The content of this review was originally posted on the online music and popular culture magazine I See Sound on 16 Feb 2006.
Release Date: 24 Jan 2006 (Barsuk Records)
Download “Portland Is Leaving” (mp3)
Download “Tinfoil Hats” (mp3)
Alex, Kevin, and Josh were best friends in high school. Now, 14 years later, Alex was getting married. Kevin and Josh were back home together for the first time in years, and, in the interim, they’d both been through a lot of changes. While Alex stayed in touch with both of them, Kevin and Josh hadn’t talked to each other in quite a while.
When they were in high school, the three of them would often walk along the train tracks that cut across their small, midwestern town. Now, the night before Alex tied the knot, Kevin and Josh found themselves with a loss for things to do or to talk about. They’d been hanging out together for the past few days. There was Alex’s bachelor party. They’d been out almost every night they’d been back to their childhood hometown. However, when you’re back home in rural Indiana, you can only go out to the same few bars so many times before you get bored. So they started walking along those tracks again.
They’d forgotten a lot about the town in which they grew up. Kevin, on the other hand, had been living in Phoenix for about 2 years. He avoided settling down. He moved every couple of years. He regretted how most of his relationships floundered to an end. Josh was living in Boston because he had joint custody of his son with his ex-wife. He couldn’t move from that Massachusetts harbor town without giving up something he held as the most cherished part of his life. Walking on the gravel beside the railroad ties, they started talking about how the town had grown and changed.
“Did you ever think there’d be a Wal-Mart here?” and “Did you think that Hanson’s Hardware store would-a closed and a Lowe’s would’ve opened?” were types of questions that got the conversation started. Then the dialogue shifted to their memories of younger days.
Reliving some of the mishaps and adventures of being teenagers, Kevin, who’d been doing most of the talking, said, “This reminds me of a line from a song called ‘White Daisy Passion.’”
“That’s on Makers the new Rocky Votolato disc,” asked Josh, a little surprised.
“Yeah. You know it?”
“I’ve been listening to it a lot,” said Josh enthusiastically. “When I bought it, I thought it was okay, but the more I keep listening to it, the more I like it.”
“Me too. It’s grown on me a lot,” said Kevin. “Well, you know the lyric in that first song that goes, ‘there’s a secret magic past world that you only notice when you’re looking back at it, all I wanna do is turn around.’ That’s how I’ve been feeling lately. I’ve been missing the old days, when we were teenagers, and everything seemed, I don’t know, easier.”
“I know what you mean. My life has gotten a lot more complicated since we were in high school, but it’s all for the better,” commented Josh, the father and divorcee.
“I wish I could say the same thing,” said Kevin quietly, almost under his breath.
“Since I became a father, I observe all the things around me in a different light. I took that song to be about noticing a special moment, one you wanted to hold on to, and wishing time would slow down so you could enjoy it a little longer. Not necessarily looking back, but trying to make the present seem longer.”
“I guess that just shows where we’re both at. While you notice the good moments while you are living them, I’ve just been living in regret ever since I broke up with my last girlfriend. I could have sung ‘She’s Only In It For The Rain’ for her.” Then Kevin sings, “You’re as pretty as you are cruel,” the refrain to the aforementioned song. “But my favorite song on the album is definitely ‘Uppers Aren’t Necessary.’”
“That’s a good track.”
Kevin confessed, “I listened to that song a lot the last week or so. Knowing I was coming back here to Indiana for the first time in years, that was my own personal theme song. That chorus gets me every time I listen to it - ‘The uppers aren’t necessary, the guilt is the coal that keeps the fire burning to drive out the cold, that creeps in every corner crack and never leaves us alone, until the messengers come calling you back home.’ Man, that’s a great chorus.”
“You can really hear the Dylan influence on that song. The way he phrases each line to lead into the next. And he’s not ripping off Dylan, just paying homage,” said Josh.
“Yeah, this is a folk album at its heart. It’s mostly just guitar and vocal, but there are a few full band songs.”
“But even those stay true to a folk-rock sound. I mean, ‘Tennessee Train Tracks’ totally sounds like a Ryan Adams song.”
“The album kinda reminds me of Kevn Kinney’s The Flower and the Knife album,” said Kevin.
“I don’t know that one,” Josh admitted.
“It was produced by Warren Hayes of Gov’t Mule, has a couple of Dylan covers on it, and is very stripped down like Makers. But what’s your favorite track on the Votolato’s CD?” Kevin asked.
“It’d have to be ‘Tinfoil Hats.’ It’s got the theme of life is ever changing, but it’s the simple percussion tapping and the opening lines that hook me. ‘He reminds me that the only way to keep aliens from reading you mind is to where a tinfoil hat, friend, and wear it all the time.’ It reminds me of my son,” Josh said as a smile came across his face.
“That’s funny. Or at least it just proves that we both interpreted this album from two different points of view. I thought this song was another one about missing the days of old, missing your childhood.”
Even though they had been hanging out together the past few days, it wasn’t until the old friends walked along the train tracks, like they used to do in high school, and talked about music that they realized how they’d both been living the last few years. Despite their differences, they were still good friends, and most importantly, they still liked the same kind of music.
The next day, at Alex’s wedding reception, Josh and Kevin celebrated at the open bar by “filling and refilling up the glass with Makers” and vowed to stay in touch.
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