WALKABOUTS – exploring the dark countrysides

The Walkabouts have been a steady part of my life for at least 10 years now. I have seen them live for about five times now and combining all Walkabouts-, Chris & Carla-, Live- and other records, there are over twenty records spread around my record collection somewhere. I guess, that makes me a fan no matter what. They always managed to let some strings inside me vibrate all through those years and the concert last week made all those memories come back. Which is why I sat down to write this piece of praise about one of the greatest, yet most unknown bands in the world. This, and the upcoming double-CD of lost songs and rarities (1995-2001) called “Drunken Soundtracks” (Glitterhouse), which showed to me just how much work the Walkabouts have produced, and there is still more water in the well.

Even though the Walkabouts have been prolific in their career, to say the least, they have always remained somewhat of a secret. They never made it big, even though they had two records on a major label. They never had a huge following, but always a steady one. Ironically in regard to their utter Americanism - even if it is an academic, ironic Americanism - they had bigger “success” in Europe than in the USA. A result of problems with their American labels. Which makes the band the typical American ex-patriats travelling through the oldest towns and countries in Europe, looking for truths, roots and experiences of ages past. The Walkabouts have heavy connections to Greece and Prague (live records), Germany (Glitterhouse-Label) and Paris (where Chris Eckman lived for some time), and – at least I tell myself so – to Vienna. Imagine the type of US-expatriates, hanging out in old, dark, smoke-filled cafes, reciting stories of murder, prostitution and criminality whiling breathing the aloof air of the bystanding watcher. No one does it better than the Walkabouts.

Their songs are deeply melancholic and dark, filled with the bleakness of the lost American dream though vibrating with hope and love that blooms between the cobblestones of bad experiences. Using a recurring cast of chronic losers, petty criminals, lovers and winners, hustlers and hobos, they keep on telling little parts of the great, dark American novel. No one knows how to use a minor-major-chord-change more to perfection than Chris Eckman and Carla Torgerson (see the European roots in the names!), who were always the core of the band, writing the vast majority of songs together, touring as Chris & Carla with none but acoustic guitars. It’s a life, y’know. To try to recap the whole history of the Walkabouts in this here website would be useless. There are hundreds of pages to fill with stories, songs and anecdotes. But I will try to give some major points using four (to me) very important songs, that build up the palace I built around the band. If you need more info, check out www.walkabouts.com.

JACK CANDY – from: New West Motel (1993)

This double-LP is the Walkabout’s very first masterpiece. 17 (on vinyl) songs that still hold as timeless and are still played by the Walkabouts live and warmly greeted by the audience. The record opens up with the stomping, heavily electrified “Jack Candy”, the tale of a girl regretting not having helped the town’s outlaw, whom she had a (forbidden) love affair with. The story hints at lynch mobs, drug trafficking, underage love, and many other parts of what makes up family histories (not only) in the American hinterland. The record-sleeve features a picture of the band around a table, with a beer-pitcher and the sunlight shining in at lots of pensive faces. Only Carla looks straight into the camera – like a snapped moment of rest in some truckstop during a tour. Only the modern art piece, featuring a bearded man in a stars&stripes-shirt, looking at his watch, holding a noose hints at the aloof position the Walkabouts take towards their points of interest. The fascinating interest in the dark sides of live, but always recipied from a distance.

On this record there are, next to some all time hits, some very interesting cover-versions, e.g. “yesterday is here” by Tom Waits, “Snake Mountain Blues” by all time hero Townes Van Zandt and “Like a hurricane” by Neil Young. Latter one has been a vast pit of influence to the Walkabouts who have a knack of getting into Neil Young-songs unlike many other bands. During “like a hurricane”, when all the storms of solos break loose, they like to recite some lines from Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the water”, and that addition fits as if it always belonged there. And talking of cover-versions:

SATISFIED MIND – from: Satisfied Mind (1993)

This song was made famous by Porter Waggoner, an old-time country-hero and stands proud of the lines: “I’ll be richer by far / with a satisfied mind”. This is just such a beautiful song, that not even the worst of kitschy-mainstream-country singers can destroy it. The whole record mentioned above is nothing but cover-versions, that describe the heart and soul of American or at least Americanised music. The range goes from old Traditionals to Nick Cave (Loom of the land), to Robert Forster (The river people) to John Cale (Buffalo Ballet) to Patti Smith (Free Money) and back to the Carter Family (Storms are on the ocean) and Charlie Rich (Feel like going home). The production is reduced and gives away the whole slew of alt.country about now. There were people like Larry Barret, Gary Heffren, Mark Lanegan, Peter Buck and others helping out, who have always been circling around as friends and fellow-musicians. The Walkabouts repeated the effort in a European-version years later with “Train leaves at eight” (2000), where they covered only European songwriters, whose music they discovered during their long and exhaustive stays on this continent. There we have the krautrock of Neu, songs by Jaques Brel and Jochen Distelmayer and songs from Scandinavia to Greece, from Spain to the Balkan. This one is of course a little harder to digest.

The main point about cover-versions and the Walkabouts is though, that whatever song they cover, they make it their own in style, tone and color. They are able to turn an innocent tale of lost love into an epic about murder, betrayal and innocent victims only by adding a little of their very own impeccable style. Just by connecting one piece of up-to-then straight american folklore to their intricate web of dark and seedy connotations and explorations, they turn the whole thing around and enrich it with a thousandfold of new possibilites and interpretations. Of course, the songs and stories of the Walkabouts are wide open as the sky in Texas, and whatever they do, it will contain a part of the very strong spirit they enthralled from a sense of place and time in their work.

LAZARUS HEART – from: Ended up a stranger (2001)

This one is the opener from their latest album and it goes straight to the heart and stays there. I chose this song to illustrate the point, that the Walkabouts have gotten over the escapades that endured when they went on to a major label. Some say that they made their best records on the major label, because the suddenly had the money to record those songs exactly the way they wanted them. The way they should be. But I am not sure. The concert during that time was the most boring of all the times I have seen them play. The records never really stuck to me the way earlier efforts did. I kept myself afloat during that times with a slew of live-recordings and Chris & Carla – Lps. And I was happy when they got back onto Glitterhouse-records. And even more so, when they produced a grand record there (read review here).

Well, that sums up my little trip around the universe the Walkabouts have made for me, and there is still so much I haven’t pointed at yet. Chris Eckman’s most dark effort with his solo-CD “A Janela”, written and composed during hard times when the Walkabouts were without a label. Or the tales of old country-singers living in reclusion in some mountains somewhere, recording straight to tape-recorder, selling those tapes. Or diving deeper into the connections between the Walkabouts music and the whole universe of American songwriters, starting by Willie Nelson and Townes Van Zandt and going up to their friends and contemporaries such as the Willard Grant Conspiracy, Larry Barrett and so many others. Or about the Nighttown Orchestra, about the Soundtracks they did, about Mickey Newbury, and about a thousand other things. But I don’t want to bore the hell out of you. Just keep checking back, search the internet, browse through record stores.

To sum up, I’d like to add, that I have never heard a bad album by the Walkabouts and I rarely ever see their records in second hand stores. That tells me that other people feel like me, and that the Walkabouts, once they have touched you, or you made some connection to their songs, won’t ever leave you alone. Which makes this dark and windy world a warmer place.

Resources:

www.walkabouts.com

www.glitterhouse.com