
The Flatlanders – Treasure Of Love
Rack’em Records/Thirty Tigers – 9 July 2021
After a dozen years, The Flatlanders have reunited under the guiding hand of producer and pedal steel maestro Lloyd Maines. Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock originally formed their pioneering Americana Texas trio back in 1972 before the members found individual solo success, disbanding in 1973 but subsequently getting back together for various albums over the years.
Although The Odessa Tapes, a collection of hitherto previously unreleased material, surfaced back in 2012, this album is all new material, a collection of primarily covers they’ve featured in their live shows over the past 50 years alongside four originals, three of them by Hancock.
Indeed, they kick off with one of his, Moanin’ Of The Midnight Train, a bluesy, slow walking rhythm road-song number about being apart from your lover, here sung by Ely, the others being the goodtime dance number swing-shuffle Mama Does The Kangaroo and, another blues-shaded, steel-stroked song about trains and restlessness, Ramblin’ Man. The fourth of the self-penned tracks is provided by Ely with the sprightly train-time rhythm fingerpicked good timing blues Satin Shoes.
The first of the covers comes with a number from way back, Gilmore’s nasal – and yodelled – vocals taking the lead on Frank Harford and Tex Ritter’s country-ache Long Time Gone, a big hit for the Everlys, coming slightly more up to date with Ely upfront on a shuffle-along take on Townes Van Zandt’s classic Snowin’ on Raton, Maines again providing sterling steel work. A brace of Leons follows it, first up being a jaunty bass twanging romp through Leon Russell’s She Smiles Like A River led by Gilmore, the second, accompanied by mandolin, a sturdy, throaty slide guitar coloured crunchy rhythm take on Leon Jackson’s Love, Please Come Home.
Inevitably, one Johnny Cash number surfaces at some point, here Hancock taking charge of the typically chugging Give My Love To Rose before turning to another legend with Gilmore warbling his way through the brushed snares shuffle of the George Jones and J. P. Richardson title track.
A somewhat overlooked singer-songwriter from the 70s Greenwich Village scene, Gilmore honours Paul Siebel on a pedal-steel driven cover of his 1970 Western-movies inspired waltz-time shuffling The Ballad Of Honest Sam. Then, by contrast in the fame stakes, comes Gilmore’s heads down rocking reading of Bob Dylan’s She Belongs To Me complete with twangsome guitar break before dipping back into country’s past for Ernest Tubb and Jim Scott’s slow swaying, big chords heartache and regret ballad I Don’t Blame You.
The remaining two numbers span the decades, firstly from 1971, Mickey Newbury’s Mobile Blues, taken at a far faster tempo with Hancock on lead, and then reaching back to 1930 to end the album with the trio’s staple show closer, Sittin’ On Top Of The World, originally written and recorded by The Mississippi Sheiks and now considered a traditional American standard, the version, on which they swap around lead vocals, giving it a rockabilly/bluegrass treatment with some mean harmonica blowing from Hancock and some blistering guitar by Maines. Individually, a force to be reckoned with, each member has made their distinctive mark on the alt-country and Americana scene over the decades; as this welcome reunion shows, together they are indeed the musical living definition of a triple whammy.
Treasure of Love is out now. Order via Amazon | Rough Trade
Photo credit: Jay Blakesberg