You get two magnificent songwriters together and you can't help but come up with a collection of songs worth listening to.  Toss in their ability to play instruments and sing, and what you end up with is an album as flat-out grand as "You Can't Save Everybody."

Kieran Kane and Kevin Welch are both from America, but their music is hugely popular in Australia, which is the roundabout way I came across them, as a friend of mine "down under" sent me their "Live in Melbourne" disc.  It wowed me, and now, their new studio release does the same thing.  Wow.

Joined by fellow Dead Reckoning artist Fats Kaplin on button accordion, tenor banjo, danelectro, and fiddle, as well as Claudia Scott joining in on vocals, the duo present twelve awesome songs, starting out with the powerful ballad, "You Can't Save Everybody," written by Kane and Sean Locke (who shares co-writer credit on several of the songs).  And each song that follows retains a magnificence, a crystalline elegance of purity. Lyrical, sensuous, intriguing, the music washes over the listener, encasing them in sensation.

From Kane's "Somewhere in the Middle" to Welch's haunting "Flycatcher Jack and the Whippoorwill's Song," it's impossible not to be drawn into the beauty of these songs.  When listening  to Welch's magnificent "'Til I'm Too Old To Die Young" you can hear the stark simplicity of the writer's intent.  While there's nothing at all wrong with the Moe Bandy version of this song, somehow Welch's own version strikes the heart.

A little topical commentary appears in the form of Welch's "Everybody's Working For The Man Again," with lyrics that state, "We had a radio station that played our music/ The way we all liked it round here/ Then a big corporation with a whole lot of money/ Told our jockeys what they wanted to hear."  And Kane's "Just Like That" speaks eloquently with lyrics, "We've learned how to take our dreams/ And turn 'em into fine machines/ But there's one thing we haven't done/ We haven't learned to live as one."

This is music stripped down to the basic roots, eloquent and delicious.  The standing barriers between folk and country come down here.  The sounds of simple instruments simply played well mingle together with rough-hewn voices to bring out a passionate, beautiful, and absolutely true piece of real music.

Standout Tracks: "Everybody's Working For The Man Again" "You Can't Save Everybody" "Flycatcher Jack and the Whippoorwill's Song" "'Til I'm Too Old To Die Young"

Final Word: Australia's discovered these boys.  It's high time America did, too.

http://www.deadreckoners.com/


Kathy Coleman TakeCountryBack April 2004