& MORE REVIEWS

In motels, I've written a lot of songs during the day — because in a motel room there's not much difference between the day and the night. When the door's closed and the big rubber curtains are shut, it's just like night.
— Townes Van Zandt


It starts somewhere around Cisco Pike, a man with a hard-shell case walking in profile, going to meet a man — probably not about a horse. The sun is sharp, and judging by his coat, there's some chill in that sunlight. There's music playing, accoustic guitar surrounded by a full arrangement, and a voice singing about the past, and how remembering it is a hell of a lot easier than facing what's ahead.

The man, of course, is a drug dealer played by Kris Kristofferson, and he's coming to give a guitar and a way of seeing to some teenage mug from the Midwest named Patrick Crowson. There'd be other heroes, too. The late, great Townes, the Willie Nelson of Red Headed Stranger, and Haggard, naturally, (though it's not in Crowson's fingers to pick you to pieces like Merle, or, hell, Jerry Reed for that matter.) But the particular method of conveying that longing, with a mixture of physical detail followed by a summary line you can hang your hat on — the way of being elegiac and clear-eyed at the same time — strikes me as coming from that man and his hard-shell case.

Crowson never quite learned to tap his feet in regular time, so the circular, rather than linear, shape of his songs comes as much from that god-given disequilibrium than from some notion that you make things more interesting by making them harder to follow. His songs are elusive without being obscure. They slither, they wander, they double back, and just when you think you recognize a landmark, you realize, nope, you're still lost. But you've seen something interesting along the way.

In earlier times, Crowson was more of a three-chords-and-the-truth type songwriter, if only because G, C, and D and about one rhythm to strum them in was all he knew how to do. But even back then, his chucka chucka rhythm, which had some Bakersfield giddy-up and some Johnny Cash freight train, sounded pretty different. It was country music without being an imitation of country music. Some of us didn't know what the hell it was or what to do with it.

Glad to say, that old rhythm is still around, if slowed down in tempo, and is now played with more care and feeling. In the intervening years, Crowson added a pretty good Jimmie Rodgers claw to better separate the rhythm notes from the melody. There it is on "Poison Water" and again on "Old Man". And not only has the pallet expanded greatly in terms of chords, there are some totally different rhythmic ideas on this record. Listen to the Bert Jansch-like descending lines on "Little Rose", for instance, or the murder ballad country blues runs that punctuate "What the Sun Can See."

Then there's Josh Allen, Meanwhiles auteur, soundtrack composer, with a suitcase in his hand, bringing temperature to the air outside the rooms where loss is taking place. There's a little more light on the proceedings thanks to this man, both candle and electric. It's a neat trick, to clarify the shadows without taking them away. But bless him, Josh let's the man do his one thing he does well, well — I'd have had to kick his ass if he hadn't.

So is this music sad, dark — too sad, too dark? Well, to steal from Mark Strand, who supposedly titled the book Darker in response to the overkill with which poets in the '60s used the word "dark",
"The present is always dark." Crowson allows how he wrote the songs for this record at a particularly trying time, and it may be that it's not the music they put you on hold to when you call the suicide hotline. However, I'd say the sadness of "Dogs Running Around" is like the sadness of Kristofferson's "For the Good Times" — there's a handkerchief being offered, a hand to the jumper. And damn it if Allen doesn't have bells and something that sounds like the vibraphone from "Just the Other Side of Nowhere" in there.

Finally, it's about splitting a bottle with Crowson, sitting back and listening to a new song of his weave four, five minutes late at night. There are empties underfoot, a cat somewhere around the toe of your boot. It's pleasantly dark, but maybe that's your vision fading. Crowson plays his new song. You listen to its crooked path without trying to follow it. Your head starts nodding, not with sleep, but in agreement, not like for what Townes did when he reduced a whiskeyed-up farrier to a red-eyed mess, but like for what Dylan did to Peckinpah when he sang him, "Billy, you're such a long, long way from home" over coke, weed and tequila until Sam broke down and said, "You cocksucker, you son of a bitch," with tears in his eyes.

