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Tom Russell - Blood & Candle Smoke
Country troubadour goes continent-hopping
Russell’s songs have been covered by many country bighitters, including Johnny Cash, Nanci Griffith and Guy Clark, all attracted to the Texan’s eloquent storytelling and evocative Western imagery. His own recordings have never found the wider notice they deserve, despite releasing more than 20 albums over the last three decades.
Blood & Candle Smoke is partly a musical autobiography, Russell recalling a youth spent teaching in Nigeria – literally East Of Woodstock & West Of Vietnam, as the title of the Tex- Mex-flavoured opening track puts it. The political instability of Africa in the early 70s informs the country-reggae of Criminology, our narrator audaciously wringing a few laughs from having guns regularly held to his head!
Other songs throw the spotlight on the US, such as The Most Dangerous Woman In America, which takes pre-Depression labour leader Mother Jones as a jumpingoff point for a Springsteen-esque chronicle of a desperate jailbird forced back into a life crime. Mississippi River Runnin’ Backwards recalls a bygone world of paddle steamer casinos and door-to-door salesman, a love poem to a land that barely exists today.
Proper | PRPCD 049
Reviewed by Terry Staunton
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