“…one thing that keeps Dom Flemons engaged and inspired is his indelible belief in the magic and wonder of music. It is that spirit which rises to the fore so definitively on this deep, indispensable new album.”
The title alone says it all, Dom Flemons has travelled far and wide in recent years, giving him a rich perspective on the effects of both social and climate crisis, the destruction it is causing, and his own battles to find hope and encouragement as he moves along life’s troubled and turbulent highways. He has seen a connection between the rapid quickfire spread of a wildfire with the way music and stories can pass through the generations and how lessons learned from the past can still be applied to present-day thinking, often with music as the vessel for this wisdom. It is good to hear him flexing like this, he is an artist who undoubtedly can bring relevance and meaning to an old-time tune, but here we are far more focused on original, newly written material aligned with a few new interpretations of songs that seem to belong within this song cycle. In keeping with the learned music he has put his name to previously, Traveling Wildfire is empirically compiled, both confounding and cohesive in its wide-ranging scope, and ultimately, the end product you hold and play is a many-coloured, enchanting, life-affirming joy to receive.
The opener Slow Dance With You, has a sweet Hawaiian lilt, a swaying serenade to a fellow broken-hearted partner that propositions a romantic swish across the tiles whilst confessing, “I ain’t the perfect man”. As a curtain raiser, it certainly sets a scene, the sun coming up on an amplitude of music to follow. The twangy guitar that ushers in Dark Beauty recalls the sonorous, echoing grandeur of a classic fifties country ballad, a grain that Dom harvests deeper still on If You Truly Love Me, a gorgeous tune which features floating pedal steel guitar sounds and a lyric dripping with classic country relationship pathos, “get your eyes up off the floor because I don’t give a damn if you don’t love me anymore”. That said, the turbulence heard on It’s Cold Inside seems way, way darker; the pensive nature of the tune makes it one of the outstanding pieces on here. The singer seems to be calling out from the bottom of a deep dark well, wrestling himself for a way back up, but any clues as to whether he can actually make it are oblique, the only resolve heard at the end is to start a fire to keep him from the cold. As the music expires, does it take the protagonist with it?
Traveling Wildfire is actually the fifth solo album from Flemons, an artist who may be best known to folk listeners as a member of Carolina Chocolate Drops alongside Rhiannon Giddens. Accolades such as a Grammy nomination for his 2018 Dom Flemons Presents Black Cowboys, and his weighty alias identity as The American Songster suggest his music is making a mark that is hard to ignore. While it is clear with Traveling Wildfire that a far more personal statement is sought this time around, this experienced serial collaborator has still found room to bring in a multitude of extra-musical partners. It is produced by Ted Hutt, who also contributes guitar and electric bass, while the sound is fleshed out by a combo comprising David Hidalgo, Marc Orrell and Matt Pynn. There are also guest appearances from Sam Bush and James Fearnley (heard playing delightful piano accordion on the LP’s closing instrumental). Indeed, the record’s title track is a fair pointer to the fitting, yet understated, use of his band, where the dark moon is “beaming as the final melody is being played” and sounds linger and bounce around the foreboding canyon being painted so vividly in our mind’s eye.
Later in the running order Big Money Blues exhibits a naturally adept picking style on the acoustic guitar. This one is a headlong dive into the twenties and depression era hard-up blues mode; deceptively simple it sounds too, but this song reaches for and catches a level of authenticity that no mere imitator could attain; this is proper. Old Desert Road has slightly more of a jug band bounce to it, in terms of tempo at least, but once again, we are on a journey through a baron landscape where the singer finds his head spinning with voices, anxieties and indecipherable premonitions. Rabbit Foot Rag is a star-popping delight of an instrumental, like a sudden breeze of cool air blowing away the sawdust, before Tough Luck barges its way onto centre stage. The ‘tough’ of the title is also felt in the vigorous way it is played. As the words “if I lose, let me lose, I don’t care, but I’ll be lucky some old day” are sung, it is abundantly clear that this is the statement of a man finding his way back, re-connecting with his sense of purpose and turning the ignition key on his self-belief. This is a Flemons arrangement of a song arrived at via banjo songster Clarence ‘Tom’ Ashley on a Folkways album of Clarence and Doc Watson; this and much more insight into the sources and inspirations of the music captured on ‘Traveling Wildfire’ is found within Dom’s extensively detailed liner notes.
When our man steps away from his own thoughts and words, it is to a song learned from a prison recording of a spiritual from the Library of Congress entitled We Are Almost Down To The Shore. We are also treated to a stylish interpretation of Rev. Gary Davis’s Saddle It Around played with his beloved Fraulini Angelina guitar, as well as a hundred-year-old banjo named ‘Big Head Joe The Giant.’ Dom also covers material by Eric Andersen and Bob Dylan; his version of Bob’s Guess I’m Doing Fine (known to Dylan fans as one of the early sixties ‘Witmark Demos’) really gives the collection a shot of rootsy, late in the day, fiddle slashing, clouds parting, penultimate track hope and elevation. But the real story here always returns to the man at centre stage, for it is his reflections, meditations, hopes and fears acquired throughout recent years of travel and evolving musical discovery that fuel this collection. At times the album seems almost apocalyptic in nature; central songs hover with hands on the lever to the trapdoor of climate and social catastrophe that humanity currently stands heavy over. Happily, though, the one thing that keeps Dom Flemons engaged and inspired is his indelible belief in the magic and wonder of music. It is that spirit which rises to the fore so definitively on this deep, indispensable new album.
Traveling Wildfire is out now on Smithsonian Folkways – Stream/Buy
Behind the Scenes Documentary
Website: https://www.theamericansongster.com/