Paul Bodig
April 5, 2006

Review

Hanx.net

September 5, 2006

Patrick Crowson - Patrick Crowson (Eigen Beheer) ****

Debuut als Dylan Lees verder

(this was translated from Dutch to English so...)

Paul Bodig wrote a 'Letter from a Friend' to character. You can find the letter on the internet site of Patrick Crowson (www.patrickcrowson.com). The tale of record and man puts my review here in advance in the shade. The rhythm of the senses. the words, the pictures. It is everything enequalled. With loving distance and finding humor it is exactly as beautiful as this music debut. And that is what I say too, because I think on this debut that Patrick Crowson reached the height, breadth and depth which can be found in the better works of Bob Dylan. Just like on 'Time Out of Mind' the case is, you enter the record on Patrick Crowson somewhere by means of a song and wander around full of amazement. Josh Allen is Crowson's 'Lanois'. Without him it seems that Crowson would be like Dante without Vergilius; Allen is the man who knows the way. Already, the most natural deepest way is not known. Because the songs of Crowson know particular qualities which make them difficult to hang your hat on. Crowson sings with an ostensive flat voice and his acoustic guitar is simple. Allen adds thrifty instrumentation; a piano here, an organ there, some bells and especially lots of electric guitar. Percussion is missing. And then there are the songs. Refrains are scarcely there and when they are we hardly hear them. But then the nuances appear, in Crowson's voice, in Allen's production. You hear a driven obscurity which has not been damaged by the dark. Somewhat similar to that of 16 Horsepower for example, but instead of dogmatic, Crowson brings literary observations, brought with the reserve of a good narrator. Also similar to Tom Waits, for example but instead of the too-forced stubborn lecture, Patrick brings his own idiom, naturally like that of a young talent. Bodig tells of the influence of Kristofferson (film and music), Cash and Jimmie Rodgers and the distinction between rhythm and melody in the guitar. In 'Little Rose' an echo of the guitar of Bert Jansch is heard according to Bodig. Perhaps. Perhaps. He also mentions Townes Van Zandt. His presence (what nevertheless on the ultimate master student relationship indicates) is obvious. But already the songs of VanZandt are a lot more uniform than those of Crowson's. Therefore, ths is a real beautiful debut. In fact with regard to form and contents, there is nothing to compare it to. Although this may musically serve those of a slightly other language, but also the weaver of the songs is himself missing as well as the places and names along the way. And now nevertheless we have a concern for these places; a surplus of things we will never hear and we find ourselves left with the job of finding them ourselves. The reward here is to anyone that takes the time to listen (Wim Boluijt)

www.insurgentcountry.net"
by Johanna J. Bodde                                                             

PATRICK CROWSON  "Patrick Crowson"
(Self-Released)
www.patrickcrowson.com
 www.cdbaby.com/cd/crowson

Don't worry, Patrick Crowson doesn't look one bit like the muddy creature on the cover of his self-titled CD! He is a handsome young man who explains: "You know, the cover came out of an accident. A friend of mine and I were doing construction down in Waco one Summer. We were bored of the heat and decided to make a claymation western. We spent some time creating the clay cowboys - borrowed a Super 8 camera with stop-motion - set up the light and started to film. Unfortunately the lights were too hot and the clay cowboy started to melt and that was pretty much the beginning and end of the western. I always liked the one shot we got. My friend always called it the "meltin' cowboy". He'd say: "Just like you and me in Waco, man."

