Judith Gennett wrote this review.
Tom May lives just across the Columbia River from Portland in Vancouver, Washington, here in the great Pacific Northwest. Vested is his tenth album of acoustic folk, and like Minnesota’s Charlie Maguire, he sings regional songs. Though in this case his land follows the endless path of the American West, the local imprint of “Grange Hall” is on every track.
Vested begins with a song about duality. You could compare eating in downtown Portland and driving up on gravel over the Columbia Hills to his two roads… Both leading straight to the West, past the cascading waters and mountains where the weary heart can find rest.
Duality is hardly a stranger to most of us, and as “Two” says, “My debt to you both is unchanged.” How true. The song is backed by guitar and fiddle and stands out as well for melody as well as lyrics.
Perhaps the best song on the Vested is from David Rea. “Hands Up” is a perky tale of a stage coach robbery inspired by a Charles Russell painting. “Hands Up! Throw down that sack of mail!” Tom and choral pal “Bill Oskay” sing, accompanied by banjo and whip. Wow! What a fun song! I’ve played it over and over. (I’m not joking.) Another song, not so jovial, is an original called “Trial By Fire,” inspired in part by the jumpers at the Storm King fire in Colorado in 1994. You could put this in your mind or in a radio set with James Keelaghan’s “Cold Missouri Water” and Kerry Grombacher’s “Along the John Day River.”
May we all be as brave as those young men and women when we face our own trial by fire.
Also on the album, among others, is an Ian and Sylvia remembrance, “Spanish Is the Loving Tongue,” a track about Buffalo Bill, a reminder of the classy San Antonio river walk, and a song of nostalgia and wine imagery for more than just his former home in Eatonville, Washington:
Do you recall in Haines Alaska?
The summer sun refused to fade
The midnite sky was lit with laughter
There was good French wine as the sky turned cabernet…
Tom has a wonderful voice that might remind one of Stan Rogers. I like it best on the quick songs, when it is less stylized. On the slower tunes I wish he’d keep it steadier, because I think it’s a dynamite voice, but at this point I think Tom must like it the way it is. All the backing music is acoustic, save for the more portable electro-bass and though too spirited to be unobtrusive, it works beautifully. Musicians include ex-Touchstones Skip Parente on strings, the amazing Orville Johnson on frets, and Terry Prohaska on hard-core traditional instruments like hammer dulcimer and autoharp.
(Blue Vignette, 2001)
