Soulful live-to-tape studio album from country hit maker
Ketchum’s been a country hitmaker since the early ’90s, with consistently interesting albums that have often shaded to the smoother, adult-contemporary side of Nashville’s output. In 1998 he split the sessions for I Saw the Light between Nashville and Austin, employing a more rustic choice of material and arrangements for the latter. The resulting album wasn’t as cohesive as his earlier releases, but taking the sessions individually one finds Ketchum standing authoritatively in both worlds. More importantly, the alternatives to Nashville’s way would again be exercised the following year with the electric blues “Long Way Down” and the Zydeco-inspired “You Love Me, Love Me Not.” Ketchum continued to revert to pop-influenced country, but he also wailed on a Bo Diddley beat for 2003’s “The King of Love,” found a soulful vocal gear for “On Her Own Time,” and championed the common man on the shuffle blues “The Carpenter’s Way.”
Ketchum’s last album, the 2007 release One More Midnight, was released in Europe but not the U.S., making this CD his first domestic issue in five years. In addition to some fine new songs (most newly written, a few selected from Ketchum’s catalog of previously unreleased works) and superb vocal performances, the presence of this live-in-the-studio recording is ear opening. Ketchum and his engineer (Craig White) capture the sort of intimate sound one used to expect from vinyl half-speed masters and direct-to-disc pressings. The purpose-built band, featuring Bryan Sutton, Darrell Scott, Eddie Bayers, Chip Davis and other A-listers, responds to the live challenge with performances miles beyond the baffle-separated, multi-track chart readings of modern recording. And it all took two days, no overdubs and only a few second takes.
From the opening track you can hear Ketchum roughing up the polish of Nashville’s manicure as his first-person narrative explores the human estrangement and philosophical implications of a panhandler’s hopelessness. A soulful backing chorus provides a taste of Muscle Shoals, but it’s Ketchum’s pained, emotional vocal that brings the song’s protagonist to life. He manages the same feat on “Ordinary Day,” crossing genders to voice the tired-but-satisfied voice of a waitress, and on “Sparrow” he laments the cost of war from the perspective of a Civil War soldier. More fantastically, the jazzy bluegrass and cooking Southern funk of “Millionaire’s Wife” backs a steamy noir-styled tale of cheating and betrayal, ending with the imprisoned mark’s death sentence: “She got a house and a long black Lincoln / I got a ticket straight to hell.” Think of Body Heat or The Postman Always Rings Twice as told by a poor sap on death row. A swampier second-line rhythm can be heard on the kiss-off “If You Don’t Love Me Baby (Just Let Me Go),” and the band fires up gypsy jazz sounds with Bryon Sutton’s fleet-fingered acoustic guitar playing on “Million Dollar Baby.”
Ketchum frequently writes about family, including a loping Marty Robbins-styled waltz, “Yesterday’s Gone,” that profiles his grandfathers’ decline upon the passing of their spouses, and the poor-but-rich nostalgia of “Surrounded by Love.” His great-grandmother’s passing provided the inspiration for the moody “The Day He Called Your Name,” and the album’s only cover, Tom Waits’ “Jersey Girl” is sung as a soulful fiddle-and-steel country love song for his Jersey-born wife. Closer to home, “Down Along the Guadalupe” paints an inviting picture of a summer evening on Texas’ Guadalupe river, with Spanish-tinged guitars providing fittingly lazy accompaniment. As noted earlier, Ketchum’s always been a consistent album artist, but freed to record as a musician (rather than a studio artist) he’s delivered a CD whose lack of production artifice inspires a level of artistry and soulfulness well beyond his middle-of-the-road hits. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com] 