Hardened and Tempered – Hold The Line
Self Released – 14 January 2021
A singer-songwriter duo from Austin Texas, here joined by producer Lloyd Maines on guitars and bass and Pat Manske on drums, Kristin Davidson, an activist for indigenous people, and Carolyn Phillips, a PhD oncology nurse, share vocal duties, the former also playing guitar and keyboards, this being their second album.
Introduced by drone before the Spanish guitar strum arrives, opening track Counting The Cars has a gypsy-folk waltzing feel, Davidson on lead for a song about urban disconnection (“nothing good grows in a garden of steel and concrete”) that features the striking image of how “a cage painted white holds as much hope as a wedding dress wrapped in barbed wire”.
Phillips takes over vocals for the moodily styled slow walk rhythm of Breaker, Breaker, another song that, adopting a CB radio call-sign as its title and with resonator guitar break, speaks of the need for connection (“I’m calling out for you to call back to me. If all it takes is a reverie, when I think of you, you’ll think of me”), albeit here couched in a despondent relationship wishing they were lying next to someone else. That same reaching out for hope but caught in stasis also characterises the fingerpicked intricacy of Crossroads, their voices coming together as, pedal steel chiming, they sing “Dreams burn with kerosene to cast a shaft of light, but I summon from the shadows a fear that keeps me paralyzed/I can’t stay. I can’t go”. It’s here too on the harmonised uptempo, fiddle and mandolin laced bluegrassy chug of When The Harvest Comes, a dust bowl depression narrative sung in the voice of a poor girl trying to keep the farm afloat, hoping that “next year’s the one”.
In contrast, Maines playing papoose, the sprightly jogging Magnolia offers images of beauty in unexpected places and nature’s work ethic (“it’s not the flower that impresses me/ It’s what the spider’s spinning behind petals and leaves”). Elsewhere, Maines on dulcimer and baritone guitar, the jaunty, military drum pattern Hold The Line talks of human resilience in times of trouble (“I’ll live these days the rest of my years. I may tire, but I won’t disappear. I’m a stone that paves the way”) because “In the ashes, the heart’s a precious stone”.
It’s a theme carried across into The Republican River, Phillips playing the ukulele, as the song recounts ancient legend when giants roamed the land, defying the gods but washed away by the rains when they “tried to tame the river” as, again addressing the futility of man in the face of nature, the song references the devastating Texas floods of 1935 and the consequences of technological advances in land cultivation.
Opening with and featuring Mark Gonzales on horns, set to a slow New Orleans-styled march beat, Beer Bottles and Broken Hearts turns the gaze inwards for a song of self-reckoning (“I was potent once, full-bodied and robust. I was a rebel with a minor chord and shined like a pantsuit playboy. Took my aim and always found the mark on beer bottles and broken hearts”) as “time has turned me into something that I’m not”.
Davidson again on pedal steel with mandolin from Maines, it ends with the Billie Jo Spears-like perky country rhythms of Wide Awake at Midnight, driving home through the night and ending the album with another song of hope and determination that keeps us moving forward on the long road ahead even when the needles in red, and “storm clouds gather to the west. Signal’s lost on the radio. Warning lights say I need to rest. Headlights have turned to halos”, feeling most alive when the odds seem stacked against you. Taking their name from a process to toughen steel to prevent it from wearing down, it brings a combination of hardness, strength and toughness, The duo have all that, but they have a tenderness too.
Order via Bandcamp: https://hardenedandtempered.bandcamp.com/album/hold-the-line