An accent -- the right accent -- is worth a thousand words. Just ask
Green Day frontman Billie Joe. That British accent that cut though the surge of
"Longview" and "Welcome to Paradise" was every bit as important to the impact
of the performance as the snarling guitars. The curled-lip snarled Briticisms
of his live show were just as crucial to the punk picture as his carelessly
cropped manic panic blue hair. And Billie Joe wasn't and isn't alone: in scenes
across the country there are bands whose version of punk includes a little
British accent to enhance the singer's sneer. It's a time-tested conceit that
dates all the way back to the first wave of American punks inspired by the
Pistols, the Damned, the Buzzcocks, and the Clash. In fact, I remember having a
good laugh at a live tape of the early-'80s Boston band the Outlets, whose
frontman, Dave Barton, was known to affect a pronounced British accent. In this
particular case, however, having just returned from a tour, Dave forgot to drop
the faux Joe Strummer between songs and unwittingly blurted out "It's
great to be back in Boston" in his finest British slur.
Roots music is another realm where the right accent can be as good as gold, and
the so-called alterna-country landscape is littered with fine young guys and
gals boasting the down-home sound of the South in voices that came of age well
north of the Mason-Dixon lined. There's nothing surprising about that, and
there ain't nuthin' wrong with it neither. Certain kinds of songs call for a
certain kind of delivery by the vocalist, and it can be harder to keep the
twang out than to let it creep in. Of course, sometimes a "y'all" or two sneaks
by when the artist isn't singing. Before long said artist finds him- or herself
with an on-stage persona that draws on decades of country clichés, from
snakeskin boots to Stetson hats, from I-IV-V-based chord progressions to
wide-open skies, runaway trains, and lost highways. Anyone who remembers the
Del Fuegos will recall frontman Dan Zanes's rapid evolution from an
Andover-raised rock rat to a seasoned and somewhat Southern-sounding man of
many woes.
Kasey Chambers
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Shannon McNally, a new Capitol artist who's been getting the rare opportunity
to develop at her own pace since she started working with the label more than a
year ago, falls into that same Del Fuegos gray area between roots and rock. And
when she came to the Paradise last Friday night to open for sacred-steel
virtuoso Robert Randolph in support of her debut album, Jukebox Sparrow,
it seemed the roots side was winning out. For starters, the attractive,
long-maned McNally came dressed in the kind of easy-going '70s rock garb Sheryl
Crow prefers -- tight blue jeans that revealed her to be a real woman, not a
little girl, plus some puffy earth-toned top. And there was a little of that
y'all twang in her voice when she stopped to introduce the band.
As for the music, it's what would be called "classic rock" if modern rock had
retained any of the gritty blues and spicy R&B flavorings of seminal '60s
and '70s rock and "classic" could be taken to mean more than just "retro" or
"old." Instead, the label that probably suits it best is "roots pop," as in
Sheryl Crow, Tom Petty, and Bonnie Raitt. Which is to say it's aimed at enough
of a mainstream audience to keep it out of the alternative-country ghetto, but
it's too grounded in blues and/or country to be at home anywhere near the
melange of aggro-metal guitars, hip-hop sampling, and power-balladeering that
is modern rock. If that means its only viable format is adult contemporary,
well, that's just sad, because there's plenty of youthful energy both on
Jukebox Sparrow and in McNally's performance, which at the Paradise drew
a twentysomething crowd who appeared to like what they heard and saw.
The overall feel of McNally's music is that of rebel girl from the right side
of the tracks who spent her weekends sneaking out to the juke joints on the
wrong side of town to soak up the bent-note blues guitars and soul-pumping
rhythm sections, and the rest of her time studying the rock on the radio, from
the Stones to Seger, with a whole bunch of Fleetwood Mac and Tom Petty thrown
in for good measure. Her slurred, gutsy delivery and the sharp, spiky blues
leads of guitarist Neal Cassal put the finishing touches on the sepia-toned
picture. Actually, the South McNally grew up in was the South Shore of Long
Island, which is (according to her bio) the working-class foil to the
upper-class North Shore. Either way, the mellow twang in her voice is every bit
as genuine as the Londoner's sneer in Billie Joe's delivery, and there's
nothing wrong with that.
