Jeff McCord on the month’s new releases
Iron & Wine, Calexico
Overcoat Recordings
Not every songwriter is a born bandleader. Iron and Wine (a.k.a. Sam Beam), who has relocated from Florida to Dripping Springs, originally chose to go it alone, and the sparse nature of his early recordings gave his ambitious lyrics, fairly or not, a sheen of preciousness. No longer. The tumbleweed-border rock and roll of Tucson’s Calexico breathes fire into seven of Beam’s absorbing tales on In the Reins (Overcoat). Beam aims for the richness of a short story in his writing yet leaves key details unexplained; it’s a secret to his allure. While the opener tries hard, maybe too hard, to find a wild-plains, Cormac McCarthy vibe, Beam and Calexico’s Joey Burns harmonize beautifully, and throughout this all-too-brief recording, their instincts are sound. Spooky fare like “Red Dust” and the murderous “A History of Lovers” is given just the right amount of drama and drive.
Booker Ervin
Blue Note
Only being born too late kept Booker Ervin from becoming one of the original Texas Tenors. No one embodied the braggadocio of the Texas jazz sound like the Denison native; he cut into each piece with his sawtoothed tone, improvising with ferocity. Unexplained is how Ervin, who soared during his years with bassist Charles Mingus and on his 1963 breakthrough, The Freedom Book, found his latter-day career stalled. Or how the newly reissued Tex Book Tenor (Blue Note), a post-bop powerhouse ’68 session made two years before his death, sat on the shelves for almost a decade, in print only sporadically since then. Understated in the modal opener, “Gichi,” Ervin’s saxophone then explodes. The flawless drumming of Billy Higgins propels the session; trumpeter Woody Shaw and pianist Kenny Barron also shine. But no one overshadows Ervin. He made sure of that.
Jon Dee Graham
Freedom
Unfortunately, bad luck is often followed by more of the same. Take songwriter–guitar slinger Jon Dee Graham, whose son Willie was diagnosed with a rare and debilitating disease at the same time the family’s insurance company declared bankruptcy. Fortunately, Graham lives in Austin and has many talented friends, who contributed to the benefit CD- DVD set Big Sweet Life: The Songs of Jon Dee Graham (Freedom; available at texasmusicroundup.com), a souvenir of a Continental Club tribute in June coupled with an all-star video shoot. Graham’s elegiac yet hopeful works are interpreted by everyone from Ray Benson and Patty Griffin to Kathy McCarty and Ray Wylie Hubbard. Some performances resonate more than others, but all are heartfelt, a testament not only to what Graham means to his friends but also to what music means to his adopted hometown.
