Search - Tom Russell :: Hotwalker: Charles Bukowski & A Ballad for Gone

Breaking New Ground From Old Dust

Garry Lafollette | Winchester, VA | 03/07/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I have never heard a CD quite like this . . .in some ways it calls to mind the best of Alan Lomax's field recordings starting with Blues in the Mississippie Night, but there's more to it than that, If Lomax's recordings were a small window to a time removed from our own by far more than the passing of years, this effort, deserving of the word 'masterpiece' is a kalidascope on okie shine spinning the listener into the core of it all . . .



And I should have seen it coming . . . for over ten yrs all of Tom Russell's recordings have been penetrating and revealing studies of place, period, or personality - often all three in the same song. The man has been gifted, or maybe at times cursed, with a voice and writing style that without the distraction of calling attention to itself brings the trust of his songs into stark focus. The man can write, plain and simple.



Until now he's focused by and large on songs, marrying instrumentation and melody to the words, on this CD he works more in voice over, music free to epotmizes a time or a place, free to call to mind an image b/c it isn't anchored to his words by melody or strutural contraints. . .instead it is like the dirt in the bullring or the broken pavement of a border road beneath a banger Ford. The words are spoken, but that can't be the term, 'speaking' doesn't convey the power or force, stripped of melody there is no room for the wrong word or a weak turn of a phrase. The approach demands the most perfectly written CD he has ever record, and that is what this is.



Think of how speaking rather than singing added gravity to "That's What Love Is" from the Borderland CD. Amplify that a dozen times. This is a recording you participate in. It is not however a CD you're apt to play several times a day - although you will want to play it daily - even before its played through you'll be digging through your CD collection for the music it references, or your shelves for books to bring it closer.



Normally when I write a CD review I do it while playing the CD in question . . . not this time. Wynn Stewart is on the deck and a pair of Edward Abbey paperbacks, worn and stained the day I plucked them from a used bookstore in Benson, AZ are on the desk beside me. It's like any journey . . . leaves me wanting to go further."

"Authentic Voice in a Wasted Land"

Theo Logos | Pittsburgh, PA | 04/03/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Tom Russell is one of the great, quintessential American voices - among the greatest of our living song writers and story tellers. Hotwalker, his latest effort, is not, however, a collection of his songs. It is rather a historical document - spoken word narration backed with music, tying together a collection of vignettes of an outsider America of bar-fly poets, circus freak philosophers, honky tonkin' cowboys, beats, bohemians, and folk singers, that for an amazing moment in time seemed to be almost ascendant. Russell witnessed this outsider America - was shaped by it, and he lovingly recreates it here.

Russell put together quite a cast of luminaries for this project, including recordings of Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Lenny Bruce, Harry Partch, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and Edward Abbey. Little Jack Horton, a side show midget who had been a drinking buddy of Bukowski's, co-narrates with Russell, and his amazing funhouse voice and outsider philosophizing are uniquely suited to the material. And while Hotwalker is not an album of songs, there is a plethora of music, both as mood setting for the spoken word, and an occasional, expertly placed song that speaks volumes. The song Woodrow, about Woody Guthrie, that Russell includes here is as powerful as anything that he has ever written, and is almost worth the price of the CD by itself.

This CD will not appeal to everyone, not even all of those who are fans of Russell. But if you empathize with the great independent, iconoclastic outsiders who once peppered the American landscape; if you are sick of conservatives who spin hypocritical family values and rah-rah patriotism, sick of liberals who spin saccharine and silly political correctness, sick of a culture that only values what it can put a price tag on and sell you, that homogenizes everything, and whose grandest ideal is the shopping mall, then Hotwalker is a necessary addition to your collection. Listen to it - really hear it, and you may find yourself saying along with Little Jack Horton, "it's ours! it's our g-d damn country, from sea to g-d damn shining sea!"



Theo Logos

"

A serious major work by a radical artist

C. DIMOND | Gardner, CO United States | 04/09/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I have underrated Tom Russell in the past. This is serious, sad, mind-expanding -- a glimpse into the literary sources and true hard-drink inspiration of Russell's lyrics and philosophy. Not for honkies or sissies. This is the real stuff. Don't expect anything like Russell has ever done before. I have to rank this higher than 5 stars. An important album that will lose him as many fans as Tim Buckley lost with Starsailor. But the musical settings are beautiful. Right up there in Dylan territory. Take this advice from a beatnik, you Rollos, and face the music, whoever gave this one star. You lost what was said. It could still change you life if you just listen with fresh ears, not expectations. Lenny Bruce, Charles Bukowski, Edward Abbey, Harry Partch, Dave Van Ronk,and much and many more. And real memorories of an LA adolescence in a vanished culture. ****** STARS. Just beautiful. I almost wept. Hell, I admit this provoked a tear."