We’re big fans of songwriter John Statz here at Wake The Deaf (we have written about him here and here). A few months ago we told you that he was running a Kickstarter campaign to fund his new album, Tulsa. Luckily there were enough generous people in the world to make the LP a reality, and Statz released it back in March.
As we explained in our previous post, Statz enlisted the help of a variety of musicians to bring his album to life. Jeffrey Foucault produced the album and lended his guitar and vocal skills, Caitlin Canty provided harmonies while Billy Conway (of Morphine) drummed, Mark Spencer (of Son Volt) played guitar, Jeremy Moses Curtis (of Booker T band) the bass and Matt Lorenz the fiddle. There is something gratifying about a range of talented people getting together to bring one man’s writing to reality, a more traditional sense of folk community opposed to the set line-up of most contemporary bands.
The album opens with the title track, an atmospheric all-American song made for driving long roads in beat-up cars, rife with that half-mean, half-defeated air of a compulsive whiskey drinker. It tells the tale of a sad traveller stuck working in a Tulsa casino after car trouble, playing on the uniquely soul-destroying mix of desperation and sadness that drifts around casinos and seeps through your skin:
“Working at the Cherokee casino,
watching people pull the slot machines.
Wasting all those precious hours,
wasting money like it’s free.Working late into the mornings,
sleeping through the afternoons.
I still dream of Arizona,
but I guess Tulsa has to do.”
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‘Old Pro’ is romantic in a different way, a classic country love song with wistful violins and pedal steel in which money and distance and time get in the way of what could have been. The album as a whole flits between emotions in this way, with the mood changing between the galvanised surety of chirpy Americana songs like ‘Home at Last’ and ‘One Way Opens’, the late-night bourbon-scented blues of ‘Exposure’ and ‘Tanneburg’, and the contemplative melancholy of ‘Any Town Will Do’, ‘Roadkill Zone’ and the mournful Radiohead cover ‘Motion City Soundtrack’. The result is a complete picture of love and loss, the massive highs and crushing lows of a single lovelorn drinker, the stories he half-hears over the jukebox, the collective emotions of a room or time. A snapshot of Tulsa and all its characters.
You can buy Tulsa now from the John Statz Bandcamp page.
John is also about to embark on a tour of the UK and Ireland. Check out the dates below and then go along and support him!