Formed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the music of Clay Parker and Jodi James‘ second album, Your Very Own Dream, might well be described as a hillbilly Gram and Emmylou, their rootsy cosmic country dreamily delivered in a laid-back, languorous, limpid manner. Built upon the rhythm of a children’s play tune and sung by Parker, earworm album opener Fire For The Water colours the lyrics with familiar Southern imagery such as levees, turnpikes, the midnight special, mules and a ‘steel drivin’ man’ held together with its chorus hook of “Fire for the water/Water for the tea/Tea for a taste of bitter/Don’t it go down easy for me” which somehow transforms brewing up a cuppa into something enigmatic.
Slowing the pace down further, James takes over lead with Parker on harmonies for the sparse, reverb strum of Hey Hey Hey, a borrowing of a familiar folk blues phrase that captures otherwise inexpressible emotions (“I won’t ask and you won’t say — hey hey hey”) in a song that asks “who shot the shot that brought you down to your knees” and finds the blame lies in self-delusion (“Did you question why?/Did it satisfy your mind/To find the fault was all your own?)”. As in other songs, they have the ability to suggest much without needing detail.
Anchored by a damp drumbeat underpinning the chiming guitar, Nothing At All is one of their few duo numbers, their voices merging on the refrain while James drawls the verses in their wistful sketching of rejection (“I would’ve came if you would’ve called/More of the same, nothing at all”) and the melancholy captured in lines like “January turns to June/And all the winter coats/Are all boxed up/I’ve got books stacked on the bedside table/That are gonna make me well and able/But the light in my room/Is still burned out”.
Another minimal folksy strum with Parker on lead, bluesy electric and dulcimer adding the mood, recorded in the house with just one microphone and a Fender Champ, In The Cool Of The Evening is an aching song of loss, inspired by a friend whose dog was hit by a car and died, everything captured in the simple, “I miss that little pal of mine” and extending that into a broader picture with “Don’t you wish the rail line/Still ran all night?” and “Don’t you wish the last drag/Still burned as bright?”
In what is virtually a rock n roll belter by comparison to the rest of the album, mistaken identity, escape, lust, betrayal, drunken conclusiveness and even some Old Testament (“Moses talked to God with the shaking of a fist”) all come together for Flatfoot with its melody boots firmly planted in the Bayou traditions of Doug Kershaw’s Louisiana Man. By contrast, a duet with James’ voice to the fore, How High Would I Have To Fly is a 30s-styled romantic yearning, piano-based crooner in the manner of Hoagy Carmichael.
Again more musically robust, with Clint Kirby and Dave Hinson on drums and bass, the steady swaying Southern gothic A Matchbook Song echoes the melody line of the verses to Mockingbird in what hints at both doomed love (“If I see my love ‘fore daylight come/They won’t know which way we’ve run/But if my love don’t pass my way/They’ll bury me down in the cold black clay”) and murder ballad territory (“Shots ring out and they’re ringing out still/There’s a golden band at the bottom of the well/If my love don’t ask I’ll never tell”).
They end harmonising on the title track, a line lifted from Woody Guthrie’s When the Curfew Blows, the lyrics all fever dream imagery (the spoon in the moon, Mozart in a lounge, blues singer Johnny Shines, bluebirds, possums, steam engines) in the blurring of reality and inspired by both a nightmare James had (“The crow flew straight into/The horse’s face today”) and the death of John Prine (“I heard the news that they/Were hauling you away”), all essentially summed up as how were all living our individual realities, however absurd they might be “And if you want it/You can make it/Your very own dream”.
This is only the duo’s second album, and while it would be interesting to hear them exploring more uptempo material in future, it clearly reveals them as an Americana force to be reckoned with.