A year and a half after his remarkable live album, Tap the Red Cane
Whirlwind, Kelly Joe Phelps returns to the studio with his restless,
searing, intimate vision and remarkable skills as both an instrumentalist
and a songwriter. While Phelps employs several musicians from his past,
such as guitarist Steve Dawson, fiddler Jesse Zubot, and keyboardist
Chris Gestrin (all of whom played on 1983's Slingshot Professionals),
there's nothing here that's reminiscent of that set. First and foremost,
Phelps is a songwriter here. Phelps looks at his subjects, such as
the lover in "Spanish Hands," from the side. He communicates directly
while peeling back the layers of appearance, and describes her as both "a
gentle bell" and "a cat's eye." This is the songwriter as poet, heard
over and again as the subtly shaded instrumental backdrops caress his
words lovingly, letting them roll out unencumbered. In the opener, "Crow's
Nest," his acoustic guitar is unassuming as he trots out the words "Come
along to the riverside, sit down now/I just want to hear somebody else
whine/If you've got tomorrow, I've got a blade/We can dig a hole into
an old book/We can keep our secrets there." He allows the truth of
desperation, love, and the willingness of other possibilities all to
emerge before Zubot floats his way in and adorns that guitar with some
lonesome balladry of his own. On "The Anvil," Wallace Stevens' ghost
comes to visit in Phelps imagery, metaphors, and similes, accompanied
by a shuffling snare and a pump organ as he sings "There is an eye
walking curiously/By the campground, the bedside night stand/My leg
bones feel weary yet walk on they will/Holding for wheels and gravy/On
a plate full of nothing but shaking my head/With a side bowl of nothing
to do." His rhymes touch the inside, looking at difficulty and confusion
from a nearly wistful place, longing for he knows not what. But it's
Phelps use of the banjo on Tunesmith Retrofit that is the
album's biggest surprise. (Before recording this set, he hadn't played
one in 20 years.) He doesn't try to play bluegrass, nor does he try
to haunt the ghosts of those players who have gone before.
His high lonesome breakdown on "Scapegoat" is infused with the blues,
late-20th century classical music, and flamenco. He moves through them
all, always returning to the night owl song of the bluegrass breakdown
before it all falls apart and comes home to roost in emptiness. Another
instrumental is "MacDougal," the rag tribute to Dave Van Ronk, "the Mayor
of MacDougal Street" in New York. Phelps lets whimsy carry his playing
that touches on Rev. Gary Davis, Jorma Kaukonen, Bert Jansch, Sandy Bull,
and yes, Van Ronk himself. The lover's conflict on "Loud as Ears," another
solo acoustic guitar effort, brings to mind Davy Graham in style, but
it is all Phelps' distillations of folk styles from British to American
to roots. But here again, it's Stevens who comes to haunt Phelps' startlingly
original lyrics: "Old dark ruby coats his throat/Gloves a feathered mind/Sharpens
up her fountain pen/Lays ink down along the table/Plaintive brickyard,
textbook line/Whips her fable down/As long as she is able." The meta
text here is Phelps writing about writing, and its inability to reach
through conflict to communicate, all to the accompaniment of his acoustic
guitar making its way through history. The banjo moans again in the intro
to "Handful of Arrows," a tribute to the late guitarist and songwriter
Chris Whitley, who died in abject poverty in 2006. Here high and low
lonesome hold hands and dance as a Weissenborn guitar, drums, and bass
come to join the banjo's long, sad, weeping rage. Tunesmith Retrofit is
another side of Phelps to be sure, as a songwriter who understands the
actual music of poetry and creates a loose, coarse weave that allows
the listener room to inhabit and live inside his songs. His rhythm is
true, his words are impure, his songs are nearly glorious. Once more,
Phelps shatters expectations and conjures something truly original and
brave in the process.
A year and a half after his remarkable live album, Tap the Red Cane
Whirlwind, Kelly Joe Phelps returns to the studio with his restless,
searing, intimate vision and remarkable skills as both an instrumentalist
and a songwriter. While Phelps employs several musicians from his past,
such as guitarist Steve Dawson, fiddler Jesse Zubot, and keyboardist
Chris Gestrin (all of whom played on 1983's Slingshot Professionals),
there's nothing here that's reminiscent of that set. First and foremost,
Phelps is a songwriter here. Phelps looks at his subjects, such as
the lover in "Spanish Hands," from the side. He communicates directly
while peeling back the layers of appearance, and describes her as both "a
gentle bell" and "a cat's eye." This is the songwriter as poet, heard
over and again as the subtly shaded instrumental backdrops caress his
words lovingly, letting them roll out unencumbered. In the opener, "Crow's
Nest," his acoustic guitar is unassuming as he trots out the words "Come
along to the riverside, sit down now/I just want to hear somebody else
whine/If you've got tomorrow, I've got a blade/We can dig a hole into
an old book/We can keep our secrets there." He allows the truth of
desperation, love, and the willingness of other possibilities all to
emerge before Zubot floats his way in and adorns that guitar with some
lonesome balladry of his own. On "The Anvil," Wallace Stevens' ghost
comes to visit in Phelps imagery, metaphors, and similes, accompanied
by a shuffling snare and a pump organ as he sings "There is an eye
walking curiously/By the campground, the bedside night stand/My leg
bones feel weary yet walk on they will/Holding for wheels and gravy/On
a plate full of nothing but shaking my head/With a side bowl of nothing
to do." His rhymes touch the inside, looking at difficulty and confusion
from a nearly wistful place, longing for he knows not what. But it's
Phelps use of the banjo on Tunesmith Retrofit that is the
album's biggest surprise. (Before recording this set, he hadn't played
one in 20 years.) He doesn't try to play bluegrass, nor does he try
to haunt the ghosts of those players who have gone before.