John Howie Jr and The Rosewood Bluff “The Return Of…”

“The Return Of…” John Howie Jr and The Rosewood Bluff’s new album seems like a misnomer since Howie never really went away.

John Howie Jr has been playing country music for 30 years, even though he never expected to be a country musician. In his teens, Howie had no interest in country music. “I thought all of that was the most ridiculous music; it just didn’t have anything to do with where I was coming from,” he has said. It took a trip to England when he was 19 to change his mind. Playing with an American-style punk rock band, Howie realised that his bandmates loved country music. He began listening to it and never looked back.

Howie grew his career with roots firmly planted in the sounds of traditional country. This is the Bakersfield sound – rough and ready outlaw music, featuring Waylon, Willie, Jessi, and Kris. It is music with rock influences, but never in doubt about its country connections. When Howie formed a band, he said his goal was “to have country musicians in this band instead of rock musicians posing as country players.” The Rosewood Bluff came some years after Howie’s first band, Two Dollar Pistols, which he formed in 1995, and after a stint playing drums with Sarah Shook’s The Disarmers. Along the way, Howie released a solo album, ‘Not Tonight’.

But it was The Rosewood Bluff that was Howie’s anchor. He has said, “It’s the only band that I’ve had or been in that I’ve considered having tattooed on myself.” The band’s current five-piece line-up features Nathan Golub on pedal steel guitar, Tim Shearer on electric guitar, Mark Connor on bass, Dave Hartman on drums, and Howie on rhythm guitar.

“The Return Of…” leads off with ‘Who Needs the Neon?’ This is real, honkytonk, bar music. It’s a song about the anaesthetic effect of the lights and sounds of a place likely called the Dew Drop Inn. It covers the downward spiral from “I’ve gone from stay-at-home to stay out all night long”. Great slide guitar, solid drums and rhythm guitar give the song just the right notes, and Howie’s baritone is perfectly pitched for the emotion of his songs. ‘Who Needs The Neon’ sets the stage for a series of breakup and broken heart songs. The next song is ‘(There Is) A Ghost In My Room’. It would be hard to find a better song about being haunted by a relationship gone bad. The balance to being unable to forget is ‘My Memory (Ain’t What It Used To Be)’, where the pain is fading and one asks “Tell me one more time/ How I wanted to die when you went away… My memory well it ain’t what it used to be”. 

“The Return Of…” is really a grand tour of a slow path, from the pain of loss to seeing a hint of light at the end of the tunnel. There is a song of blind hope, ‘How Can I Make You Love Me’. There is denial: ’She’s Just Missin’ Me’. There is the need for distance in ‘Gotta Get Away’  when Howie sings “Gotta get away from you/ Gotta figure out if all the things I think about life are true”’

The lyrics are a blend of regret, exasperation, defensiveness and vulnerability, with a touch of humour. And they have the ring of truth. You can hear the pain, the confusion, the anger and sadness that occur all at once when a heart breaks. This is country music at its best, great lyrics about real life, accompanied by classic instruments and not an auto-tune in sight.