08/31/2015 Vermicius, Album review , 'The Bellfuries: Workingman’s Bellfuries'

Somebody on the Standup subreddit asked a question a while back: “What does it mean to be a ‘comedian’s comedian?’” The perfect answer: You’re as funny as Patrice O’Neal, but you’ll never be as rich as Dane Cook.” If there ever was a “musician’s musician” band, it’s the Bellfuries. Their third release – Workingman’s Bellfuries (Amazon, iTunes) – debuted Friday and it should be your new favorite record.

The measure of whether you exist nowadays is whether somebody took the time to write your Wikipedia entry. The Bellfuries don’t have one, which I might just as well write along with this review. The band’s one constant since 2001 is Joey Simeone, rhythm guitar player, pitch-perfect singer, and one of the best songwriters under the tent of what you could loosely call “Rockabilly.”

The first record, Just Plain Lonesome, appeared in May of 2001. A brief aside: I bought the record on the recommendation of Big Sandy and the Fly-Rite Boys frontman Robert Williams, when he was writing a regular column in a mail order CD catalog I can’t quite remember the name of. It arrived at my house the day before we invaded Afghanistan in October that year. I was out of work, and my wife and I got in the car and drove to Nova Scotia. For the next five days, about the only thing we listened to was Just Plain Lonesome.

It was a life-changing record. Rockabilly is a well-defined subgenre, and there aren’t many artists able to push its boundaries: Three chords, hiccups, standup bass, hollowbody Gretsch. If you can follow the Gene Vincent songbook and pile your hair up in a greasy pomp, you’re 85 percent of the way to starting a band and finding an audience.

The Bellfuries were wildly different. Joey Simeone wrote complicated songs with sometimes gut-wrenching lyrics. His song “Your Love (All That I’m Missing)” contains lyrics like:

Don’t need to worry about me taking care of you
I’m gonna treat you like the Queen I think you are
Believe, the man that I catch disrespecting you
He’s gonna know what it’s like to swallow this guitar

When JD McPherson – who is successful enough to have a Wikipedia entry – was released on Jimmy Sutton’s Hi-Style records in 2010, “Your Love (All That I’m Missing)” was the first cut to get any kind of airplay. Twelve years 19382-the_bellfuries_20press_20image880after the song debuted on Just Plain Lonesome, when JD McPherson’s record got a major release via Rounder, I heard that song on the PA at TJ Maxx.

The followup came seven years later, in 2008. Palmyra turned the rockabilly/pop combination on its head, leading with the pop side of the equation. Guitars were right up front, and not a lot of hollowbody Gretsch sound, either.

Here’s the review that still exists on the Rockabilly Hall of Fame page, written by a guy named Shaun Mather: “Have you ever had your heart ripped out of your chest and been left to bleed to death in the gutter. [sic] The sorrow you feel during those last moments is probably comparable to the misery this album will give you. After their stupendously good debut, Just Plain Lonesome in 2001, this long awaited follow-up seems even more pitiful. It’s just pop music, miles away from the previous rockabilly outing.”

That’s the danger in coloring outside the lines when you’ve aligned yourself with the wallet-chain and cuffed Levi’s crowd: If your record veers right or left, they’ll turn on you overnight.

It’s a goddamned shame, because Palmyra is a terrific record. Eddie Cochran it is not. It’s Mike Viola meets the very best of Matthew Sweet, with a heavy side of Rubber Soul. Songs like “Welcome to the Club” and “Death of an Idol” are exactly as well-written as the songs on Just Plain Lonesome, just with more of a power-pop feel than the record before it.

Workingman’s Bellfuries was a long time coming. On the last two records, the Bellfuries was Simeone, plus a rotating cast of characters well-known in Austin music circles: The Horton Brothers played a bit on the first record and backed Simeone when the band played at the 2002 Viva Las Vegas rockabilly weekender. On the second record, Big Sandy’s former drummer Bobby Trimble played, along with bass player Shecky Seaver.

On Workingman’s Bellfuries, the lineup changes again, but it’s been solidified in live performances for a while now. Guitar duties fall to the amazingly talented Mike Molnar. He cut his teeth as a young guitar player for the rockabilly legend Ronnie Dawson, and backed Dawson in his appearance on Late Night With Conan O’Brien. (For the record, that slot has been a AAA team for some of the most talented guitar players in the last 20 years, including the amazing Nick Curran, who passed away in 2012). Shecky Seaver is back on bass, and drummer Chris Sensat arrives after appearances with dozens of bands including The Alice Rose and The Jungle Rockers.

19383-Bellfuries_20Cover_20Final_201500x1500_20300dpiThe songwriting is as strong as ever on Workingman’s Bellfuries. “Loving Arms” is what qualifies as a “single” today. If you can reboot a song the way you can reboot a movie, think of this as an updated, McCarthy-era version of the Arthur Alexander song that the Beatles rode to early success: “Cease fire soldier, lay the weapon at your feet/Give up your arms to hold her/and concede defeat.”

“Bad Seed Sown” is where producer Jimmy Sutton’s influence seems most obvious. It’s got the same drum-forward feel as a lot of the songs on JD McPherson’s Signs and Signifiers. “Under the Light of the Moon” is a straightforward love song with some fabulous guitar work from Molnar. “An Illusion Believed” features steel guitar work from Sutton’s former partner in the Four Charms, guitar genius Joel Patterson. “Just Remembering” showcases Molnar’s guitar artistry. He’ll play that song live without a volume pedal. He creates those hypnotizing swells with the volume knob on the guitar.

“Letter to My Maybe Baby” has the most traditional rockabilly feel, but to reviewer Shaun Mather’s eternal consternation, these are again pop songs with a dose of rockabilly, not the other way around. The Beatles cover “She’s a Woman” comes from the band’s amazing live performances, which you can check out locally when the band plays at the New England Shakeup on September 25, or in the Albany area when the band plays at the Ale House in Troy. Do not miss it.

Standout tracks for me are the rockin’ cover of “Baltimore” which originally appeared as a bonus track on the remastered Just Plain Lonesome. It’s a rocker that showcases the ragged edge of Joey Simeone’s voice and Molnar’s Telecaster work.

The other is “Beaumont Blues.” It’s one of the most heartbreaking songs I’ve heard in years, about the inevitability of living in small-town Texas. It’s the kind of song Bruce Springsteen would write if he had the attention span to really dig small-town America, instead of just dipping into the well-worn tropes. Hiding the lyrics behind a swingin’ tempo, and foreshadowing the outcome with the sound effect in the intro is mature, experienced writing and arranging.

It’s a great record that has the wind of JD McPherson’s success in its sails, but I’ll eat my hat if I hear one of these songs in TJ Maxx. Bending genres is tough business. Just ask John Doe.