Reviews

Gordie Tentrees & Jaxon Haldane
Album: Double Takes
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 10
Website: https://www.tentrees.ca/

The first fully collaborative album by the Canadian roots artists, recorded in Nashville with contributions from harp maestro Charlie McCoy, fiddler Tania Elizabeth, Steve Mackey on bass and drummer Shawn Fichter, it's very much a mix of blues and bluegrass delivered with an easy rolling laid back groove, a mood set from the outset with Haldane's 12 bar bluesy lope 'Drive Or Push' described as "An arsehole's justice. The tale of an impatient man and his romantic partner's final vehicular revenge", as the former, behind the bumper, declares "I wonder can you work a jack, I know that you can talk/But if you're gonna run your mouth all day, Then baby you can walk" while the latter at the wheel "dropped it into gear…left me on the roadside, knee deep in the ditch/Looking like a reject, feeling like your little… boy". More of a ragtime persuasion, picking up the mandolin he follows that with 'Franklin Street', Bill Chambers on lap steel, a romantic ditty about finding home in a place ("a two storey Tudor with an old oak tree… a single south side dormer/And a double detached Garage … and a lot of room for a family") and a person ("the pipes are loud and clangy, and the plaster's seen some wear/But the place is like a palace, when I'm with my baby there").

Elizabeth on fiddle, Tentrees' first contribution is the sprightly picked 'Bygone Days', an ode to community and Canada's colonising indigenous pioneers, most specifically Edith Josie, Elijah Smith and Kate Carmack, the First Nation woman credited with being the first to find gold in the Klondike River in 1896, alongside Yukon Destruction Bay dog team racer Babe Southwick of the pioneer Dickson family from Kluane Lake and Ontario trapper Sam Cain.

Returning to Haldane, a musical homage to 'You Ain't Goin' Nowhere' by The Band, the banjo-shaded 'Nowhere Fast', a song about estrangement ("I'm all alone, no 'R' with the 'SVP'") and regret ("I've watched the years unfold and grey replace the gold/I'm told our boy just graduated school/I fought the urge to show, I gotta let it go/I know I bear the shame, I broke the rules") born from a life on the road ("We went on tour, with the Dead for seven weeks"). On a more personal note, Tentrees on resophonic slide guitar and harmonica, 'Bobbi & Gus' is a jug-band-like tribute to his maternal live-off-the-land Icelandic amputee grandparents ("Trappin' and Fishing, crocheting and stitching/Makin' their way in the world") who were a big inspiration to him as a child ("They taught me grace without saying a word/And all about faith without knowing a God/They showed me freedom and tolerance, fairness and trust").

The second from Tentrees, Haldane on lap steel, 'Arcarta' is a road song, inspired by driving down to the California town for a gig, thinking of home ("She's tucking them in as I start this song… Truly I miss your morning breath taking the kids to school") and taking in the mile and landscapes on the journey, the pair sharing vocals on the acoustic guitar and banjo bluegrassy 'Time' which, featuring former Asleep at the Wheel pedal steel player Lucky Oceans, is a simple song of finding contentment inspired by two friends and their journey ("We lost a boy, 2005, we never stopped crying inside/There's a buck in the meadow, we stop to size, smell of dew sunrise/Nothing happens till we make it happen, there's no TV to turn off the action/Quading and fishing, there's garden in the kitchen, plenty of time left for kissing/This road's getting older every day, let's go skinny dipping I love you babe").

Haldane adding fiddlesaw to the banjo, persistent drum beat and acoustic and electric guitars, 'Tinkering' is a propulsive bluesy cut that touches on growing older with Tentrees turning 50 ("Woke up with a bald spot/Everything is grey on top shrinking head to toe/Must I pee so slow, sliding out of underwear, this skin is dead no fair/This dad bod rocks hope this heart don't stop") and setting an amusing bucket list for his 75th ("Swim upstream, take nature off course, polish your balls, ride naked on a horse/Get a Spanish tongue, cha cha for fun, cook an 8-course meal, hop a train, make a new deal/Breakfast for Dinner, masturbate till noon, love your scars, box a kangaroo/Sport a thong, then bang a gong, before you forget all the words to your own songs"), a reminder to "resuscitate, all your dreams, before it's too late".

It ends with one from each of them, first, Elizabeth back on fiddle, Haldane's country chugger 'Crystal', a meth-head's lament ("She never cared much to have me,/But she couldn't bare setting me free/Pure evil distillate, her name was Crystal/And she turned her pistol on me… She drained all the life from my body, I was her little puppet to play/She led me to strife and a beggarly life/And then drove all my loved ones away") inspired by first-hand stories of survivors of addiction and the way, trying to score, "Morals don't seem to mean nothing/When you're thinking on making the scene/Preying on teens, laying beatings on queens".

Finally, McCoy on harmonica, it bows out with the mid-tempo bluesy gospel lope of Tentrees' 'Gratitude', written after his son had his bike, apprehending the thief and having a healing circle session with the wisdom to "Hold the good, fold the bad, be happy with the sad/Overcome adversity, grit it's all you need". Rooted in human truth and experience, there's grit aplenty here.

Mike Davies

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