A small-town song cycle energetically conveyed as a country-rock parable.
A bar band! A concept album! A rock opera! These are descriptions that might send some running for the nearest bottle of Jack Daniel’s, but wait, come back. The debut record by the Dirt Road Souls is, in fact, a prime slice of infectious country rock, and resistance is all but futile.
The band is new, but its members are three Boston veterans: Davis Black (vocals and guitar, and the songwriter), Rick Weden (drums), and Brian Sargent (upright bass, vocals, and mandolin, and also producer of the album). The promotional material tells us that “the record follows the mythic arc of our anti-hero Moonshine; a backroad dreamer, moonshine runner, hopeless romantic, and overall tragic figure.”
The names of the trio’s previous bands are, perhaps, revealing. Black Headed The Inebriations, Weden was in Shotgun Waltz, and Sargent graced Black Cat Crossing. These are artists who sound as if they are steeped in live, crunchingly melodic and crowd-pleasing music. If you had spent the day on a US freeway and found yourself stopping in a bar where the Dirt Road Souls were plying their trade, you would count yourself very fortunate. And you would also want this album on your car’s sound system when you hit the road again; it would be great driving music.
It helps that they can all play, and despite this being their debut record, they sound as if they have been playing together for years. Apparently, Davis Black has been writing the songs which ended up forming the album over a period of time, but realised he could string them together to make the story of his eponymous Johnny Moonshine character.
The American dream this is not. Johnny starts out as the cool guy in a small town, but when he starts running moonshine and following his inflated ambitions, it all goes downhill. His young lady, Jenny, hopes for a different end to their story. Dreams, the closest thing to a ballad on the record, features a vocal by Ava McCabe (as Jenny), which provides a welcome counterpoint to Black’s powerful voice. Johnny heads to New Orleans to make it big, makes bad decisions and returns to his home town with his tail between his legs, but perhaps with a flickering hope that all is not lost for the future.
The songs sequentially follow the story, as told by a narrator. When we meet Johnny in the opening track, “He always gets away” and “He’s running to the river, the river of his dreams“. In Next to You, it’s party time, and he’s “Got to wear my best pair of shoes” in case he gets to stand next to Jenny, and he “Can’t wait to see what the night will bring”. However, in Moonshine, Johnny is “Running my moonshine…across the county line“, although Jenny’s his “whole world“. In Dreams, Johnny sees himself in New Orleans, where “We can be happy/We can be free“. However, sensible Jenny says, “I need some stability” because “We’ve got everything we need right here“. Of course, Johnny heads off to the Big Easy anyway. Things don’t work out well, and the next few songs chart his decline, where he encounters the “Bright lights and broken dreams” of New Orleans. The Whiskey Bottle Blues finds him philosophising that “The Devil you know beats the Devil you don’t“. So it’s back to his home town where he’s “staring at a one-way sign” and “I’m almost home“. In Johnny Goodbye, our narrator notes that “We all lose our way sometimes/He was a good man“.
The songs tell the story in straightforward terms. It’s a view of American small-town life, love, dreams and disappointment, which is not novel, but put across in engaging and passionate terms with Black’s strong vocals supported by his excellent backing band. Perhaps one day we will have a chance to see the Dirt Road Souls live over here, while we nurse a cold Bud. This album suggests it would be an evening well spent.
