Although my weekly CD reviews are gone from the Montreal Gazette (I promise to start posting reviews here soon), I still occasionally write the Gazette's Album of the Week feature. This week's is my review of Jesse Winchester's new album, Love Filling Station (Appleseed).
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Love Filling Station
Appleseed
****1/2 out of five
MIKE
REGENSTREIF
SPECIAL TO THE GAZETTE
For a little over a decade, beginning with
his self-titled debut classic in 1970, longtime Montrealer Jesse Winchester
released albums of new material at a relatively prolific rate; seven albums in
11 years, each chock filled with great songs. In the ‘80s, though, the pace
slowed to a trickle. There was a new album in 1989, then a decade’s wait until
1999.
Another decade has passed. In the years
since, Winchester has remarried and left Quebec – where he lived for almost four decades since
arriving at Dorval
Airport as a Vietnam
War-era draft resistor – for small town Virginia. And, at last, we have a new
Jesse Winchester studio album; nine finely-crafted original gems and three excellent
covers.
Winchester grew up in Memphis and his music
has often blended Memphis R ‘n’ B traditions with country and folk influences.
This album also has a very strong influence of early rock ‘n’ roll,
particularly the ballad tradition of singers like Roy Orbison, a bit of jazz, and,
perhaps in a nod to the sounds that waft through the Virginia countryside where
he now lives, a hefty dose of bluegrass. Several of the core backup musicians,
including guitarist Russ Barenberg, steel guitarist Jerry Douglas, fiddler Andy
Leftwich and singer Claire Lynch have deep roots in bluegrass.
A couple of the songs, Bless Your Foolish
Heart and Eulalie, both in country veins, first surfaced on Live from Mountain
Stage, a live album put together from Winchester’s appearances on that American
public radio program. Both seem fresh and new in these arrangements fleshed out
by the fine studio band.
Another previously-heard tune is O What A
Thrill, a ‘90s Winchester tune covered by the Mavericks. Winchester reclaims
the song for himself with a gently rocking arrangement that highlights his
haunting, liquid-like tenor voice. Others in that vein include
Sham-A-Ling-Dong-Ding and a version of Stand By Me, the old Ben E. King hit
that Winchester convincingly makes his own with his so-very-soulful singing and
an arrangement highlighting Leftwich’s fiddling.
Other standouts include It’s A Shame About
Him, an infectious country-swing tune that would have done Roger Miller proud,
and the simply gorgeous I Turn To My Guitar which captures the feelings that
have led to the creation of so much music by so many people over so many years.
The album ends with a terrific honky tonk
duet that has Winchester trading lines with Lynch on Loose Talk, Carl Smith’s
huge country hit from 1955.
