I grew up in a trailer perched on a hillside, one cowpath and a pair of dirt roads between us and the neighbors. When I think of banjo, I remember the old guy who lived across the county on Wolf Run Road, plaid and denim, black suspenders, work boots, and a plug of Skoal in his cheek. He didn't play much in public, but when he did, damn the arthritis, there's a show to play – and he'd tear up the fretboard for everyone in earshot.
And punk, in boots and suspenders, says damn the cops, there's a show to play – and we'd tear down the walls, despite anyone in earshot.
So when Los Angeles-based Old Man Markley is sold as "punk bluegrass" and features washboard, autoharp, fiddle, washtub bass, and, yes, banjo, I've got high hopes for a gritty barn-burner. But their latest release is less Earl Scruggs-meets-GG Allin, more Avett Brothers without the bashful brooding; the Old 97’s without the scruff and distortion; a bottle of half-proof whiskey brought up in a clean, unburnt barrel: in other words, about half of something you've had before, and about as far from something you'd want a second time.
Down Side Up is produced by Fat Mike, founder of Fat Wreck Chords and SoCal punk rock mainstays, NOFX. Fat Mike's been in business awhile, and the man knows his way around a studio. Which may be part of the problem: front man John Carey's vocals are . . . there, and Annie DeTemple is sweet on the couple of songs she sings. But good country sounds like shame and hurt. Good punk rock sounds like anger and edge. This is the sound of seven ridiculously talented musicians strumming away in a clean, well-lit studio.
The first track, "Blood on My Hands," starts things off with a stomping beat, plucky strings, and its heart in the right place. And the last song – "Too Soon for Goodnight" – taps into the ambivalence of an after-show buzz, sad and still wanting to rock.
But pick almost any track in the middle, toss the nonspecific, blue-collar angst ("Trading years for an hourly wage, ripping out the following page/These walls feel more and more like a cage, you're looking older than your age" – "Blindfold") and lyrics that sound like something from Punk in Drublic's B-side ("The corporate propaganda paralyzes us with fear/Destroying our ability to trust/Fear keeps us fighting with each other over scraps/Starving to death in the dust" – "America's Dreaming") and it'd fit comfortably between a Prairie Home Companion sketch about laconic Minnesotan lumberjacks and the news from Lake Wobegon.
And then there's the lyrical weirdness that is "Beyond the Moon:" "Don't wanna lose my mind like Gary Busey did/Once upon a time he was the same as you and me/But if I lose my mind like Gary Busey did/Promise me you'll be around to keep me company." I'm just not sure a D-list celebrity with a head injury sustained during a motorcycle accident lends much besides an ironic chuckle when the chorus first pops up. And after the sixth time through . . . I get it. Gary Busey.
Everyone in OMM is technically proficient: rhythm is tight, washboard included; banjo, fiddle, harp and guitar are all picking and sliding away like a well-oiled family sedan.
But when I hear banjo, I want it howling from a ditch choked with cattails, maybe the stink of a sun-bloated possum curling through the humid buzz of the cicadas. There's a rusted out Ford burring down the road with its exhaust pipe strung up on a bent coat hanger. John Carey and Co. better holler, or I won't hear a thing over the belch and roar of that tin-can deathtrap.
Yeah, yeah, it's not about where you're from, it's where you're going. Down Side Up, though, sounds like it's riding along the I-10, far from the stink of any possum.
Grade: C+
Old Man Markley is disingenuous as are you.