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www.budbuckley.com

How I Feel About It

This is Mr. Buckley’s second album, and it is a well produced blend of folk and rock. He employs some very capable musicians and it’s clear that this gig was more than just a paycheck to them. It is also clear from these tunes that Mr. Buckley has been dragged through a world of shit. His melancholy is deep and not the all-to-frequently affected sadness of aspiring hipsters.

This album took me back to the sixties and early seventies; no surprise since some of Mr. Buckley’s most significant influences come from that era. However, when you cite Bob Dylan as an influence, I want meaningful lyrics. I’ve seen too many artists who cite Dylan as an influence and then proceed to spew cliché after cliché. I found very few in these songs.

What’s most impressive about this album is Mr. Buckley’s absolute candor. His ability to speak directly to the listener about issues related to getting older is touching and thoroughly endearing, but to be brutally frank, younger listeners may have some trouble sympathizing with an adult coming clean about his mistakes. They should listen to it anyway.

What I Think About It 

In the end, this album is the tale of two song types. The first type consists of the utterly abject and whiskey-soaked folk lullabies in which Mr. Buckley shines. (Suppose he doesn’t drink whiskey: he made me want to crack a bottle almost immediately.) The second is made up of slightly peppier, sometimes political numbers which sound like an effort to prove to the world that he’s not manically depressed. This second category finds songs that unfortunately can’t hold a candle to his first type.

There is another split among this collection. Most of his melodies strike me as an attempt to test conventions. He’s not pushing any envelopes in composition, but he tends to steer clear of tunes that are a mere reworking of older folk and blues pieces. But he doesn’t always succeed, and some of the tunes are so simplistic that they fall into a category I call Muppet Music. The songs which tread The Path of Kermit are particularly annoying since the lyrics are usually good, but are diminished by the feeling that the music was composed for children.

The first track is called Let Me Go. Musically, listeners will find more Mark Knopfler in this album than Dylan and this song is a good example of that. The guitar here smacks of early Dire Straits and it’s well executed. The strings in back are well orchestrated and haunting. The song deals with the ending of a relationship that’s gone on too long:

“Before you, life was more hard
Than the face I showed you
But together we starred
In a love story overdue
But now it’s time and it’s been time for a long time
Oh  it’s time and it’s been time for a long time”

If you’ve ever been in a similar situation with a loved one, this song will resonate with you.

You Can’t Leave My Mind uses a harp to create a very delicate backdrop to another incredible sad song about being left without wanting to let go. This song has the most Dylanesque vocal line and it has another well orchestrated string part. I would be more excited about this song except for the last phrase of the chorus, which lapses into a Muppet melody: “But you can’t leave my mind…” sounds too much like the hook to an advertising jingle. It put me off an otherwise excellent song.

Underground is one of those peppier numbers I referred to above. The arrangement reminds me of Dire Strait’s, Down to the Waterline but the lyrics are political and deal with the singer’s advice to anyone who’s waiting for the republic to collapse. Unfortunately, these criticisms of the direction the country is headed are a bit dated. They sound much like the protest music of the sixties and do not shed any light on our current political problems.

Keeping Secrets was the first song that really caught my ear. Here Mr. Buckley returns to the sadder composition, and once again the guitar returns to Mark Knopfler. The organ and the guitar are straight out of Love Over Gold. The song is about the danger of keeping secrets in a relationship:

“Your silence is causing this ache that my heart’s trying to deny
Your stillness as cold as the lake, Just make a ripple so I know you’re alive”

Elevator falls into the Kermit Category.

The Silence There utilizes some steel guitar that once again brings me back to Dire Straits. It’s a good groove about having too many memories. This is definitely a song for those thirty and over.

I Still Remember How that Feels is a stunningly beautiful song that even if you don’t like folk music you should give it a listen. It deals with the joys and pains of having a daughter. It’s songs like this where Mr. Buckley’s depth of experience shines through.

Meltdown is more Muppet Music. Except for the swearing, this song is unremarkable.

Tattoo is a little Brazilian number that I think is Mr. Buckley’s best. The music is a bit of a cardboard cutout, but it’s his best vocal performance and the lyrics are awesome. Check out www.budbuckley.com and read them for yourself.

Crowded Memory suffers from a bit of Muppetism.

All in all, this is a strong work with strong instrumentation. The only thing that’s questionable in that regard is Mr. Buckley’s vocals which sometimes suffer from lack of breath support and sometimes he uses the Knopfleresque husky voice in order to mask pitches. That said, Mr. Buckley’s sheer emotive force and his excellent overall wordsmithing more than make up for shaky intonation. Mr. Buckley deserves (and will no doubt gain) a wide audience.

