Growing older (and wiser) with the Bohannons
I sat down to listen to the newest release from the Bohannons, titled Bloodroot, and waited for inspiration to strike. In truth, it gets harder to write about one of the area’s most solidly great bands.
There’s only so many times you can say the guitar is blistering, the rhythm section is rocking, the vocals, soaring. It’s the price of being the best.
Or so I assume.
People grow to expect every note to be brilliant and when it is, well, that’s just those boys doing what they do, so what’s to say that hasn’t already been said? Don’t take this as sarcasm; I mean it. Matt, Marty, Mike and Billy are flat-out the best around and what can I add to that to make it any clearer than it already is?
“Well I see her at Christmas, maybe twice a year, when somebody is married, or buried here.”
And then that lyric hit me, like a ton of bricks. Never mind that the backing music was just delicious or that Marty’s delivery was, well…nobody else could deliver it any better. Those things, as I’ve said, are practically a given already.
Those words, though…in a flash I was acutely aware of how old I am, how far removed from the places I grew up, the family and friends I used to know and how it seems more and more that the last lingering connection I have with where I am from comes in the form of funerals and weddings.
And there, ladies and gentlemen, is the hook, the thing I can say about a band whose praises I’ve already sung plenty over the years. With this latest release, the Bohannons have hit a new high water mark with the resonance, with the truth of their work.
Please bear with me on what’s going to seem like an odd comparison at first.
At the tender age of seventeen, Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page” was, to me, the epitome of life on the road for a working musician…because I hadn’t been one yet. See, there’s a hint of truth underlying the dusty old tune, but mainly it’s more what a seventeen-year-old might imagine life is like for a musician, a caricature with exaggerated features and made-up, overly dramatic bits.
I’m not ragging the tune or the artist, but I will say that anyone who’s actually spent time on the road and in the industry (myself included) hears that song and gets a wry grin or maybe an eye-roll, because we know what it’s trying to approximate, can even appreciate the effort, but we know how close it doesn’t get.
Bloodroot, on the other hand, nails it. And it isn’t just a “life on the road” album, it’s a “life” album.
“It’s inspired by our home, family, friends, and this indelible planet,” Marty explains. “The songs are vignettes of this wild journey…”
So there you have it, the album is as much as series of observations gleaned from thirteen years of touring and living, delivered with a subtlety so fine, you don’t even recognize that’s what they’re doing until after they’ve done it.
The music itself covers a lot of ground. “Howler” isn’t precisely psychedelic, but it has a haunting aspect I find very appealing. “Hungover Hills” sounds deceptively light-hearted, yet there is a darker element just beneath the surface that never entirely reveals itself but leaves you with a feeling that there’s more going on behind the scenes of the carnival than clowns and elephants. “My Dark Roots” is just some by-god great rock and roll. “Sister Twister”, “Cold Case”, Nice and Slow”, every track has something a little different to offer musically.
It’s all brilliant. But the takeaway for me, the common element binding the tracks together, is the plain and simple truth of it all. The Bohannon’s lyrics have never been lacking, but there is something here in this latest release that goes further and deeper than they’ve done before, and so I will attest that an LP that was bound to be great before the first track was laid has yet again raised the bar for the brothers.
Bloodroot isn’t just a hell of an album; it’s an album that I will be thinking about long after the last note sounds.