A review of the Tom Russell CD "Mesabi"

When his contemporaries and even some of the younger ones too have run out of fertile juice, Tom Russell keeps plucking from his desires, dreams and especially his memories.

His latest -- "Mesabi" -- is among his most creative ventures, bringing back to life artists and performers from multiple entertainment realms, their unsanitized human shortcomings and the feelings everyday folk attach to their stars.

In this release, the spectrum covers the resonance of Bob Dylan's birthplace, reality's demons despoiling actors Sterling Hayden and Bobby Driscoll, the improbable life of Ukelele Ike, Elizabeth Taylor's serial quests for fulfillment, riffing off James Dean's no-mans-land death and, very broadly, the fantasy world depicted in films plus what viewers add to such make-believe. Call it the human fascination with other worldliness, a respite from the down and dirty of reality.

Russell's latest home territory, El Paso, but more so the accompanying Juarez, now separated by a river of hope and tears, is also tragically displayed.

In "And God Created Bordertowns," Russell sings:

"...Our guns go 'cross the Rio Grande
Two thousand pieces everyday
And the coke and weed and methamphetamine
Come sliding back the other way...

In "Goodnight Juarez," he captures the nihilism present today:

"...Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows just
caught the last bus out
She said: "Seven sorrows used to fit the bill
but I'd need 10,000 now..."

But there is departure from the sins and sadness too, such as that depicted in "Love Abides," a plying of eventual optimism plus the destruction of fear and a heading inside to one's sanctuary core in "Heart Within A Heart."

There is no one else offering this kind of material and with such a display. Russell presents an entertaining mix of past and present in displaying vignettes of our mostly human tragedy.

Here is a review of "Mesabi" written by Mike Regenstreif.

Here is a link to a promo of the release (couldn't embed it for some reason):

The Playlist

* Mesabi
* When The Legends Die
* Farewell Never Neverland
* The Lonesome Death of Ukelele Ike
* Sterling Hayden
* Furious Love (For Liz)
* A Land Called "Way Out There"
* Roll The Credits, Johnny
* Heart Within A Heart
* And God Created Bordertowns
* Goodnight, Juarez
* Jai Alai
* Love Abides
* A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
* The Road To Nowhere

Two more Tom Russell items

Found this August 6, 2010 Tongo Rad post at the now defunct Horseflies Music Blog and he does a tremendous job at breaking down Tom Russell's "U.S. Steel" song:

"... By all rights what you’ve got here are the ingredients for some standard blue collar fare, no disputing that. But what makes is stand above all of the rest is just how smartly written the lyric is and how well the arrangement is executed .."

Go here for more and it's definitely worth your while.

and

Here's another broader Tom Russell piece by ScottR at The Agonist, dated March 8, 2011. This line in particular jumped out at me:

"... Music has always been about the lyrics for me ..."

This also hit home:

"... I tried to tell him how much his music meant to me, and how I had lost a very close musician friend a couple years back, and how he had helped fill a hell of hole in my life. I tried to tell him that I had taken a creative writing course at one point in my life and the instructor had pointed out how many writers “take the easy way out” in their writing instead of doing the hard work to get it right. I said that even Dylan was guilty of it at times. I told him that I had never seen him do that. He looked at me, handed me back the CD’s, shook my hand, and said, “Thank you…, that really means a lot to me ...”

Tom Russell's entry into the Folk Pantheon

Mike Regenstreif calls Tom Russell “the best songwriter of my generation” and initially that seemed a stretch to me. Russell has been a favorite of mine but I've tended to put the more literate singer-songwriters (we're talking Dave Carter territory) on my highest pedestal. 

But in reviewing Russell's output (not even considering his releases of late as he's shattered and stomped on the mold of running out of things to say as a performer ages) and his genre-crossing talents, he deserves such rightful recognition.

The Russell songs that connect with me the most:

* "U.S. Steel" with that great line: "My ex-boss Mr Goodwin, he keeps shaking my one good hand..." - Russell never names the culprits behind the individual decimation he is describing, just the effects, and that's a teaching moment decision for me 

* "Gallo Del Cielo" - his yips are an unexpected plus and this: anyone else have a stirring song about cockfighting?

* "The Sky Above, The Mud Below" featuring these descriptive verses:

"...Now the Deacon was a preacher who had fallen hard from grace
He owned the bar and a string of quarter horses that he'd race
Yea, Deacon he could drink and curse, though he still quoted sacred verse
He was sheriff, judge; he owned the hearse, a man you did not anger..." 

and
 

"...Well the trial commenced and ended quick they didn't have a hope
Deac says we'll cut your hair now boys and you can braid yourselves a rope
The Old Testament, it says somewhere eye for eye and hair for hair
Covet not thy neighbors mare, I believe it’s Revelations..." 

* "Manzanar" - this detailing of the Japanese-American internment during WWII will cause you to pause and ponder

* "Big Water" - with Russell and Iris Dement trading off verses and the line about his wife and kid, a pair of old hound dogs and a Sears and Roebuck canoe, it is simply classic

* "Isaac Lewis" - is as good as any of the lost-at-sea celtic and UK genre

* "Tonight We Ride" - is simply a cowboy song with an extremely engaging rhythm

* "The Angel of Lyon" - featuring: 

"...And he sang Ave Maria 
Or at least the parts he knew..." 

Yes, it's a minor point (maybe) but who writes that a character sings a song and then continues with a description about the lyrics, and not the vocals  -- what caused Russell to make such a decision? 

and

"He had a vision of Anne Marie
With a rosary in her hand
So it's exit the rainmaker
The old gray flannel man..."

There's more single-minded focus featured later in the song but those last two lines in the above are just descriptively perfect.

* "The Man from God Knows Where" - the entire folk opera

Being Irish probably genetically predisposes me to enjoying it but what an undertaking and his carrying it off is an absolute joy.