I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: JOHN MORELAND-Tiny Desk Concert #733 (April 20, 2018).

I don’t know John Moreland, but the blurb says he was in a metal-core band.  That band was Thirty Called Arson.  The blurb also says it’s hard to believe that he was in such a band, but I can hear the gravel in his voice, as sweet as it may seem.

Moreland falls into that Steve Earle kind of alternative country that I begrudgingly like.  I especially liked the first song.

Moreland and his musical partner John Calvin Abney kick off the Tiny Desk Concert with “Sallisaw Blue,” a song originally recorded in a bar in Moreland’s hometown of Tulsa.

“Down for the count, along for the ride
Sipping cold medicine, ruining our lives
Slumming I-40 with American songs
They can bury our bodies in American wrongs”

This is one of those funny situations where the main guy’s sidekick is the far more musically talented fellow.  John Calvin Abney plays a wild harmonica and some cool solos as well as adding all kinds of grace notes to the song.  Of course, it is Moreland’s voice that is the centerpiece.  And really, I love the chorus of this song.  I love the chord progression and how unexpected it is coming from those verses.

“Old Wounds,” is a slower song.  It’s got the disturbing lyric, “if we don’t bleed, it don’t feel like a song.”

It’s a style of storytelling and image-painting that John Moreland has been making with his guitar for at least the past ten years, over seven albums. His songs are filled with characters and tales of broken love and broken people.

“Cherokee” continues with those broken people: “I guess I’ve got a taste for poison / I’ve given up on ever being well. / I keep mining the horizon / digging for lies I’ve yet to tell.”  The melody is pretty and the accompanying guitar is quite lovely.

Moreland would be a treat if he opened for someone I wanted to see.  I would enjoy a 30 minute set from him.

Especially if he plays a Thirty Called Arson song

[READ: April 12, 2016]: “Vast Hell”

This was a short story (just a couple of pages) but it was packed with so much.  And I loved how by the time it was over I had more questions than answers.  I also loved the very strange way it was constructed.

With such a great opening sentence

Often when the grocery store is empty and all you can hear is the buzzing of flies, I think of that young man whose name we never knew and whom no one in town ever mentioned again.

The man was dirty from travel.  He bought some cans of food at the store and then asked where the barbershop was.

The narrator kicks himself for sending him to Cerviño’s place.  Because he feels that what happened would have never happened if he had sent him to Old Melchor’s.  But Old Melchor’s was further away and why would he think anything of sending him to Cerviño’s.

There’s some back story, obviously. Cerviño and his wife had moved to Puente Viejo less than a year earlier.  They didn’t really socialize. He was shy, but his wife was intense–staring down everyone and silently judging them.  But Cerviño had a hairdressers diploma and had fancy lotions and clippers, so everyone went to check him out.  And his wife, whom everyone called the French Woman was often there–not wearing a bra, showing off her cleavage and being disgusted with everyone she saw.

The narrator believes the stranger was smitten with her.  He set up a tent on the outskirts of town and while he never came to the market (once every couple of weeks for canned food) he spent a lot of time at the barber shop.

We also hear a little about Old Melchor and the ways he combated Cerviño’s attempts at overtaking his business.  This included telling everyone that only sissies would go to a hairdresser.  He also bought the villager’s first color TV when the World Cup started.

It’s a wonderfully full background for this story which is nearly half way over.

One day the whole village noticed that the French woman and the stranger were both missing.

Rampant speculation provides all manner of reasons for this.  But one widow is convinced that Cerviño has killed them both.  And she sets about digging holes all around town looking for them,

What she finds is far more shocking and leads to a whole new story we never could have anticipated.

This was translated by Alberto Manguel and I definitely want to read more from Martinez.