Long-time absent ‘outlaw country artist’ delivers his life story and philosophy in a fascinating song cycle.
Born in Augusta, Georgia, in the late 1940s to Polish-Lithuanian immigrants, Daniel Antopolsky may have been a lost immortal, but he is not lost now, and he may become an immortal. AUK readers may already know the story of the friend of Townes van Zandt, who was the first person to hear ‘Pancho and Lefty‘ as it was being written, who saved van Zandt’s life following a drug overdose and who subsequently left the music scene in the 70s, travelled the world and settled down on a farm near Bordeaux after meeting his soon-to-be wife, French medical student Sylvia Kirsch. Our esteemed AUK colleague, Andrew Frolish, met him in 2019 after a stint at the Black Deer Festival, and his illuminating and informative in-depth interview can be found here. This followed his startling re-emergence in 2015, when his debut album, “Sweet Lovin’ Music,“ was released at the age of 67.
And now comes “Ballad of the Stable Boy”, an album that is “my life poured into song,” according to Antopolsky “It’s about doing right, even when it breaks you, and finding peace in the end”. It is informed with positivity in the light of the ups and downs of life and its obstacles – there are elements of folk, country and blues, with some folk-style fables and moral parables derived from his life, all delivered in Antopolsky’s quasi-spoken style (not too far removed from the way van Zandt or John Prine delivered some of their songs), in a slightly strangled lived–in voice, but certainly not without emotion or feeling, or twang. There are no fancy arrangements for the songs; the orchestration is basically acoustic (guitar, banjo, dobro) with just the occasional electric guitar, slide or organ.
The album’s tracks have been collated from a vast collection of songs (believed to be up to 500) that Antopolsky has written over the years “in the wilderness“. The title track is the opener and is the bedrock of the album, a tale of selfishness that seems to infuse Antopolsky’s lifelong morality, with dobro and slide adding to the story of a stable boy who rides against the local rich kid in a race off but ends up saving his rival’s fiancée’s life, thereby losing the race. The last two lines set the tone for the rest of the album: “What happened next: just you can guess / the miracle is that we all can dream / I must confess that stable boy has helped me reconsider many things.” ‘Lost at Sea Odyssey’ uses a mythical pirate yarn to explore the early struggles in his life.
Three songs then explore the search for love and the challenges, then the joy; ‘Bring on the Fire Brigade‘ uses the metaphor of gladiators in ancient Rome and the story of the Titanic to get to the core “somehow you showed me how to shout out loud / somehow you showed me how to dream in the clouds / and set me on fire in the centigrade, bring on the fire brigade”. ‘Clinging for Love’ is a handclapping Appalachian-style romp. ‘Floating in the Belly’ is a whimsical number written from the perspective of the unborn twin daughters his wife was about to deliver. The stories, the optimism, the humour continue throughout, notwithstanding the subject matter. ‘Old Friend Charlie’ reflects on the memory of a lost friend, written in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris in 2015, a particularly poignant song because Antopolsky’s daughter was in Paris at the time. ‘Good Lord Help Me Through the Cracks’ has a certain New York, early ’60s folk scene vibe (but with backing vocals). ‘My friends born in ’95’, a song about life lessons from old mentors, has the album’s philosophy writ large in the final couplets “We can learn from our elders / we can learn from our friends / we can do them things that set the world to spin, Amen / we can wake up every morning as the years move out and in / and before you know it….. we’re senior citizens” Even the saddest of songs (‘Sis’ speaks to the pain of being split from a sister in the aftermath of their parent’s divorce, ‘Broken-Hearted Lover‘ is a melancholic song about a lost love) come over as life experiences rather overtly depressing.
The album was sympathetically produced in France by Paul Magne, the instrumentation and the backing vocals, whilst empathetic, very much playing second fiddle to Antopolsky’s songs and his voice. The album ends with a song written in the UK, ‘The Captain of Clapham Common, Cheerio’, reflecting on his life through various scenes. In summary, it’s an album of tenacity and morality that has delivered Antopolsky into, seemingly, ultimate contentment with his life. You should take a listen.
