The show starts at 10 p.m. Mr. Slim will go on 10 or 15 minutes after that.
Slackeye, known in the mundane world as Joe Frankland is responsible for at least three albums -- Texas Whore Pleaser, El Santo Grial: La Pistola Piadosa, and, his most recent effort, Giving My Bones to the Western Lands. (Follow the links to my reviews of the last two.)
Basically his albums are the musical equivalent to dark, troubling western movies, wild tales full of harsh landscape, desperate anti-heroes. Sometimes the songs are full of savage violence. Sometimes they're just soul-searching reflections by men with broken hearts (to sneak in a Hank Williams reference.) And many of his melodies are nothing short of gorgeous.
Slackeye's originally from Ohio, but like the troubled transients he sings about, Slackeye has knocked around the west these past few years, living in Montana, Colorado and now New Mexico.
So tune in tomorrow night and hear Slackeye Slim's songs and stories. You can listen live on KSFR's website, or, if you live in northern New Mexico and parts of Albuquerque, at 101.1 FM.
I have one listener down there who tells me he sometimes drives out to the West Mesa to listen to my show on his car radio.
Tonight would be a great night to do that.
You can listen -- and buy (what a radical idea!) Slackeye Slim's most recent works HERE.
And meanwhile, here's one of his real purdy songs:
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican Feb. 13, 2015 Johnny Dowd writes his songs like a sniper aims his gun. Sometimes his songs are like a captured serial killer’s confession. They’re full of regret, shame, venom, horrifying humor, and uncomfortable truths.
Dowd’s new album, That’s Your Wife on the Back of My Horse, has a title based on one of the most cocky, swaggering lines in the history of the blues, from Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s “Gangster of Love”: “The Sheriff says, ‘Is you Guitar Watson?’ in a very deep voice/I say, ‘Yes sir, brother Sheriff, and that’s your wife on the back of my horse.’ ”
This time out, Dowd played virtually all the instruments himself — exceptions are vocal contributions from Anna Coogan, who sounds so much like Dowd’s old bandmate Kim Sherwood-Caso it’s spooky; a guitar solo on “Words Are Birds” from Mike Cook; and a brief appearance by Dowd’s regular band on the end of “Teardrops.”
Dowd himself has compared the record to his first one, Wrong Side of Memphis. That late-1990s album is also mostly just Dowd on a variety of instruments. But it is more acoustic and rootsy, based in country and blues. On this new one, the music behind the lyrics is crazier than ever: low-tech electronica; rasty, distorted guitar licks; insane beats from an ancient drum machine over Dowd’s growling drawl and Coogan’s angelic melodies. It’s “New Year’s Eve in the nuthouse,” as Archie Bunker would say.
The album kicks off with the title song, Dowd reciting the lyrics that serve as a taunting invocation: “That’s your wife on the back of my horse/That’s my hand in your pocket/Around my neck is your mother’s locket/Your sisters will dance at my wake/Your brother will blow out the candles on my birthday cake/That’s your wife on the back of my horse.”
This is followed by a funky, boastful rap, “White Dolemite,” a salute to the heroic persona of “party” record artist and blaxploitation star Rudy Ray Moore. “I live the life men dream about/Stand up, people, give me a shout,” Dowd declares, as Coogan responds, “Hot pants! He needs a spanking.”
J. Dowd
Photo by Kat Dalton
On “The Devil Don’t Bother Me,” Dowd sounds like a death-row inmate contemplating theology while awaiting injection. “An angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other/Jesus, He’s my savior, but the devil is my brother.”
And that's just one of Dowd’s characters who seem like a coiled snake about to strike. On “Nasty Mouth,” Dowd’s narrator spews harsh judgment about a woman, who, I would guess, rejected him. “I’m just trying to forget the words that came out of your nasty mouth,” he spits over ambient blips and bleeps and a dangerous fuzz guitar.
