The Oklahoma Kid is Back Again
Matt Moran Reissues Black Sheep in a Deluxe Package
Music Review by Adam Van Winkle
Matt Moran’s Black Sheep starts off with a bang, literally. The opening lines from the opening track, “Scarecrow,” are hard to beat for impact:
Snub nose in the closet, six in the cylinder
It's always nights like these when I think of her
Shoot my way out of this town, fill up my gas can
Burn the whole thing down and run like the wind
Matt Moran’s deft and stunning skills as a songwriter are just as relentless as the rest of the album unfolds.
You’d be forgiven, for instance, for thinking “Thrift Store Cowboy” is a cover from the down-on-his-luck back catalogue of Blaze Foley or Todd Snider. That is, if you’ve not already done your deep dive into Moran’s catalogue:
I'm just a thrift store cowboy
Looking for his drug store gal
I've got songs a dime a dozen
I'd trade 'em all for a fistful of pills
It takes a special writer and vocal phrasing to make it work, but gal rhymes with cow and somehow pills at the same time when Moran sings it. Of course, songs don’t always have to rhyme, sometimes parallel phrasing like dime a doze and fistful of pills brings enough poetry.
The songs takes us to the Blaziest and Foleyist of conclusions:
Some might call me a drifter
I wouldn't say that they're wrong
Some might call me a grifter
I'd just call me alone
No wonder the follow-up to 2020’s Black Sheep was called Heartache Kid. Moran himself often promotes his work as music that will make you sad. Of course, any music fiend worth their salt knows that music that makes us sad ultimately makes us happy.
Moran makes me happy because he reminds me of Oklahoma. Until he died, my dad had lived on the same tiny Oklahoma town lot all my life, and most of his. I see the townies and their towns, I see the vehicles a grit they kick up as they drive by, I see the roads and lost highways. I know exactly what a Friday night in a Dry County when you want to go anywhere else in the world feels like:
Where it's fifty miles from the nearest bar or
Sixty to the liquor store
With no way to get out of this town
We'd end up on some lost highway or
Busted flat on the interstate
Trying to thumb some old diesel down
You said some days you get tired of being a townie
Living in this dry county
Moran’s existential country moves beyond the borders of Oklahoma. In fact, Black Sheep is filled with the heartbroken–a waitress who wants more, a kid from a broken home, a transwoman born to Baptists, criminals, addicts, the jilted–all looking to break free, going south, going north, going west, acting outside the law.
But hey, I’ve known for five years that Black Sheep was an album you should put in your regular rotation of Americana Existential Cosmic Cowboy Country Songwriters. Why crow about it now?
This week (April 20th) Moran reissued Black Sheep as a deluxe edition with seven new tracks that offer new versions of old songs and a never-released track. If you’re like me and have, due to geographic circumstance, never made it to a Matt Moran & the Palominos show, hearing full band versions of “Rivertown” and the aforementioned “Dry County” is a treat. And new Moran lyrics? Bud, I'll take 'em any day of the week.
While his most recent album, The Ba’ar, was a full band effort, the original ten tracks on Black Sheep are acoustic: guitar and some harmonica. And while a guitar and harmonica has always been plenty for me, it’s dreamy to get the full Palominos treatment of existing favorites.
Electric guitar and drums let some of the lines in “Rivertown” hit a bit harder:
I might be breaking the law, but it ain't my fault
I'm just trying to get along
In a town where you can't get a job
‘Cause everyone knows who your daddy was
Nothing ain’t worth nothing but it still ain't free
Nothing ain't worth nothing but it's something to me
Takes a kid from Oklahoma to know that "daddy" is the common nomenclature. My Illinois wife still thinks it's weird that I called him Daddy after I was grown.
The new one? That’s “Burn Down This House,” and my gawd does it hit you in the heart like a shot:
Lost my old man six weeks ago
Cancer took him quickly, it’s as good a way to go
He got much more than he deserved
Some pastor’s eulogy about faith and good words
If I could I’d burn down this house
Set fire to the memory, smoke these demons out
Use his picture for a starter flame
Walk out the front door, never turn around
But why would I expect Moran to let my heart off the hook? He’s a poet of the melancholic, a lyricist of the woeful. He’ll make you sad. And you’ll be glad he did.
I was already a sucker for this album. Getting a few demos, live and full band versions of some of these tracks, along with “Burn This House Down,” makes revisiting it even better.
Stream Matt Moran's Black Sheep (Deluxe Edition) now wherever you stream. And be sure to visit mattmoranmusic.com to buy digital albums, CDs, and vinyl.
