Cowboy Jamboree Music Review
James Gedda &
The Big Breakfast:
South of Mars
by Adam Van Winkle
There’s something to James Gedda’s voice that makes me feel like I’ve been listening to him for years. A little Johnny Cash, a little Nick Cave, and yet something else altogether...
In truth, I discovered his music recently when a song he posted called “Townes” showed up on my Xitter feed. Being a Townes Van Zandt-a-phile, naturally I checked it out.
The first thing that hits on the song is a killer country fiddle. I thought of all those pics of Townes holding a fiddle. From there, I was expecting a song about a songwriter trying to write songs and thinking of Townes. I often look sideways at songs about being a musician or about being a songwriter as I wonder how much they connect to them that aren’t either...but I also really dig a great number of them (including Gedda’s “Talking Bar Blues” herein). Or, I thought it would be a song about a guy living the life that Townes lived. Beautifully tragic. Really drunk.
But James Gedda is unexpected in all the best ways. What I got in “Townes” was a wonderfully clear scene of a wife’s struggle. A wife who sympathizes with her husband’s pain, understands how it was passed along from his parents (including how to cope with it), yet anxious she can’t get through to him, especially when she’s got to take care of the kids. Her exasperation comes in the chorus, lamenting that her husband has locked himself in the den, drunk and drinking more, “listening to Townes God Damn Van Zandt in the dark again.” It hits as well as a country song as it would a Raymond Carver story.
Shit bowled me over. It takes a writer and half to get out of his own head and into someone else's. Takes a rare talent to do it with such emotional weight. Gedda brings the goods.
When Gedda announced he and his band, The Big Breakfast, were working a full-length LP, I had high expectations. Boy, have Gedda & The Big Breakfast cleared that bar and more in South of Mars.
There’s an atmosphere on the album that feels vintage, like Gedda’s hypnotic baritone is pouring through a chrome bullet microphone and blasting through the car door speakers of a ‘74 Nova. And I’d take a midnight run in an old car with the windows down and South of Mars playing any day of the week. Like I said, it feels like I’ve already been listening to him for years.
The heartache doesn’t stop at “Townes.” In “Sleeping Around” a heartbroken bastard vows to “sleep around til I can sleep alone.” He misses the one that got away. And in a John Prine move, think “Donald and Lydia,” Gedda manages to bring the separated lovers together across time and space. Gedda’s move is to make it happen through the eyes of what he calls, “a real piece of shit”:
I look in her eyes but I see yours
And I'm kissing you when my lips touch hers
And I make love to your memory every night
That’s raw, to-the-bone, stuff that mainstream country generally won’t admit, and most writers probably aren’t gutsy or honest enough to pull off (Gedda indicates that he isn’t as distanced from this speaker as he is in a song like “Townes”).
Speaking of an honest assessment, "Mr. Right Now" also hinges on a less than romantic encounter, as a guy knows he's not the prime choice, but at least his hair parted good that morning:
I can't say I'll be the best of your whole life,
But sugar I'm the best you can get tonight
In this dive, in this god damn town
I know my way around a kiss and I look okay
My hair's been cooperating with me today
So what do you say? Let's turn this night around
"Old Reliable" shows heartbreak in a hookup as well. A woman with a habit of "shut[ing] down every local joint, and push[ing] far beyond the point she used to go," drunk texts her standby:
She texts him "Are you busy now?" and asking how his long work week has gone
But desperate is a pungent scent especially when she's half drunk and alone
He knows he's just her second choice, and the background noise when the night comes closing in
And so his pride he throws away to go play old reliable again
The title track shows a man so desperate to escape the jail his home has become that he's taking off for parts unknown, going as far as "south of Mars and north of Hell." In "She's Not the One" the woman is leaving because she's been cheated on and lied to...
If it's starting to sound like heartbreak and heartache are matters of concern on this album, they absolutely are.
Heartbreak and heartache are of course common in country music. As themes they come in some of the best and in some of the worst the genre has to offer. What makes Gedda & The Big Breakfast's version so great on South of Mars is that Gedda does it from so many different perspectives. The album works like a set of short stories on what we talk about when we talk about love lost (sorry, another Carver slip), each with a fresh take from a different set of tired eyes.
And Gedda's lyrics and vocals let me feel how honest and authentic each one is. James Gedda is a bona fide stud writer, the genuine article, and The Big Breakfast are a cracking country band. South of Mars is going in the regular rotation with the good stuff.
