OLD RELIABLE
Saturday, March 24
The Night Gallery
On the surface, things looked fine, but things are seldom as they seem. Something happened in the cells, invisible at first, discreet, yet in that moment, that gradual moment, a decision had been made, a life taken, although it would take years. Something happened that wasn't in the plan. Things are seldom as they seem.
The Gradual Moment, the second album from Edmonton roots musicians Old Reliable, is not as it seems. At first listen, it is a set of simple, direct, delicious and honest countrified songs, hurting music about love gone wrong. It works that way, too, for the listener who knows no more. But there are oddly textured hints, pieces that stick in your mind and your soul, intimations that this band did not set out to make one more boy-loses-girl cliché, no matter how fresh or enchanting. The tinted sleeve photo of medication, the passage on the back of a lover releasing another's ashes, song titles alluding to morphine, heaven and hollows.
"My girlfriend died (from cancer) three years ago (in May)," says songwriter/vocalist Mark Davis from his Edmonton home after returning from a shift supporting developmentally disabled adults in the community.
"Her name's not really anywhere on the album, except maybe on one of the prescriptions in the photo and in a song title. But the songs are all related to that period."
And while assembling the likes of such high-powered help as Howe Gelb, Bob Egan and Corby Lund to help with the recording would usually be an occasion for celebration, Davis admits that the atmosphere in the studio was sombre with the weight of the task. The diagnosis came after the couple had been together for three years – the process of dying lasted another three and a half.
"(My girlfriend) knew that I intended to create this, and she supported the idea. I mean, she liked my music."
However, the mood in the studio did not translate into a particularly sombre album. Joy and acceptance, too, peek out from between sweet organ riffs and airy, open instrumentation. Live, the band is known to be loud and raucous.
"At our (recent) CD release (for this record), we played 50 songs. Most of them were ours. At the release of our first CD (1995's Gone are the Days), we played 50 different songs of our own. So if (we have) 20 songs about (the death), that's not really all we're about.
"We've been called severely morose. I think most albums aren't severely anything, so that it's good to be something that pronounced. Terry Wickham (producer of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival) came to see us and said we were the loudest band he's ever seen, which probably pretty much means we won't be playing the Edmonton festival."
Davis likes to get away from things, both musical and macabre, by going camping, which helped him bond with Tucson's Howe Gelb, who often comes to Alberta and spends time with Davis looking for escape in nature. Davis, who until recently owned a share in a record store on Whyte Avenue in Edmonton, also finds relaxation in cooking. But these things, and even the release of the album, cannot heal all of the damage done.
"I haven't found any closure or anything like that because the album's out. And I don't expect to find any, really." |
