TOM RUSSELL
Love And Fear
The Pugilist At 59 / Beautiful Trouble / Stealing Electricity / The Sound Of One Heart Breaking / Ash Wednesday / K.C. Violin / Four Chambered Hearts / Stolen Children / It Goes Away / All The Fine Young Ladies / Old Heart
Producers: Tom Russell, Gurf Morlix, Mark Hallman
Hightone HCD 8190 (45:36)
*****

From Country Music People, April 2006

Is it me that’s getting older or is it the singers? There have always been songs about growing old – September Song, It Was a Very Good Year and My Way – but now it’s okay for the singers to sound old as well. Johnny Cash sounded ancient on his final recordings, like a voice from beyond the grave, and John Stewart isn’t far behind. Bob Dylan’s been in Jurassic Park for some years and both Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson have come through the gates. Ralph Stanley’s career was resuscitated with O Brother, Where Are Thou? and Neil Diamond has had the Rick Rubin makeover. Leonard Cohen talked his way through his last record as he has given up trying to sing. As he has been cheated out his earnings, the former tour de force is now being forced to tour.

Most performers have the Cliff Richard Syndrome in wanting to appear much younger than they are but this has the makings of an unlikely trend: that is, performers who are reaching advanced years and, in words of Tom Russell, are finding that “old age is everything it’s cracked up to be.” You don’t retire – ask the politician Ming Campbell: ask the jazz singer George Melly, who is almost 80 and still performing. Al Martino toured the UK last year and in June we’ll see Mickey Rooney. No doubt about it: being old is the new cool. Brenda Lee could make a comeback and LeAnn Rimes’ getting worried.

Tom Russell’s last release was an ambitious, concept album, Hotwalker, but this time he is baring his soul as he reveals how he feels as he approaches 60. When he was interviewed for CMP in August 2004, he said, “If you are in a relationship and you love somebody, you would like it to last eternally. That never seems to happen with me, but you learn something new with every relationship.” His new songs, All The Fine Young Ladies, It Goes Away and K.C. Violin came out of that. Now we have those songs and several more in Love And Fear.

Put on the album and straightaway you are in Tom Russell’s world. We find him waking up, doing his sit-ups, and wondering why he takes vitamins when he is filling himself with alcohol and caffeine. The photos of his former girlfriends are on the fridge door are laughing at him. He was once a heavyweight champ but now he is reduced to “Back street affairs in watertank towns.”

Russell writes about looking for a relationship with a 25 year old in Beautiful Trouble and his time with Elena Fremerman, the violinist with Hot Club of Cowtown, is chronicled in K.C.Violin. Both K.C. Violin and All The Fine Young Ladies describe how drinking can ruin a relationship: “Most of them quit drinking, they left it up to me.” In It Goes Away, he recognises how hurt has been resolved with time.

As Russell lives in Mexico, he also chronicles life there. He describes how poor people are killed, climbing the pylons trying to get free electricity. “Hey, baby, ain’t that like you and me, Love is like stealing electricity.” This song has a compelling lyric with several quotable images. In Stolen Children, he reflects on pictures of missing children and how the common marriage may have more cruelty than bullfighting. The Pugilist At 59 contains a reference to “one old Father’s Day card” and in this song, “My youngest kid don’t speak to me, I’ve known a few disgraces, Send me no more photographs of stolen children’s faces.”

I love The Sound Of One Heart Breaking, which Tom Russell wrote with Sylvia Tyson and sings with Gretchen Peters. They sound like John Stewart and Buffy Ford at their best. Gretchen Peters shares the vocals for his incisive comments on Catholicism in Ash Wednesday, including an unexpected pun: “They got holes in their pockets, Holes in their minds, They are holy people in an unholy time, Ash Wednesday.” When Russell hears about alligators having four chambered hearts, he’s away and another song is nailed.

The musicians include the usual suspects (Andrew Hardin, Fats Kaplin), but Love And Fear has a fuller sound than most of his work, and you should play the album loud. The lyrics may be heavy going but they are counterbalanced by some of Russell’s best melodies, and the album is, quite simply, brilliant. Of course, Russell’s lifestyle is so bizarre and self-absorbed that his conclusions can only apply to himself but we learn that the virtues of being honest and not showing yourself in a good light.

In All The Fine Young Ladies, Russell looks into himself and writes, “Compromise was not one of my rules.” He accepts this weakness and now he can be “a man who could satisfy a lady in her prime, If I could hold a fine young lady one more time.” Not, you note, a woman of his own age! The pugilist is coming back, but talking of compromise, I don’t think the next girlfriend is going to be happy with those photos on the fridge.

Spencer Leigh