Nathan Bell – Loves Bones and Stars, Love’s Bones and Stars
Angry Stick – 10 September 2018
Iowa-born Nathan Bell follows up last years’ Love>Fear (48 Hours in Traitorland) with what he refers to as the unexpected fourth in his Family Man trilogy, that is to say, the album’s about being a working-class American, a cycle upon which he embarked in 2011 at the age of 51. This, however, is closer to home in that it involves a close circle of friends and family with several songs dedicated to assorted kith and kin.
His wife is the subject of the opening number, I Would Be A Blackbird, a pledge of love written many years back and titled for her favourite bird, sung in his husky wood stain voice with John Mock on anglo concertina and Annie Maher providing harmonies. The first of two versions of the intimately sung five and a half minute title track follows, the three folk to whom it’s dedicated presumably friends, on the first of which cello adds extra colour to its hymn to the ordinary moments of good fortune that make a life and its portrait of a family man, “who never lets down his guard” and the morning coffee and chaos of love that fills his home.
Originally intended as a song for a friend’s as then yet unborn granddaughter (Etta Bea), A Day Like This morphed into a letter of hope and wisdom to his own children, daughter Aileen Violet especially, in which, variously playing harmonica, 8-string tenor, ukulele and banjulele, Bell conjures his close musical kinship, both in his delivery and songwriting, with John Prine. It too comes in two versions, the second with Mosher’s harmonies giving it a brighter, more optimistic touch.
Again, featuring Courtney Blackwell’s cello and using his guitar body for percussion, he describes Fragile as an atheist’s prayer that, if when we go we’re gone, then wishing for one more day with those you love is an afterlife in the here and now. Written for a couple of friends and their new son, Molly Had A Baby, another Prine-like number, pretty much does what you’d expect, talking about how the arrival put sorrow on the train and brought happiness, but still finds room to talk about baseball and “how the designated hitter damn near killed the game.”
A gently fingerpicked, cello-accompanied track, Metal compares driving his cars until they fall apart with living his life, a musing on accepting mortality (“it’s an old man’s job to slip away/ And open up new places in the line… and I don’t mind”) and the hope that “I was better than unkind”. The positivity here is in distinct contrast to Whiskey, You Win on which, featuring just his guitar and Annie Masher on harmonies. Bell doesn’t drink, but as he notes, he knows plenty who do and has seen how it can tear lives and marriages apart.
Though written for his now twenty-something son, Colman Saul, the semi-spoken My Kid is a song to strike a chord with any father proud of his child’s spirit, his intelligence and stubborn courage in seeing and questioning how the world and realising they’re going to be okay.
Co-penned in a matter of minutes with Missy Raines, To Here From There is an unapologetic song of love and gratitude, a sentiment that follows into Gold Wedding Ring (Please, Mister, Please), a Guthrie-like fingerpicked country blues about a struggling songwriter trying to make enough to get married, originally recorded with Richard Bennett when Bell first ventured to Nashville back in 1991 for a never-released album.
If you know your bourbons then you’ll get the title of Faulkner And Four Roses, a poignant meditation on mortality and loss, dedicated to a friend recently widowed after fifty years and how they got to talking about whiskey as a cure for insomnia, Bell’s wife adding harmonies to bring the album proper to a beautifully sad conclusion.
Er Gaetha Pawb A Phopeth (Live Album)
But it doesn’t have to end there, because released simultaneously is an official bootleg recorded at the Cwtch Coffee House in Pembroke, Wales, November 2017 during the I Don’t Do This For Love, I Do This For Love tour.
Just him and his guitar, it perfectly captures his live charisma, trawling across his back catalogue from 2011’s Black Crow Blue, the title track of which opens the set, to a back to back sandwich of three from the then as yet unrecorded new album as well as American Gun, a new and lyrically dark number as yet to find its way to a studio version. Particular highlights would have to include his politically-veined protest numbers MIA, Names, Walking Boss and, especially, Jesus of Gary Indiana, while, as he notes in his introduction, Coal Black Water has particular resonance for Welsh mining communities left high and dry by the industry’s collapse.
A writer of songs both deeply personal and universal, long may he continue to toll.
Nathan Bell is on tour in the UK during October. Visit his website for details https://www.nathanbellmusic.com/