Artist: Kevin Gordon
Album: Tilt and Shine
Label: Crowville
Release Date: 7.27.2018
Nashville singer-songwriter Kevin Gordon penned one of the greatest roots songs in the last two decades with his epic “Colfax/Step in Time” from Gloryland. It’s a career defining song that sets the bar so high that it behooves you not to expect the next Gordon album to deliver a comparable song. Songs like “Colfax/Step in Time” are once in lifetime events. Yet, Gordon continues to successfully pen gems spawned from his home state of Louisiana both on 2015’s Long Time Gone and again here with Tilt and Shine. Authentic stories, vivid character portraits river and levee images populate the songs, and the swamp is ever present in his sound. The dichotomy of refined, literate lyrics and raw, crunching bluesy guitars define Gordon’s signature organic sound. Gordon is humble, understated and disinclined to self-promotion, but his loyal fans consider him an American treasure. Maybe a nickname like “Swamp Bard” would be in order.
Gordon’s MFA from the University of Iowa’s famed Writers’ Workshop shows through continually, as does his bluesy guitar playing, nurtured by early stints in Iowa-based Bo Ramsey’s band. For this one, Gordon’s musical partner, vastly underrated producer and lead guitarist, Joe V. McMahan, returns in both roles surrounded by Gordon’s usual rhythm section of Ron Eoff on bass and the renowned Paul Griffith on drums. Other drummers and bassists appear on select tracks along with Robbie Crowell on keys with Aaron Lee Tasjan and Laura Mayo on background vocals.
Unlike “Colfax” which is autobiographical, Gordon takes on the role of narrator here, but again, the stories are all true. “One of the things I like about it and am mystified by is that what passes for normal in Louisiana would not make the grade elsewhere,” he says. Successful Louisiana-oriented authors like James Lee Burke have a similar fascination. Burke always includes the nation’s most brutal prison, Angola, in his crime mysteries and Gordon takes his turn on “One Road Out (Angola Rodeo Blues),” where prisoners for life compete in a rodeo while the town watches. The single and video, “Saint on a Chain,” has been a staple in Gordon’s live shows over the past few years. It depicts a down and out character who holds on to medal as if it’s all he has left. Gordon works with words like a craftsman; and you may need to listen several times to appreciate the imagery which can be as subtle as it is vivid. (i.e. “Every river’s a daughter of a dirty rain”)
The opener “Fire at the End of the World” is a rock ‘n’ roll ode to a more innocent time. The dark” Gatling Gun” uses a brutal metaphor for a dreamlike encounter with a former love. “Right on Time” is a musician’s traveling song with penetrating lyrics like these: “two kids and a wife that makes three, people who don’t know what to make of me. Blow through the doors with my four chords and my rhymes.” “DeValls Bluff” sets another eerie, haunting tone. Gordon’s mantra is as follows: “I like the unfinished ending, the story that just continues when the song’s over,” says Gordon. “Life never sums itself up in three-and-a-half minutes, and a good song doesn’t need to do that either. But it should tell a story.” The “Swamp Bard” says more in three and half minutes than most songwriters say on an entire album.
—Jim Hynes
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