Tom Russell is one of the great Americana troubadours with a back-catalogue that goes yay far, all the way back to 1976 and numbering 29 studio albums. This song is from the 2017’s “Folk Hotel” and in a very Russell way blends reality and the subconscious – when he sings of a bottle coming through his windscreen , that really happened. ‘The Last Time I Saw Hank‘ is a reminder that, once they are gone, the only way we can access the people we admire, who were our friends, or whom we love is through the sometimes incoherent dream state thrusting its way up through the subconscious.
It’s somewhat amazing that he can sing the verses about the last dreams concerning his father and then his mother, they choke the emotions of any listener who shares in that mixed-blessing of having human emotions, especially on the lines “The last time I saw my Mother someone put a rose on her forehead / was this miracle or a mockery? I cried she’s asleep she ain’t really dead / then I sang my old song Alkali she opened her eyes and then she winked / Lord it all moved in a circle in a dream I call the last time I saw Hank“.
Live Tom Russell has always been a delight – gruff, blustering sometimes, often acting as his own opening act with a selection of his and others’ songs more or less as a vocal warm-up. His audience, well they, heck, we, adore the man – an American who has culture, writes poetry and sets it to music. He’s a painter too, with a striking style which he sometimes uses for his album covers. He’s deep into his country roots, is a champion of folk revivalists of the Sixties and beyond, he rubbed shoulders with The Beats and did we mention he’s a poet?
