ROUTES & BRANCHES
featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
October 1, 2024
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
Being an original traditionalist songwriter can't be easy, staying to your chosen lane, trying to create unique music out of bits and pieces that have been available to listeners for years. While they pull from the deck of different genres, both JP Harris and JD McPherson have each successfully embraced the challenge. Now JD serves as producer for JP Harris Is a Trash Fire (Bloodshot, Sep 20).
Writing about an early album, we commented, Maybe you can fake this stuff, but so far Harris at least seems to be a dedicated study. His 2021 release, Don't You Marry No Railroad Man, featured little more than Harris' banjo and Chance McCoy's fiddle on a boxful of folk standards. But at his heart he knows he's an outlier, a self-described avant-country outlaw, as evidenced by the tongue-in-cheeky record jacket and the cover of Devo's "Beautiful World" which closes Trash Fire. Yet, between those covers is a generous treasury of very good, very country music.
In an advance video, McPherson explains, We wanted that kinda tight, dead Jerry Reed-esque sound for a lot of his stuff. But, on the other hand, we're not making a reenactment record, because his songs are fresh and alive. A good half of Harris' new collection delivers sweet and nearly sentimental midtempo tunes characterized by thoughtful lyrics and earnest sentiment. "Write It All Down" evokes John Prine in its gentle good humor, with a great vocal: Coulda done worse, and she coulda done better / Write it all down in one last love letter. "Charms and Letters" finds the singer dispensing advice on his own funeral: When I die you oughta lie carelessly about me / And all the right ways that I done wrong. On the short, sweet "Barbra Dee", Harris tells his mother's story, promising, Everything's gonna be alright / You boy's gonna stay and take good care of you.
Per McPherson's comments, Trash Fire largely achieves the duo's intention to create a record that sounds out of time, forgoing fancy and polished for warm and human. Backing vocals are contributed by Erin Rae, the Watson Twins, and Shovels & Rope, with the producer and Harris handling instrumentation. The album's more upbeat tracks land with a honky tonk spirit and Harris' self-deprecation dialed up. Adding keys and pedal steel, "Old Fox" resembles the trucking songs on his 2012 debut, I'll Keep Calling: There ain't one mile of good road between Knoxville and Memphis / So I think I'll stay awhile in Caroline. "Long In the Tooth" features an infectious chorus and a spirited pedal steel break. With its low-slung truck horn guitars, the unexpectedly direct "Dark Thoughts" finds Harris promising, I could be the one / To bring to light your darkest fantasy. "East Alabama" takes listeners down the abandoned streets of the songwriter's hometown, a sawing fiddle suggesting a bluegrass arrangement: Now there's nothing left from a young boy's memory / But a flag stop and a five-and-dime.
You can track down an online documentary directed by Schuyler Howie, House-Broke Tiger On a Leash. The camera follows as JP Harris goes about his day job restoring old houses, drawing parallels between the artist's carpentry craft and his music - what he calls old shit that had some life left in it. Harris explains how a desire for self-sufficiency and a commitment to living his values led to his complementary passions: I don't want it to just be a really good replica of something that came before me, he comments. I want to have my own little thumb print on it. Trash Fire's title track plays like a mission statement, or a declaration of Harris' independence: I'm writing old songs in a new style / Just trying to stretch this country mile ... The world keeps turning / And I stand still.
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