Bobby Bare Jr.’s Young Criminals Starvation League
Friday, April 22, Grey Eagle

There’s a good deal of musical alchemy on Bobby Bare Jr.’s 2004 album From the End of Your Leash. It’s one of those adventuresome discs that leaves critics reaching for those always reliable French nouns that suggest variety: pastiche, palette, tableau, and (what the heck, why not throw in) melange. Not that there’s anything French about this record: this is pure possum-grin Americana, filled with the sounds of alt-country, Stax/Volt soul, and seething garage rock. Put another way: twang and reverb, rhythm and blues, piss and vinegar. You’ll hear the crashing symbols, slide guitar, soul-sweet horns, noisome feedback, saxophones, mandolins, vibrato whistle, and bubbling organ riffs from five decades of American music, and each new sound feels as natural as the last. This is musical miscellany at its best: neither as amateur mash-up nor cynical appropriation, but as the organic outgrowth of an artist’s broad tastes. It’s a heady mix of sounds, well-executed, all overlaid with Bare’s slightly cracked voice.

Of course, veteran Bare watchers will tell you that it’s not just his voice that’s slightly cracked. First with roots-rockers Bare Jr., and later with the country-tinged Young Criminals’ Starvation League, Bare has developed a reputation for writing mordant, sarcastic, self-deprecating ditties, with just enough humor among the headstones to keep his songs from swallowing themselves. From the End of Your Leash proceeds according to form: caustic in places, deadpan in others, it’s filled with keen observation and trenchant wit. (Perhaps that’s no surprise, considering two of his heroes: first, his father, Bobby Bare Sr., the outlaw country legend with whom the young Bare had a hit when he was 5; second, Shel Silverstein, a family friend whose own songs mixed whimsy, irony, and heartbreak to devastating effect.)

Choosing a favorite cut on From the End of Your Leash isn’t easy. Most quotable is the idyllic aw-shucks satire of “Visit Me in Music City”:

The hills are filled with naked ‘Hee-Haw’ honeys

Who all sing along in perfect harmony

The world’s greatest living guitar pickers

Can deliver you a pizza or sell you weed

Guitar strings grow on shrubs and maple trees

Guitar picks tumble out of gumball machines

Record deals fly in and out like happy bumblebees

The cops carry capos in case you want to change your key

In Nashville, Tennessee.

Compare that to the punk-and-run lyrics of “Let’s Rock and Roll”

I live in the floor of a minivan

Driven by drunks across this land

And I wake up in the worst part of your town

Drink free beer and sing until I fall down

Let’s Rock and Roll, let’s Rock and Roll.

Also in the running: “Your Favorite Hat,” “Borrow Your Girl,” and the Silverstein-penned “Things I Didn’t Say.” The winner? Give me a few more weeks to decide.

A few months ago, I called for the first revision to my Best of 2004 list, writing that we had to find room for Steve Earle’s The Revolution Starts ... Now. Hold the presses just a bit longer: looks like we’re gonna have to find room for From the End of Your Leash as well.

Call the Grey Eagle at 828.232.5800 for ticket prices, start time, and beer specials.

Westfest
Saturday, April 23, Haywood Road

Tis the season for street festivals, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t plug the one in my own backyard. (Well, not technically: the festival will be a few blocks away. I do have a swingset and a doghouse, but no homemade soap or Kettle Korn, so there’s really no point in dropping by.) Westfest is West Asheville’s own li’l community celebration, right at the heart of historic Haywood Road. Fans of local music should get their fill: the Main Stage features the Royal We, Jen and the Juice, and Menage; the Family Stage hosts Edwards & Ellison, the Nobody Knows, Dave Desmelik, and Sassagrass. There will be plenty of booths from local merchants, plus a Kids Zone, a karate demonstration, and a car show too. How can you go wrong?

Westfest runs from noon to 7 — on Haywood Road between Vermont and Oakwood — and is free as a bird, baby.

Also Playing in Asheville

• RB Morris, Jack of the Wood, 4/22

• Blueground Undergrass, Stella Blue, 4/22

• Jazzmanian Devils, Tressa’s, 4/22

• Lost Gospels and My Brother Zebulon, Westville Pub, 4/23

• the bluehouse, Diana Wortham Theatre, 4/23

• Sons of Ralph, Jack of the Wood, 4/23

• Amy Ray, Grey Eagle, 4/23

• Hydra, Orange Peel, 4/26

Three Good Things

1. Toothpaste

2. Floss

3. Tweezers

They Said It

“He and I had that big hit [“Daddy, What If”], and were nominated for a Grammy. Then ‘Hee Haw’ tried to hire him and my other son to be on that show, ‘cause they were cute little boys. I wouldn’t let ‘em do it, though. We wanted them away from the business when they were small, because we wanted them to be regular kids. All that attention makes kids crazier than shit.”

— Bobby Bare, Sr., recalling his son’s early success in No Depression