Eternal and Lowdown is easily the match of any alternative country CD released in 2001. It’s packed with solid, passionate songwriting and intense singing and playing.
Ray Wylie Hubbard, a 54-year-old Texan, has been writing and singing songs since the 1970s. Influenced by Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt, he came up in the pack of singer-songwriters that included Lyle Lovett and Michael Murphey. Much to his chagrin, he ignored Clark’s advice to never write a song you won’t want to sing for the next 25 years, and penned the infamous “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother.”
The song became a staple of Jerry Jeff Walker’s act (and barrooms across the Lone Star State and beyond) and has helped pay his bills in the intervening years. It may have somewhat reflected his lifestyle then, but since getting sober and taking guitar lessons in the mid-Eighties, Hubbard has blossomed as a songwriter of uncommon sensitivity and power. And he’s no slouch with a slide guitar or a fingerpicked resonator, either.
*Eternal and Lowdown* features 10 Hubbard originals and one cover. Most are blues-based, but they hit all the bases of the Texas country-blues-folk genres — choogling rockers, greasy blues, confessional folk, and acoustic ballads. They’re rich in metaphor: gambling, nightlife, fast cars and women, and hurricanes, plagues of insects and other acts of God. And Hubbard delivers them with a warm but gritty voice like “Okie From Muskogee”-era Merle Haggard with more of a twang, and slide guitar work reminiscent of Bonnie Raitt’s.
He’s ably assisted by Gurf Morlix, perhaps best known for his long association with Lucinda Williams. Morlix plays guitars and other instruments, sings harmonies and did the recording and mixing of this excellent CD.
It kicks off with “Three Days Straight,” an instant classic. This swampy shuffle is packed with slide and electric guitars, excellent lyrics and an immediately catchy refrain in which the title takes on more meanings with each iteration.
From there it goes from strength to strength. “Sleep of the Just” is a slow, lowdown blues with tasty fills on the B-3 from Ian McLagan. “Mississippi Flush” has an insanely hook-laden refrain (“Deliver me from my sorrow and shame/Release me from my burden and pain”) and chorus (“Blackbird, blackbird fly away home/say a prayer over St. John’s bones…”), over strummed acoustic guitar, Dobro and clattering percussion by Rick Richards.
“Sugar Cane” is a mighty acoustic ballad that takes the myth of the crossroads in a whole new direction, as a farmer faces the true Delta blues from the loss of his crop when the levee breaks. “Nighttime” is a slow, slow, funky New Orleans r&b, with languid vocals and restrained call-and-response guitar lines from Hubbard and Morlix. “Black Dog,” the only cover song, is a bluegrassy, old-time country shuffle that is listed as Public Domain.
And on it goes. There’s not a weak track on this album, which ends with two very strong folky numbers, the gospel-tinged “Didn’t Have a Prayer,” and the reflective acoustic solo “After All These Years,” in which Hubbard figures he’ll “kick back and sing some blues/Instead of living them like I do.” He even describes himself and his music better than any reviewer possibly could. “I suppose I fall somewhere in between/a lost soul and a romantic …”
Eternal and Lowdown is one of those all-too-rare recordings that grabs you on the first listen, and keeps rewarding repeated plays with subtle nuances, sturdy musical layers and rich lyrical treasures.
(Philo/Rounder, 2001)