Patrick was born in Alton, Illinois. How did he get involved in music? "As far as learning, my older brother Mark and my good friend Paul Bodig taught me more about music than anybody else - along with the first two Kristofferson records and some others. My first band was with my brother, a guy from Austin who just had a kid and a friend from Missouri. We were the Oblate Brothers. We played in a bunch of different Ice Houses in Houston. Played a couple of shows in Austin and a couple in Shreveport and then we just kinda burned out. We were moving pretty fast at the time but we had some fun. I took off for a while and ended up forming a band called Cockfighter. I ran into a guitarplayer whose heroes were The Minute Men. We made a couple records, made a lot of noise and then I was called back home for a while." Paul Bodig -the good friend- also wrote the biography, not your regular bio but a well-written novelette, that begins with a quote of Townes Van Zandt: "In motels, I've written a lot of songs during the day -- because in a motel room there's not much difference between the day and the night. When the door's closed and the big rubber curtains are shut, it's just like night." Patrick adds: "I don't think I really deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence but Townes Van Zandt is one of my heroes. Then of course Dylan, Kristofferson, Newbury and a bunch of others."

No big surprise, that his lyrics turned out to be impressionistic dark poetry, about people. "The present is always dark," said Patrick Crowson, who wrote the songs for his record at a particularly trying time and comments a year later: "As far as the inspiration and lyrics, it's hard to say. It's not like I'm trying to be coy or mysterious but once they're done I don't really think about them much. I'm glad they're there but why or how I got 'em doesn't really matter much to me." How about the music? Patrick lives now in the Boerum Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. His friends are Josh and Todd Allen from Meanwhiles. Josh produced the CD (together with Patrick) and plays guitars, piano, harmonium, genie organ, keyboards, sanctum & tone educator bells, while brother Todd is the bassist and Patrick himself plays guitar. Josh describes the results as "dark acoustic songs with shadowy arrangements weaving through the narratives."

O.K., let's listen now... Patrick Crowson has a melancholic, sensitive voice and sings slow, often long ballads without refrains, just some repeated words now and then. Influences from his heroes indeed, singer-songwriter music between alt.folk and alt.acoustic rock. The lines are meandering through well-mixed soundscapes of sparse, effectfull arrangements. "You came before / I wished you couldn't stay. So you're not worthy / To leave the sadness you know " and first song "Homesick" ends on "You're the homesick I couldn't kick". "Poison Water" has this ominous electric guitar and the bass in the background. "The day's own troubles / Outweigh the day / Purple and grey", that's "Dogs Walking Around", pretty with Josh Allen's backing vocals and those little bells. "Longhair" goes back to exposing the truth: "Hey what's become / Of wanting something that means something / Of knowing something before you speak / You're walking down / You're part of the crowd / You think you're a mystery." I hear a touch of Steve Wynn there... If those CSI-series weren't so darned fast and commercial, they would use a song like "Little Rose". "Got an impression of your mouth / With all your love lord running out / Some times you would smile / I'd wish I could change something deep inside of me", deceivingly beautiful with "the Bert Jansch-like descending lines", that's a very good comparison from the bio. "Old Man" contains a soundscape with disturbing traffic sounds and on purpose off-key singing with too many words for the line. "So what if it's on / Second Avenue / He sure knows how to drink my friend / He's got nothin' to lose now / He's just like me." Then "Saints", based on acoustic guitar sounds again. It ends like this: "Thank God for all the litany of saints / I bet maybe half of them ain't / But some of them are true." Adorned with those little bells and other stuff, plus the great back-up singing of Josh: "You don't have that spring in your step / Your heart's a little broke / You wonder when they're gonna find out / That you're so damned worn out." "Daylight" has something slightly Dylanesque: "Daylight on shoulders / That never see the sun... You got a mind for making mistakes / But I'm going to love you forever anyway," while on "What The Sun Can See" the layers of sound are fading in and out, hypnotizing! "I can see what the sun can see / A fountain sealed with memories / Memories you keep / You keep inside your garden walls you keep / Your world from me."

Well, I hope my music loving friends who visit this site, also like listening to poetry. It's worth trying anyway! And if Townes Van Zandt had been born in the late 70s, he might have made music like this...

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Written by Johanna J. Bodde, March 2007.
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