Jamestown Revival – Young Man: Album Review

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Jamestown Revival carry the traditions of Americana as the cultural crusade of their time and present Young Man as both a meditative album and an uplifting one. These are hard times, but there are always good times despite the mood and the bad moon rising.

Zach Chance, piano and Jonathan Clay, guitar grew up together in Magnolia, Texas. They were solo singer-songwriters who bumped around and managed to write their first joint song effort at fifteen. There was a vocal chemistry when they sang together. People reacted to it and eventually they came together as a band about ten years ago.

Jamestown Revival

Jamestown was the first English colony to be settled in America at the turn of the 1600’s. Through there also came the first ship of captured Africans, and the slave trade commenced in the state of Virginia.

Jamestown Revival also pays homage to Creedence Clearwater Revival, at one time the greatest American Rock’n’Roll band.

Although they feel this is a departure from the sound of previous albums, it feels like a natural progression and possibly a subtle maturation. They have used an outside producer for the first time, Robert Ellis. The Texas Piano Man. He has added some polish to the elements that were already there.

Coyote. The album creeps out with a resonating note which sounds like a musical saw. Then the sound of old Cowboy music and the Sons of the Pioneers. Quiet, understated vocals and gently swinging like the classic Cool Water. Lyrics have the feel of Hank Williams and his reveries of a Paradise lost. There is the faintest of yodels.

Young Man and their great harmony singing is to the fore. An Appalachian country fiddle, and drums are added. A two-step with Gospel overtones. There is a walk down to the river.

Saw my face at the water’s edge/ Man with a heavy heart/ Where did the young man go?

Reprised towards the end of the album with Old Man Looking Back. The tempo is slowed to a funereal march. A pedal steel is keening.

Young man, tell me whaddya you know/ You ain’t even seen your children grow/ You may not listen to what I say/ Just a young man wearing an old man’s shoes.

The drums come forward and lead in the spare and authoritative style of a Charlie Watts. You will notice the great walking bass too and the rest of the song becomes a fait accompli.

Working on Love is Americana as Country with a little Blues mixed in. A work song but then you hear I’m working on love like I’m working on the land. These are grand gestures of classic  American movie and literature. The fiddle anchors it to the South. These guys did come out of Magnolia, after all.

Northbound starts as a Pop song with piano playing a little soft Jazz to hook on the intro. Texas is a big old state/ Four days drive to get across the line. The songwriting has the tone of Willie Nelson who is arguably as much Jazz as he is Country. The overriding concept of this album could easily have come from Nelson’s classic Red-Headed Stranger.

These Days. Banjo and guitar twang and pick. Could be worked into a fast-stepping Bluegrass number. Chance and Clay are masters at slightly understating their voices, and thereby amplifying the little dramas into tension. Here they let go a little bit and climb the higher peaks. The Devil gets a name-check.

Slow it Down and some hand drums make for a great touch to lift a bouncing John Denver style Country-Pop workout. Whilst you can hear Creedence Clearwater’s influence right across this and earlier albums, there is the sweetness of melody with their vocal harmonies which comes from the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo.

As with other contemporary American artists, the turmoil and fracturing of America in the late Sixties and the music it inspired is back once again to serve the same purpose in new troubled times.

Why It Was widens the palette. Little melodic orchestral flourishes similar to what the Rolling Stones used on Aftermath. That had a lot of Country on it too. John Prine style observational lyrics with sly humour.  Hoboes/ Hillbillys/ Bankers in suits/ Hippies. The last one in Merle Haggard’s derogatory drawl.

A quiet triumph for a band who certainly have a deep connection to the history of their country and would like you to enjoy the ride, as they sing on Northbound.

Rev Orange Peel              

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