The new album from Ted Drozdowski and Coyote Motel is a tour de force, showcasing their cosmic roots.
Psychedelic isn’t a word usually associated with americana, which mostly gets terms such as country, folk, bluegrass, blues, and roots rock. But you don’t have to listen too long to “The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South” to find psychedelic sounds. The album, the soundtrack to the eponymous movie, starts as it means to go on. The first song, ‘Tupelo’ sets off on a wild ride down the rapids of America’s rivers through their history. The music combines traditional sounds with those originally influenced by mind-altering pharmaceuticals. Opening with a great guitar riff that is quickly joined by drums and bass, it tells the tale of the Tupelo flood of 1938, memorialized in the song ‘Tupelo Blues‘ by John Lee Hooker. This song is blues in the style of Blue Cheer and Cream, raucous but precise, wild but controlled.
The voyage continues with songs that combine blues, folk and the spaciness of psychedelia. But that doesn’t mean chaotic. It is a different kind of precision, an attention to the sound with an altered sense of time, atmospheric music that you can only create with the sort of practised control that allows for freedom. This is a style that relies on great guitar work driven by a pronounced bass and drums interwoven with unusual percussion and instruments.
Coyote Motel has what it takes with Drozdowski on guitar, vocals, and diddley bow joined by bass player Sean Zwick, drummer Kyra Lachelle Curenton, Luella on vocals, guitar, and percussion and Laurie Hoffman-Theremin on glockenspiel. The songs, which conjure up images of the Mississippi, Cumberland and Tallahatchie rivers, tell different stories. ‘Black Lung Fever’ is a deeply personal response to family history, ‘The River Runs Forever’ is about life along the Mississippi, ‘Trouble’ is about contemporary events, ‘You’re Still Among the Living’ tells of personal pain and ‘Homecoming’ and ‘Down in Chulahoma’ are tributes to mentors and muses.
“The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South” is a great addition to the psychedelic strain in the Americana canon, which can be traced back to bands including The Byrds, The Doors and Jefferson Airplane, all progenitors of americana. The poster boys of the psychedelic sound, the Grateful Dead, started out as a jug band, (Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions), and their albums “American Beauty” and “Workingman’s Dead” contributed to the establishment of americana as a genre. And the reputed originators of psychedelic rock, The 13th Floor Elevators, always used an electrified jug. That said, psychedelia has remained rare in americana, with bands like the Flaming Lips and Tame Antelope keeping the freak flag flying. Coyote Motel is a welcome entrant to a small club.
The band was founded in 2018 by Drozdowski, a musician, songwriter, music journalist and historian. Having written for Musician Magazine and Rolling Stone and currently serving as editorial director of Premier Guitar, Drozdowski’s knowledge of the history and traditions of American music comes through in every song in “The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South“. He has said, “My entire life has been a rehearsal for The River” and that he has spent decades “exploring the obscure corners where great American music heralds from”. So much of that music has flowed out from and along America’s rivers and Coyote Motel pays tribute to that.
