Between the ghost in the yard and the angel in the tree/the roses in their bed get more sleep than me.
That line, from “Half the Time,” the second track on Jon Dee Graham’s Summerland, just won’t turn loose of me. It’s one of several small telling moments on this record that add up to a very nice whole. Graham, a Texas native now well into his 40s and living and playing in Austin, has written and recorded an album of mature, hopeful roots rock.
Graham started out playing guitar in punk bands in the Seventies. He was a member, with Alejandro Escovedo, of the True Believers, a groundbreaking band that melded country, latino and punk into a new kind of roots rock. Since the Believers broke up, he’s been playing guitar in L.A. and Texas with the likes of John Doe and Kelly Willis, and touring Europe as a troubador. Summerland is his second solo effort, following 1997’s Escape from Monster Island on the Austin label Freedom Records.
This is a short album by today’s standards, with 12 songs in about 42 minutes. They range from quiet acoustic ballads to flat-out rockers. Graham has a gravelly baritone rather like Tom Waits’ voice, and he’s adept at mixing blues, r&b, latino and rock into something all his own.
“Half the Time” is a great little song. It’s a moment in the life of a guy who sounds like he stepped right out of a Larry McMurtry book — he’s grown up but still hasn’t figured out just what’s going on. “Half the time I think I’m crazy,” he sings, “and the other half the time I wish I was.” It’s not despair, just bewilderment. “October” is in the same vein, but with a bit of an edge to it. “Bury me in a pile of dead leaves/put shiny pennies on my eyes and cover me with leaves … say that I died of October,” he sings over a funky blues beat with some crackling guitar work.
Did I mention that Jon Dee Graham is one heck of a guitar player? He is, and it’s especially evident on “At the Dance,” his homage to the musicians who influenced him in his youth, from Carlos Santana to Doug Sahm. This is a languid, latin-tinged r&b song, complete with Hammond B-3 organ, that perfectly evokes junior-high sock hops of the Sixties.
“Number 3,” which in reality is number nine on this disc, is that rarity in today’s rock world, the instrumental. It’s a welcome interlude, a beautiful, dusty duet between Graham’s acoustic guitar and Mike Hardwick’s dobro. Graham takes off and rocks on “Black Box,” a song that uses a plane wreck as metaphor for the end of a relationship. “Butterfly Wing” is a gentle acoustic-blues love song that’s in the same vein as Eric Clapton’s “Beautiful Tonight,” but is much less cloying and sentimental.
We get a clue to the source of the satisfaction and peace Graham brings to this album in “God’s Perfect Love,” which is reverent without being preachy. He still obviously doesn’t know all the answers, as shown in the following number, “Threads.” It’s another metaphor song: “It won’t tighten down, ’cause the threads are stripped off, and it won’t let me sleep.” You’re never sure exactly what the source of his frustration is, but you’ve felt it yourself in many situations.
The CD ends with another up-tempo number about the life of a musician on the road, “Lucky Moon.”
Summerland is overall a very satisfying record. I look forward to hearing more from Graham.
(New West, 1999)
