Nashville, TN. (Top40 Charts/ Arista Records) - In some ways, barely-spoken
Alan Jackson seems an odd heir to Hank Williams Sr's wild-eyed, yet austere traditional country mantle. He's a family man, seemingly disinterested in bright lights, cigarette smoke and the vices being plied beyond the bandstand - and yet, the Newnan, Georgian has silently shouldered hard lives lived at the margins with both a wink ('Chattahoochie,' 'I'm In Love with a Waitress (& I Don't Even Know Her Name),''Don't Rock The Jukebox,' 'Where I Come From') and a stoic dignity ('Here In The Real World,' 'Llittle Man,' 'Drive (For Daddy Gene)' and 'Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning') that makes simplicity the most elegant thing conceivable.
More than halfway into his second decade of setting the bar of what classic country can be, where does one go for inspiration? For growth? For faith in a process that can easily erode into Xeroxing one's own records? For the man who genuflected at 'Midnight In Montgomery,' the answer arrived by looking to an inspiration of his own: bluegrass songstress Allison Krauss, whose angelic take on the falterings of humanity have captivated with an even more organic approach to making music.
Though a bluegrass project with a red dirt twang would be obvious, Krauss sought to exhume Jackson's hidden strengths - pulling out a more soul-tinged delivery and a more pensive way of embracing the lyrics. like red from a rose is an adult record, absolutely; measured songs that weigh the costs and realizations of what time exacts as it deposits experience, emotions and memories in its wake.
Evoking 'House of the Rising Sun,' the terse 'Good Imitation of the Blues' is a tightrope of good-bye and gone from a man who's had enough. It's a low-down moan that slides into the verses, as a funky Stevie Wonder-esque keyboard percolates up through the descending guitar parts. This is grown-up music, unsentimentally tendered - and in that dry-eyed recognition, a whole new kind of strength, which is echoed by the electric guitar solos burning what can't quite be said, emerges.
Indeed. Jackson's quietly surging vocal on the title track mirrors the building and growing of desire as it inhabits an adult. This isn't the curlicued romance of puppy love, but emotional currents that are as broad as they are confident. A metaphor that moves from basic image to basic image, it mines its impact from the conviction the singer brings to the song.
And that is one of Krauss' greatest gifts - aside from culling a band that mixes LA session keyboard wizard Jimmy Cox with Lyle Lovett Large Band bassist Viktor Krauss and Marty Stuart's Superlative guitarist Kenny Vaughan, as dobroist extraordinaire Jerry Douglas and unlikely but exquisite guests Michael McDonald on Clavinet and Fender Rhodes and Bernard Purdie on drums - is the way she gets Jackson toe-to-toe with these lyrics in a way that turns them inside out. Commanding, these are songs utterly committed to - and brought to a deeper believability by the ease with which Jackson takes them for his own.
Somewhere in all of this - from the gentle roll of the drifter through the life of a music man 'Nobody Said It Would Be Easy,' the hushed Danny O'Keefe/Tim Krekel 'Anywhere On Earth You Are,' California's bluegrass/country-rocker Herb Pederson's haunted plea 'Wait A Minute' or the gently exhortative 'Don't You Change On Me' - Jackson's legacy expands. Not just the man reminding us of Williams' potency, there are echoes of Glen Campbell before the cowboy got rhinestones, James Taylor when he was his warmest and most reassuring.
Looking at the growth, once could stop at Jackson's own 'A Woman's Love,' which in plain words and an easy melody that captures anyone's being, he offers the depths of commitment and the treasure secured from the price paid, But more tellingly are the songs from Robert Lee Castleman - who contributes 'Like Red On A Rose,' 'Nobody Said It Would Be Easy' and especially 'The Firefly's Song.'
On the latter, Jackson looks fondly at youth's sparkle, but in the end hails the richness of knowledge and aged desire as the truest measure of things that matter. He recognizes that knowing is more than guessing or dreaming, that the shared experience is what creates the strongest bonds… and in that truth, Jackson creates a whole new template for his music to continue it evolution.
Listen to 'Where Do I Go From Here (A Trucker's Song)' with Douglas' dobro punctuations, and hear a man consider the way he makes his life. The value he places on what he contributes and the lives that extend from his own… It is the eternal quest and question, and in adult terms, Jackson mines the theme as an existential exercise rather than trivial two-dimensional cliché.
Closing it out on Leon Russell's 'Bluebird,' a squeezebox exhaling gently, a gut string guitar plinking just where it should, Jackson lows through a mournful ballad of hope and longing. It's a hushed song, not quite norteno, not exactly folk music - and then a campfire harmonica floats up, flickering around the melody, and it's okay.
If Alan Jackson has done anything on this very grown-up record, it's given adults sanctuary to drift and dream, to marvel and wonder at the lives they've lived, the losses they've survived and the memories yet to come. Aging isn't the end, it is merely another part of the journey - with vocal help from Krauss, Lee Ann Womack, Sam Bush, Oak Ridge's Richard Sterban, Sidney and Suzanne Cox, Cheryl White, Dan Tyminski - the timeless country writer/artist makes it quite an inviting place to be.
