Reviews

Artist:Gerry Spehar & Friends
Album: Other Voices
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 20
Website: https://www.gerryspehar.com/

A double CD set, this revisits songs from the last four decades, from early days in Colorado through Nashville to his current life in LA, in company with an all-star cast of singers and musicians. Not that these are actually new recordings, some being laid down in Nashville sessions in the late 90s, others in LA in the noughties with Spehar adding his own voice on several in 2023. Neither the booklet nor the press notes give any indication as to when any of the tracks were actually recorded or, save for one, if any have ever been previously released by other artists, he not making his album debut until 2017. It's safe to assume that they're all lifted from the vaults and dusted down for this compilation.

Disc 1 opens with Gerry on vocal and acoustic accompanied by Chris Tuttle on organ and accordion with 'God Bless The Tomcat', a gentle fingerpicked reflection on hard times ("God bless the beggar man help him on his way/Help him find another dime to get him through the day/Save him from the passions of the fortunate and wise/Who have never had to view the world through desolation's eyes") he wrote over 50 years ago that remains all too timeless.

Greg Leisz on steel, mandolin and acoustic guitar, the upbeat folksy 'Grandpa's Daisies' dates from the LA sessions and, taking inspiration from the white daisies that cover the landscape of Spehar's ancestral home in Crested Butte, Colorado, has Teresa James singing about how "He was brokenhearted when they buried her in twenty-five/He took a flower from her garden, planted it on her grave/Every six in the mornin', seven at night/He'd carry up water from the riverside/Now, Grandpa's daisies cover this valley with love". Then comes 'Do Whatcha Used To Do' with Gary Lynn Floyd on vocals and John Thomas on funky guitar. A swaggery country rock number with a bluesy edge, it's the first to mark the divide between the ballads and the rock n roll, and I have to say that, for me, it's the former that work best.

As such, I'd direct you ears in particular to two Floyd duets, one with James on old timey love song 'Both Ends Of The Rainbow' and the other with Lisa McKenzie on the slower, more gospel soulful 'The Longer I Love You' as well as 'Pull On Your Boots', Spehar's Guy Clarke-ish son's memory of his workingman father ("He pulled wire for a living, dead tired from giving his all/He'd hustle home, coach Little League/He taught us how to play, said, Son, there'll come a day/You're gonna grow up and know what it means/To pull your boots on in the morning, take em off at night/Do what needs doing every day to fight the fight") written as a tribute to his electrician brother Tim.

As regard the latter, Dale Watson gives good Waylon on 'Joanne', a radio show phone in about the state of American politics ("I watch the newscasts and the early mornin' shows/And I see all our nations' leaders tearin' out each other's throats/Smilin' on the TV while they're breakin' all the rules/Takin' all that they can get and takin' all of us for fools/They investigate the liars and the ones who seek the buyers for their vote/Slowly killin' off the spirit in the papers that our Founding Fathers wrote"), while McKenzie rides a Cash-style rhythm for 'Love To The Rescue' while the disc rounds off with Spehar speak-singing his way through the harmonica and dobro shaded 'Out Of Business Blues', an ironic love letter from Middle America to Dear Mr. President about the state of the economy ("American business been belly up for years while you boys took a snooze/You're out kissin' hips, we're gettin' pink slips and goin' down the tubes/We import cars and oil and iPhones while you export our jobs/And you been callin' that fair trade, but I think we got robbed/Well Sir, the American worker signs your check, not China or Japan/And you Beltway boys can't get that straight we'll hire a crew who can").

The same formula applies over on Disc 2, opening with 'Georgetown', Spehar's acoustic fingerpicked version of the ode to his Colorado roots that Bill and Bonnie Hearne recorded on their 1997 album 'Diamonds In The Rough' with Nanci Griffiths on backing vocals. Lining up the ballads here, the stand-outs would have to be, Leisz on pedal steel. Floyd singing the achingly sad 'The Last Person' ("The last person you expected to call didn't call/The last person you expected to call sits by her phone/Staring at nothing at all and feeling alone"), the steel-stained 'What He Said' where a husband reads a heartfelt letter from his wife's old lover and wishes he had been as eloquent ("Things I've tried to say to you came from him instead/Honey, I mean every word that he said/So, every time you read a book I hope you think of me/'Cause I'll be there before you in each line of poetry/I'll let them say the words of love jumbled in my head/And I'll mean every word that he said"), the Gordon Lightfoot-like Spehar and McKenzie leaving song duet 'Normandy' and the closing 'Angel' , a remembrance of a dying mother's love sung by McKenzie and Floyd with Dan Dugmore on steel and George Marinelli's guitar.

The balance though is weighted in favour of the uptempo tracks, the strongest being Lisa Day's sassy, bluesy picked swagger through 'The Horse No One Can Ride', a mother's cautionary warning to her daughter about the untameable rodeo rounder she's fallen for, James wailing through the whistle blowing rockabilly blues 'Train, Train, Train' and, previously sung by James on the first disc, a reprise of 'Rockin' On A Country Dance Floor' with Floyd giving it some honky tonk rocking.

Whichever side of the musical fence you come down on, or if you sit squat in the middle, this is a solid reminder that Spehar is one of the finer contributors to the Americana songbook, but also stokes the fire in hoping he gets round to another solo album of his own in the not too distant future.

Mike Davies

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