Down (Merge, 24)
- Nathan Kalish, "Ma Dude" Southern Poverty Guitar Center V2 (Yellow Canary, 24)
- Dr Dog, "Still Can't Believe" single (We Buy Gold, 24) D
- Wild Pink, "Unconscious Pilot" Strawberry Eraser EP (Fire Talk, 24) D
- Aaron West & Roaring Twenties, "Whiplash" In Lieu Of Flowers (Hopeless, Apr 14)
- Jon Snodgrass, "Your First Rodeo" Barge At Will (Thousand Islands, Mar 29)
- Bill Mackay, "Glow Drift" Locust Land (Drag City, May 24) D
- Thee Sinseers & Joey Quinones, "Hold On" Sinseerly Yours (Colemine, 24)
- Pokey LaFarge, "One You Owe Me" Rhumba Country (New West, May 10)
- Sam Evian, "Jacket" Plunge (Flying Cloud, 24)
- Aoife O'Donovan, "Someone To Follow" All My Friends (Yep Roc, 24)
- T Bone Burnett, "Sometimes I Wonder (ft Weyes Blood)" Other Side (Verve, Apr 19)
- Ruston Kelly, "The Watcher" Weakness Etc EP (Rounder, 24)
- Charlie Parr, "Little Sun" Little Sun (Smithsonian, 24)
- Van Plating, "They're Gonna Kill You Anyway (ft Ritch Henderson)" single (Singular, 24) D
- Sierra Ferrell, "American Dreaming" Trail Of Flowers (Rounder, 24)
- Wyatt Flores, "Wish I Could Stay" Half Life (Island, Apr 19) D
- Sarah Gayle Meech, "Easin' On" Easin' On (Good Timin' Woman, May 3) D
- Silverada, "Anywhere But Here" Silverada (Prairie Rose, Jun 28)
- Cody Jinks, "Few More Ghosts" Change the Game (Late August, 24)
- Magic Tuber Stringbard, "Dance On a Sunday Night" Needlefall (Thrill Jockey, 24)
- Efterklang, "Getting Reminders (ft Beirut)" single (City Slang, 24) D
- Khruangbin, "Pon Pon" A LA SALA (Dead Ocans, Apr 5)
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