Chicago-born DeWyze described his sixth album, Gone For Days as being about growth, questioning, and self-exploration, on which he’s variously joined by Union Station alumni Barry Bales and Tim Stafford, and cellist Dave Eggar. He cites Cat Stevens and Simon & Garfunkel among his influences, and fingerpicked, strings adorned opening track ‘Into The Wild’ positions itself in vintage Laurel Canyon territory as he sings how “We’re gonna find our light, at the end of the tunnel”.
Circling fingerpicked acoustic carries the gently sung, strings-swept ‘Wither’, another song of seeking new beginnings (“I don’t wanna spend my time/Withering away, in a ghost town/Let’s see it from the other side…I wanna feel the sunrise through the trees/I wanna be blinded by its light…Won’t you Wither with me”). Musically likewise and conjuring those early folksy S&G shades (and perhaps hints of Donovan’s ‘Colours’) with the sound of banjo ripples, strings and gathering in force as it heads to a close, ‘Reminds Me’ once more speaks of the power of nature (sun, rain, songbirds) to fill you with the joy of being alive.
Opening with indistinct background chatter and with handclap percussion and Bales on upright bass and ‘Devil In The Details’ is a more mid-tempo dusty gospel country chug, a slight echo on the vocals, about digging into finding a sense of self and purpose (“I’ve been wondering lately, about what I’m doing here/Through all the pills and coffee, I can swear I’m thinking clear/Oh if this is where I’m supposed to be God, you can rest your case/Until I find the answer, I’m a prisoner in this place”) as he sings “I can bend my knees no more/They say the Devil’s In The Details, but I’d swear he’s at my door/Broken gravestones in the churchyard, where the pastor says his prayers/Knowing all too well that someday, he’ll be buried under there/So before I go you all should know I’m prepared to pay my dues/If my debt’s too big for heavens gates, I’ll do what I have to do”.
On ‘All Is Well’ with its violin sweeps there’s a striking vocal and musical affinity with Art Garfunkel as, a lover’s quarrel perhaps, he sings of “Breaking promises we never even made/Taking back the words we never thought we’d say” and how “maybe it’s supposed to hurt like hell” before “when the night ends, we’ll go back to different versions of ourselves… Knowing now there wasn’t anyone at fault”.
At six minutes, ‘Bloom’ is the album epic, another musing on identity and change (“Some days I wake up I feel like a different person/That’s alright with me cause’ I still know my name… I am my mother’s apprentice, and I have my father’s eyes”) and the promise that “in the darkness even shadows find defeat …all we need sometimes/Is a little room/To make amends with our defeats and all the fears we left behind”.
Stafford on acoustic guitar and with aching violin and cello pulse, ‘Dandelion’ is a gentle bruised reminiscence of young love and how it passes (“We counted castles in the sky/You wore your mother’s heels and I wore my father’s tie/As dragons circled overhead/We made our promises on Dandelion beds…Time moved with the wind as winter showed/Our memories like fallen leaves, were buried by the snow/We were life willing volunteers/And now we never step were Dandelion beds appear”).
Friskier with a racing strum, the title track is again designed with natural pastoral imagery and a lyric that conjures notions of some woodland pantheistic rites of passage (“There were ghosts in the trees with unsettling eyes/Where the shadows feel at home and the darkness lies/The spirits got ahold and they don’t let go/I am one of them now how they claim their own/Oh I opened up a door I can never close/I’m not who I was before/It’s the path I chose”) and the received revelations (“I questioned everything that I’ve ever known/Nobody will believe the things that I’ve been shown…I made music with the creatures and the wildlife”).
Gone For Days ends where S&G link spirits with James Taylor on the simple acoustic and beguilingly lovely ‘Butterfly Effect (Afterword)’, an autobiographical approaching 40 love letter to California, his actress wife (Jonna Walsh), his sister and her two kids, his brother, a best friend who passed, his parents and even his dog as he muses “I wonder who I’d be If I never played guitar” and finds peace and acceptance with the life he has as he winds up advising “Don’t be afraid to take your time/Fuck things up and step out of line/You only do this thing one time, so live your life that way/And it’s okay to love and cry/Start new things and say good-bye/Don’t take life for granted and/Be careful when you step on Butterflies”. You should wither with him.
Mike Davies
Artist’s website: www.leedewyzeofficial.com
‘Devil In The Details’ – official video:
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