Steve Perry (no relation)

Discography
Caffeine and gasoline - 2007
Everybody Needs a Tuba - 2003
Glow - 2001
Joel Sprayberry Band…Live!!! - 1998
If I Decide - 1997
Puppy Love - 1996

http://www.joelsprayberryband.com

How I Feel About It

We were given a few different songs to review, some of which are from The Sprayberry Band’s current release, Caffeine and Gasoline, and some of which are not. None of them is from the live album.

These songs remind me of a slew of young men who performed solo at college with their acoustic guitars and who NEVER missed an opportunity to subject their audiences to an anxiety-ridden moaning intended to get them laid. They frequently harmonized on each other’s songs, but such arrangements were gimmicks to help them bed women, not to serve the music itself. When I listen to Sprayberry’s songs, I’m taken back to college and music performed in cafes there: boyish and naïve on one hand, thoughtful and genuine on the other. At the time, the Bare Naked Ladies had their first release and were a popular cover along with Big Head Todd and the Monsters and their song Bittersweet.

Fortunately, Mr. Sprayberry and his band are much BETTER than the slut-males who haunted my alma mater. I know because he doesn’t take me back there in a judgmental way–what’s a poor reviewer to do?–but in a wistful way. Even his jumpy, mostly happy songs like Happy Go Lucky 2.0 ask the listener to do more than emote. They ask him or her to consider the source of those emotions. Music that sends you backward can be very powerful indeed.

I usually recoil from overtly Christian music, but not all of this band’s songs are about Jesus or God. Sprayberry is not trying to convert anyone and he’s not beating you over the head with Jesus lyrics. This bodes well for his understanding of the theology he purports to believe, and this understanding, in turn, does much to keep old cynics like me listening.

What I Think About It

Sprayberry’s electronic press kit quotes Tollbooth.org: “Joel Sprayberry is an acoustic wild man who could hold his own playing dueling guitars with any of the current top-selling acoustic artists. But unlike many guitar-intensive artists, Sprayberry has put as much thought and care into crafting his lyrics as he has into creating his finger-flying licks.”

I play guitar and not a single finger flying lick did I hear. Don’t get me wrong, everyone in the band is a competent player, but if Sprayberry is an ‘acoustic wild man’ then Pat Metheny must be positively feral. Leo Kottke must be the Demon Beast of Zoob. There still is a great deal of Sprayberry material I haven’t heard, but if the band is to include citations such as this one, they should also provide submissions that support them.

The guitar I hear is ninety percent rhythm accompaniment to Sprayberry’s baritone, and his voice is a strong, clean vessel for his lyrics, which I think are his major contribution. (There is a banjo solo, and it’s a fine effort, but to insist there is a high level of plucking going on is to engage in an unhealthy level of hyperbole.) Further, the band describes itself as ‘acoustic progressive psychedelic folk rockabilly.’ I take issue with ‘progressive’ and ‘psychedelic.’ The tunes may be progressive in attitude, but not in arrangement. There are no surprises in time signature and no real effort to push any tonal envelope. As for psychedelia, I have no idea to what the material is referring. There’s an organ in back of one of the songs—is that psychedelic?

Sprayberry is quoted in the band’s electronic press kit as saying, “If I write a song that sounds even remotely like something I’ve heard before, I’ll throw it out…” This is a bit hard to take: the songs that made it through his filter are not breathtakingly original. As I suggested at the beginning, they are reminiscent of many songs, and that’s what makes them powerful.

Having accused the band of overstatement, I have to say that Save Me from Myself is a groovin’ piece that would not be easy to play. The band is tight. There’s even a distorted guitar, a giant reverbed thing in the background. Happy Go Lucky 2.0 is also a well considered arrangement with horns, if somewhat conventional. Once again, it’s not the musicianship which is so engaging—it’s Sprayberry’s honesty and they way he conveys (purveys?) it with his words:

But all of a sudden something changed in me
I felt as though I had never seen
My spirit wells up and talks above
It cleans me out and it speaks of love

(Praise be unto Ullah, Sprayberry is saved! Now perhaps we’ll get the metal album for which we’ve all been waiting!)

Maybe there’s something wrong
with the way I communicate
Maybe I’m just looking for the things
that you don’t say

Reviewing is tough because your readers don’t have any faces to scan in order to augment their understanding of what’s written. It’s either clear or it’s not. Sprayberry is very clear with his voice and in his verse. He is honest in his assessment of his own character and of the very mechanisms which allow him to write these songs. (It’s just too bad some of that honesty couldn’t work its way into his marketing!)

Will I buy the album? Probably not, but it would be a good purchase. Would I go see the show? Yes, absolutely, and reminisce.

Steve Perry (no relation)