THE GOURDS – Heavy Ornamentals
(CD, eleventhirty)
The
Gourds are the band I want to play on a wedding. (Obviously it
won’t be my wedding.) I want the to stage the part were everyone is
partying heavily, getting drunk, falling in love and doing all kinds of
ridiculous shit. I also want Van Morrisson to come up at midnight and play a
special set afterwards to get some real feelings, but before that I want
that weird, hazy, joogly, honky-tonkin’, ass-backwards crazy songstylin’
of The Gourds. I want the mandolin to twiddle as it does, the rhythm section
to shuffle as drunkenly as it does and I want the nasal whine of singers
Kevin Russell and Jimmy Smith when they shuffle across the stage to tell
their weird tales of loneliness and live in the South, hillbillys and
honeysuckle. Hell, I want to do the “Hookey Junk”, raise my bottle of
beer and throw my hands around in ecstasy and “shake the chandelier”.
Can anyone please invite them and me to their wedding?
Aawww, I am not sure it will ever happen, but
dreaming’s alright, ain’t it? The people in the stories of the songs of
The Gourds do a lot of dreaming, and fantasizing, and weaving their own
little dreamworlds of magic, fairies and strange analogies. As harmless as a
rolling drunkard in a haystack. The Gourds have been doing this their thing
for oh so many years now and “Heavy Ornamentals” is their umpteenth
album (about ten to twelve underneath the straw heat, all borne from a
little hut in the woods – d’ya believe that?) and it is still unique and
indescribable as it is clearly rooted in the American songwriter book,
listed somewhere or everywhere between Townes Van Zandt and Captain
Beefheart (to Snoop Doggy Dogg and Woody Guthrie and back again). I remember
mentioning drunken honky rhythms with Granfaloon Bus, but Vonnegut-connotations and
musicology aside, if the Gourds don’t sound drunken from dawn onwards I
have never tasted curbicea corn beer. If they ever come over to play in
Vienna, I’ll bring them a few bottles. I think they’ll like that. They
could pay me back with a few weird stories and maybe pick a song or two
together. That would be a riot.