KASEY CHAMBERS had a much longer distance to travel to meet up with her
Southern muse. Not only is she a native of Australia, born and raised, but her
story reads like some alternate take on the Jewel saga. Stuck on the Nullabar
Plain in the Australian Outback, with no TV, radio, or indoor plumbing,
Chambers traveled around with her family as they hunted for much of the food
they ate and sang country songs for their supper when the opportunity arose.
She arrived in the US early last year with the much heralded Aussie release
The Captain, which Warner Bros. promptly but quietly unleashed on
America via its rock division even though it was, through and through, a
country album on which Chambers sounded as red, white, and blue as Dolly
Parton. (Hearing her speak between songs at a gig is like hearing Nicole Kidman
drop her American accent -- shocking.)
Of course, it's not the kind of country album they'd play in Nashville, even if
the powers-that-be in the country-music world were willing to listen to
anything but indigenous product. So the alterna-country world that had embraced
Wilco, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, and not too many other household names
was the logical place for a face-pierced, punkish but pretty country kitten
like Chambers, who got her best exposure opening for Lucinda Williams on the
Essence tour last summer.
Sheryl Crow
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Chambers's new Barricades & Brickwalls (Warner Bros.) makes The
Captain sound like the warm-up routine that it apparently was. To say she
comes into her own here would be an understatement. The disc opens with a
tough-edged guitar-driven tune that's more rock than roots but still country
all the way thanks to her clarion voice and its comfortably confident Southern
twang. She proceeds to prove that at 25 she's already capable of covering a lot
of musical ground without a misstep, from the steel-guitar-laced Patsy Cline
homage "A Little Bit Lonesome" to the fiddle-driven two-step "Still Feeling
Blue" to the blues rock of "Crossfire" to the atmospheric melancholy of "A
Million Tears." Through it all, it's her voice that does it, drawing you into
each song like the cute diner waitress who coaxes you into that piece of pecan
pie you know you should pass on. And it would be hard to imagine her pulling
any of this off without the sweet-and-sour twang of that heavy Southern accent,
which sounds as if it were bred in the bone.
IF LUCINDA WILLIAMS is Kasey Chambers's role model, than the blueprint
for Shannon McNally is Sheryl Crow. And this week A&M/Interscope will
release Crow's first studio album in four years, C'mon, C'mon. It says a
lot that AAA and adult contemporary are the two main formats aside from Top 40
that A&M is targeting with "Soak Up the Sun," the disc's first single. The
track, an upbeat number about soaking up the sun and lightening up, begins with
a feint in the direction of modern rock, in the form of a tricky little
electronic rhythm track. But before long the song settles into the kind of
familiar I-V-IV guitar chord progression that Crow was born to sing over. And
by and large, that's the story of the songs on C'mon, C'mon: they're
classic Crow numbers outfitted with comfortably rootsy guitar riffs, clever
little hooks, and genuinely pleasant vocal melodies that make you want to roll
the windows down and turn up the volume, or else turn up the volume and sing
along (because you should never roll down the windows and sing along --
it's a rule).
The story behind the story of C'mon, C'mon is that if you take the liner
notes at face value, the CD is practically a duets album. Everyone from Liz
Phair (who does backing vocals on "Soak Up the Sun") to Don Henley to Stevie
Nicks to Lenny Kravitz to Natalie Maines (of the Dixie Chicks) to Emmylou
Harris gets a track, and that's six out of 13. For the most part, Crow
dominates, and even the questionable guests don't cause much trouble. "It's So
Easy" is a bona fide duet with Don Henley that starts off like one of those
truly yucky piano ballads (shades of "Ebony and Ivory"), but Crow steers things
in a tolerable direction. Mojo Nixon ain't gonna like it, but it could have
been much worse. Kravitz and Crow do a nice job of rocking out on "You're an
Original," which is kind of an ironic title for any song Kravitz is involved
in. And with a Dixie Chick on board for "Abilene," Crow reminds us that she
occasionally gets a case of the Southern twangs herself.
Issue Date: April 5 - 11, 2002