James Gedda &
The Big Breakfast:
South of Mars
by Adam Van Winkle
There’s something to James Gedda’s voice that makes me feel like I’ve been listening to him for years. A little Johnny Cash, a little Nick Cave, and yet something else altogether...
In truth, I discovered his music recently when a song he posted called “Townes” showed up on my Xitter feed. Being a Townes Van Zandt-a-phile, naturally I checked it out.
The first thing that hits on the song is a killer country fiddle. I thought of all those pics of Townes holding a fiddle. From there, I was expecting a song about a songwriter trying to write songs and thinking of Townes. I often look sideways at songs about being a musician or about being a songwriter as I wonder how much they connect to them that aren’t either...but I also really dig a great number of them (including Gedda’s “Talking Bar Blues” herein). Or, I thought it would be a song about a guy living the life that Townes lived. Beautifully tragic. Really drunk.
But James Gedda is unexpected in all the best ways. What I got in “Townes” was a wonderfully clear scene of a wife’s struggle. A wife who sympathizes with her husband’s pain, understands how it was passed along from his parents (including how to cope with it), yet anxious she can’t get through to him, especially when she’s got to take care of the kids. Her exasperation comes in the chorus, lamenting that her husband has locked himself in the den, drunk and drinking more, “listening to Townes God Damn Van Zandt in the dark again.” It hits as well as a country song as it would a Raymond Carver story.
Shit bowled me over. It takes a writer and half to get out of his own head and into someone else's. Takes a rare talent to do it with such emotional weight. Gedda brings the goods.
When Gedda announced he and his band, The Big Breakfast, were working a full-length LP, I had high expectations. Boy, have Gedda & The Big Breakfast cleared that bar and more in South of Mars.
There’s an atmosphere on the album that feels vintage, like Gedda’s hypnotic baritone is pouring through a chrome bullet microphone and blasting through the car door speakers of a ‘74 Nova. And I’d take a midnight run in an old car with the windows down and South of Mars playing any day of the week. Like I said, it feels like I’ve already been listening to him for years.
The heartache doesn’t stop at “Townes.” In “Sleeping Around” a heartbroken bastard vows to “sleep around til I can sleep alone.” He misses the one that got away. And in a John Prine move, think “Donald and Lydia,” Gedda manages to bring the separated lovers together across time and space. Gedda’s move is to make it happen through the eyes of what he calls, “a real piece of shit”:
I look in her eyes but I see yours
And I'm kissing you when my lips touch hers
And I make love to your memory every night
That’s raw, to-the-bone, stuff that mainstream country generally won’t admit, and most writers probably aren’t gutsy or honest enough to pull off (Gedda indicates that he isn’t as distanced from this speaker as he is in a song like “Townes”).
Speaking of an honest assessment, "Mr. Right Now" also hinges on a less than romantic encounter, as a guy knows he's not the prime choice, but at least his hair parted good that morning:
I can't say I'll be the best of your whole life,
But sugar I'm the best you can get tonight
In this dive, in this god damn town
I know my way around a kiss and I look okay
My hair's been cooperating with me today
So what do you say? Let's turn this night around
"Old Reliable" shows heartbreak in a hookup as well. A woman with a habit of "shut[ing] down every local joint, and push[ing] far beyond the point she used to go," drunk texts her standby:
She texts him "Are you busy now?" and asking how his long work week has gone
But desperate is a pungent scent especially when she's half drunk and alone
He knows he's just her second choice, and the background noise when the night comes closing in
And so his pride he throws away to go play old reliable again
The title track shows a man so desperate to escape the jail his home has become that he's taking off for parts unknown, going as far as "south of Mars and north of Hell." In "She's Not the One" the woman is leaving because she's been cheated on and lied to...
If it's starting to sound like heartbreak and heartache are matters of concern on this album, they absolutely are.
Heartbreak and heartache are of course common in country music. As themes they come in some of the best and in some of the worst the genre has to offer. What makes Gedda & The Big Breakfast's version so great on South of Mars is that Gedda does it from so many different perspectives. The album works like a set of short stories on what we talk about when we talk about love lost (sorry, another Carver slip), each with a fresh take from a different set of tired eyes.
And Gedda's lyrics and vocals let me feel how honest and authentic each one is. James Gedda is a bona fide stud writer, the genuine article, and The Big Breakfast are a cracking country band. South of Mars is going in the regular rotation with the good stuff.
James Gedda & The Big Breakfast