Another favorite here include “Female Jesus,” which has a bluesy, swampy groove and is about a rural Okie prostitute who, Dowd says, “satisfied my body/She purified my brain/Then she called the undertaker and put my casket on a train.” Easily the album’s most melodic track, The song “Why?” sounds like a ’60s soul ballad left in the forest to be eaten by wolves, while the upbeat “Sunglasses” could have been a summertime pop hit … on the planet Neptune. (“Boys who wear sunglasses get laid,” Coogan informs us.)
At the end of the last song, “Teardrops,” a slow, dreamy (well, nightmarish) dirge about the fall of a powerful man (“In a world of little men, I walked like a giant/If I’d have been a lawyer, God would’ve been my client”), Dowd thanks his audience and an announcer says, “The ultrascary troubadour has left the building. With your wife. On the back of his horse.”
Left the building? Well, maybe. But I bet he actually just went to the dark alley behind the building.
Where he’s waiting ...
Also recommended
* Giving My Bones to the Western Lands by Slackeye Slim. Joe Frankland is another singer-songwriter who likes to explore the shadows, though his music is rooted in the country, folk, and spaghetti-western realms. Under the name Slackeye Slim, Frankland’s songs frequently are cast in an Old West setting, though his themes of sin, redemption, loneliness, desperation, and freedom are universal.
It’s been four years since his previous album, El Santo Grial: La Pistola Piadosa, which I compared to Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger. Since then, he’s moved from Montana to a ranch near Mesa, Colorado. He says he recorded this album in “dilapidated buildings” as well as on his front porch, “as hundreds of cattle grazed quietly just a few yards away.”
The body count on Giving My Bones isn’t nearly as high as it was on El Santo Grial, even though the second song, “Don Houston,” is about a guy who, for no apparent reason, shoots a stranger in the face. “Every time he pulled the trigger, it was the most beautiful thing you ever saw,” the narrator explains. “It was an art. His brush was a bullet, his paint was blood, his canvas was the earth, the rocks, the trees, and the dirt.”
Don Houston and El Santo Grial’s antihero, Drake Savage, would have a lot to talk about. Assuming they didn’t kill each other first.
But not every song on the new Slackeye album deals with crazy violence. One recurring theme here is psychological healing.
Take the sadly beautiful “I’m Going Home.” (I’ll be extremely surprised if anyone comes up with a prettier song than this one this year — or in the next decade.) Accompanied only by a banjo, a harmonica, and his stomping foot, Slackeye’s foghorn voice is perfectly suited to this tale of a lonesome journey to the nadir of his life. Riffing on lines from the old song “Hesitation Blues,” he sings, “Whiskey was the river and me, I was the duck/I lived down at the bottom and I could not get up/At first I thought I’d found it, a place where I belonged/But I had no home.”
Then, on “Cowboy Song” — a herky-jerky waltz that, with a few Balkan embellishments, could almost be a Beirut song — riding the range is the prescription that rebuilds a broken soul: “A man alone in the wilderness/That’s where his soul is born/As long as he’s singing his cowboy song.”
Keep singing, Slackeye.
You can listen to and/or name your own buying price for Giving My Bones to the Western Lands at www.slackeyeslim.bandcamp.com. But even though you can snag it for free, pay him something. Don’t be a jerk! It's Video time! Here's the title song from Johnny Dowd's new album
And here's a song called "Cadillac Hearse" from that album And here are a couple of my favorite new Slackeye Slim songs And here's a latter-day version of "Gangster of Love" by Johnny "Guitar" Watson
Happy New Year, dear friends! Here is a list of my favorite albums of 2015. This list is in no particular order, but at some point throughout the past year, each one was my number-one favorite for at least a few days.
1)This Is The Sonics . Unlike The Standells, Question Mark and The Mysterians, Sam the Sham and The Pharaohs, and other giants of the garage-rock era of the mid-1960s, The Sonics didn’t get much radio play where I grew up. Thus, I didn’t really get exposed to them until well into my adulthood. And I didn’t become a complete babbling devotee of their cult until just a couple of years ago when I saw The Sonics — with three original members — rage, ravage, and conquer the Ponderosa Stomp festival in New Orleans. This is the band’s first studio album of all-new material in nearly 50 years, and it rocks harder than anything by any young whippersnapper I heard all year.
