An experienced and honest songwriter explores both sides of his stylistic background, performing the same songs twice.
In a career of around 20 years, this appears to be Tod’s 21st album, either primarily with the Lost Dog Street Band, with wife Ashley Mae, and solo, but also in a variety of other collaborations and incarnations. Since his last solo album, Shooting Star, in 2024, he has issued a range of singles: two trailing this album, a further one with Shooter Jennings, and one with Matt Heckler. Demonstrating this commitment and work rate, Vengeance and Grace is one album with the same songs performed twice: once with a new full band, The Inline Six (whilst Lost Dog Street Band are on hiatus) and solo with just a guitar. As well as the usual questions that a reviewer tries to answer about a new release, this does lead to a fundamental one of: “Does this approach work?”
For this album, Tod seems to be in a good place, with a new son and a family life. In his early life, he rode the rails to make ends meet and lived a nomadic, homeless existence. Like many of his contemporary musicians and songwriters, this led to a range of challenges and addictions, which he has chronicled unflinchingly on other albums. On the opening track, Vengeance and Grace (band version), the lyrics recognise the hard-fought-for peace, and the risks and challenges of his previous life. His expressive voice sings his heartfelt lyrics against a country shuffle backing.
“When I’m around/ We will wander through the garden/ Enjoy the sound/ Pretend that I ain’t broken/ Like there’s nothing left unspoken/ Like my heart is always open and wild.
When I’m gone/ I may gamble with my demons/I’ll bet it all for the trial I am seeking/Like a child softly pleading/ that the violence wasn’t needed after all.”
It leaves the listener under no illusion as to how he feels and how soon things could change if he made the wrong choices.
The first single from the album, Goner, leads off with pedal steel guitar and has a strong guitar and vocal hookline for the chorus. Lyrically, this is one of four songs that take different viewpoints of the need to leave and travel, which at first seem at odds with his current settled life. However, these are perhaps just reflections on the subject from someone who has lived it. Goner takes the Freebird position of warning the protagonist’s partner that he will have to leave and travel on because that is who he is, whereas Closing the Door talks about having to leave and how hard it is to do so. My Pride, the second single and a fiddle-led country ballad, raises an unspecified wrong between him and a partner and how “My pride won’t let me turn around.”
In Ticket Home, Tod takes the stance of one riding the rails and not knowing when you steal a ride on a train exactly where it is going. In reference to his previous addictions, the challenge is made worse as “All the cities look the same when you’re riding a highball to the moon.” He recognises that the only way he can get home is to buy a ticket, and this feels like a metaphor for him making the positive choices to settle at last.
Other songs include two elegiac ballads, End of My Rope, with straightforward lyrics about desperation and the option to end it all, and I Ain’t Bound, where he uses four different bird metaphors to explain why he ain’t bound anymore.
As noted in the introduction, the album then repeats the same songs with just his voice and an acoustic guitar. In some songs, such as the title track, he has the space and freedom to add further nuance and expression to the vocals, reflecting hope for the future against the challenges he sees in himself. This makes this song more emotional. This stripped-back approach certainly suits and enhances other songs, adding a grittiness to dark and challenging subjects. There is a tendency for the listener to play compare- and-contrast with the versions.
So does this approach work for the listener or to the benefit of the album Tod is presenting? It certainly does for the listener. It is intriguing to simply listen to the two versions as presented and hear different things in the songs through the different approaches, and Tod would not be the first to put out an acoustic version of an album for the fans. However, there is a lingering feeling that somewhere between these two versions there is a killer version of this album, with each track given the treatment it best needs: full-band arrangement, solo guitar, and perhaps somewhere in between, with solo guitar and fiddle or pedal steel for colour. However, if you take the open-minded listener’s approach, you will find much to enjoy about this album.
