From Santa Cruz, Gerard Egan doubling on acoustic guitar and triple neck steel and Carolyn Sills on stand-up bass, the punningly named duo channel 50s honky tonks and the tropical lounges of 1930s Los Angeles with both self-penned and vintage Americana, playfulness being the keynote.
Case in point is the opener, ‘Don’t Steal My Covers’ as Sills lays down her single rule for her lover, saying “You can raid my ice box until the deviled eggs are gone/You can drink my liquor until you don’t know right from wrong/You can build a go-kart with the tools inside my shed/Just don’t steal the covers off my bed”. It’s actually inspired by their bed-sharing dog, Coyote.
A 1939 steel guitar instrumental by Dick McIntire, the hula swooning ‘Twilight Blues’, heads to Hawaii to do a Wout Steenhuis with an original lyric that’s rarely more than the song title, the island specifically summoned in the musically kindred ‘Why Oh Why Have I Not Been To Hawaii’, again with a lyrical quirk to the tale (“I’ve strolled the cells of Alcatraz, surrounded by the sea/But why I’ve not been to Hawaii’s more criminal to me”).
Twilight Blues relocates to Texarkana territory and Valentine’s Day for ‘Tuesday In Las Cruces’ and a song that musically and lyrically calls My Darling Clementine to mind as Sills sings “I was never one for billiards, there’s just something about that sound/When the cue ball strikes the others, like a hammer on the ground/But I’m all for throwing objects with sharp points against a wall/On a Tuesday in Las Cruces, when February rains don’t fall”) and the tale of falling in love with a stranger (“I’d rather get to know a stranger than sit here talking about myself/For if we had nothing in common, wouldn’t we both be somewhere else/But at this bar and at this hour, don’t we all just want the same…They began to turn the lights on, to turn us all out on our way/We fell in love that night Las Cruces; we didn’t know what else to do)”.
They punctuate things with an instrumental, ‘The Dollars Medley’ being as it suggests the twangsome themes of the Leone Westerns complete with lonesome whistling and added barking by Cowboy and Zinger.
It’s back to the tropical crooners lounge for soft shoe shuffle love song duet ‘You’re All That I Need’, a new lyric rework of rework of Tennessee Ernie Ford and Kay Starr’s ‘You’re All That I Need’ from 1950, before, borrowing Daffy Duck’s wittily titled 1941 Looney Toon of the same name, the musically scampering ‘Can’t Get A Long Little Doggie’, a “no dogs allowed” lament based on their own problems finding a pet-friendly rental (“That’s why I can’t get a long little doggie/I can’t even get one that’s small/No I can’t get a long little doggie/I can’t get a doggie at all”). And it ends of course with a great punchline – “I mustered up and went to tell the landlord that was that/And wouldn’t you know his house was filled with forty seven cats”. It’s things like this that really brighten up the day.
Twilight Blues ends with a cover, Egan again whistling, and an original arrangement of Jimmy Wakely’s 1946 cowboy prairie lullaby from the film of the same name. A real joy, happy trails indeed.
Mike Davies
Artists’ website: www.poirogers.com
‘Don’t Steal My Covers’/’160 Acres’/’Moon Over Montana’ – live:
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