2) Mutilator Defeated at Last by Thee Oh Sees. John Dwyer is a miserable failure at hiatus. His attempt at putting Thee Oh Sees on the shelf only lasted a few months before he was back with a new line-up, which I begrudgingly have to admit is just as ferocious as the previous incarnation. The sound of Mutilator is unmistakably Oh Sees: rubbery post-psychedelic guitar-based excursions into the unknown with distorted echoes of garage rock, punk, and noise-rock.
3) Freedom Tower — No Wave Dance Party 2015by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. This album, the Blues Explosion’s second since the band’s resurrection with 2012’s Meat + Bone, is a loving song cycle about New York City. In several tunes, the band indulges in a little well-earned nostalgia about the sleazy, crime-ridden era of the ’70s and ’80s, those gritty days when punk rock, hip-hop, and yes, “No Wave” were born. Jon Spencer and the boys are as loud, frantic, and joyful as they were in their mid-’90s heyday.
4)The Ruffian’s Misfortuneby Ray Wylie Hubbard. Once again, Ray Wylie Hubbard has given the world a swampy, blues-soaked collection of tunes in which, in his trademark Okie drawl, he tells stories of sin and salvation; gods and devils; women who light candles to the “Black Madonna;” undertakers who look like crows (“red-eyed and dressed in black”); and hot-wiring cars in Oklahoma.
5) No Cities to Loveby Sleater-Kinney. These women are far better at hiatus than Thee Oh Sees. Sleater-Kinney’s little break lasted about 10 years. They roared back this year, though, with a mighty tour (including a memorable show in Albuquerque in April) and this new album. It’s brash, urgent, and emotional. And they make it seem so easy.
6) Long Lost Suitcase by Tom Jones. No, I’m not being ironic here. In 2015, Tom Jones — the old British pop star who sang “It’s Not Unusual,” the cheesy ’70s TV star and Las Vegas sex symbol at whom grown women threw their underwear — made one of the year’s finest albums. I was drawn in by his haunting cover of Gillian Welch’s “Elvis Presley Blues,” but I stayed for his rocking version of Billy Boy Arnold’s “I Wish You Would,” and Los Lobos’ “Everybody Loves a Train” – not to mention his stark take on one of my favorite early Willie Nelson tunes, “Opportunity to Cry.” I was so impressed, I sought out Jones’ previous albums with producer Ethan Johns — the gospel-drenched Praise & Blame and Spirit in the Room. Jones’ powerful voice is still in impeccable form and his taste in material has never been better.
7) Giving My Bones to the Western Lands by Slackeye Slim. On his latest album, Joe Frankland, aka Slackeye Slim, continues his exploration of the shadows. As usual, many of his songs are frequently cast in an Old West setting, though his themes of sin, redemption, loneliness, desperation, and freedom are universal. Slackeye lived among us in New Mexico for a few months, forming a sinister musical alliance with The Imperial Rooster, an Española band. He’s moved back to Colorado, but promises he won’t be a stranger.
8) Walk on Jindal’s Splinters by Jello Biafra & the New Orleans Raunch and Soul All-Stars. This is a live New Orleans concert by former Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra that was reportedly done on a dare. Teaming up with a rootsy but raucous band (including a horn section), the West Coast punk-rock icon blasts his way through a bunch of Big Easy R & B classics.
9) Bailazo by Rolando Bruno. This is my choice for world-beat heavyweight champion of 2015. Rolando Bruno’s label, Voodoo Rhythm Records, describes his sound as “Full Blast Psychedelic Latino Cumbia Garage with a very Cheesy Touch of a ’70s Supermarket!!!” Bruno, a former member of the Peruvian garage-punk band Los Peyotes, also throws in Middle Eastern riffs, kung-fu movie soundtrack sounds, and other surprises to create a wacky but very danceable brew.
10)Coulda Shoulda Woulda by Holly Golightly & the Brokeoffs. Holly Golightly and her partner “Lawyer Dave” Drake continue their streak of bare-boned funky-clunky country bluesy albums. Golightly is a native Brit, but this is a big sloppy homemade American mess, which of course I mean as a compliment. The whole album is packed with crazy fun.
