Tag: Pete Townshend

Commissioned by Pete Townshend (who served as producer and plays bass and keys on two tracks) and conceived well before the interest revived by A Complete Unknown, this, the result of four years of research, is Meuross’ third song cycle and digs into the life and music of the iconic and hugely influential Woodrow Wilson Guthrie. While it does feature interpretations of four Guthrie classics, Fire & Dust isn’t a tribute album but rather a biography in song, some written from the perspective of family members, others inspired by Guthrie’s own diaries, it is as the title says a not the story.

Variously featuring Phil Beer on slide, mandolin and fiddle, Geraint Watkins on piano and accordion, fiddle player Marion Fleetwood, Roy Dodds on percussion, bassist Simon Walker, Beth Porter on cello and Katie Whitehouse on backing vocals, it opens with the title track, which, a reference to the dust bowl storms he and his family suffered (“Is this same god in who you trust/The god of fire the god of dust”), is Meuross’ own tribute to Guthrie’s music, legacy and influence . Mandolin trilling, he sings “You are the voice you are the call/You are the word of one and all”, the lyrics shorthand for the sparks that set him on his journey (“You heard the little shoe-shine boy/His harp of sorrow harp of joy/And vowed his song of slavery/You’d make a song of liberty”), referencing the inspiration of Chaplin (“The little man his cane and curls/Against a cruel and unjust world”) and, his mother committed to an asylum, teenage years in Halfway, Illinois (“Among the fallen and the failed/And the Little Juarez working girls”) where he and his father ran a rooming house cum brothel, ending with how he wrote ‘The Hobo’s Lullaby’ for Mobile Mac and Denver Fly and the other rail riding homeless.

Riding a circling fingerpicked pattern and rippling banjo notes, the swayalong shuffling ‘A Folk Song’s A Song’ is, as it suggests, a working definition of the form (“A folk song’s a song that says you are free/And whoever you are you are someone to me/And this is your world ‘though it’s knocked you around/This land – is your land and this town is your town”). The line “Hey hey Woody Guthrie I made you this song” is, of course, a direct nod to that of Dylan’s in his ‘Song To Woody’, as he sings “From the words you been sayin’ and the tunes you have sung/I wrote it to say we’ve been listening to you”.

The first of the family perspectives, Fleetwood on shared vocals, is ‘Mary’s Song’ in the voice of Guthrie’s first wife, Mary Jennings, sister of his fellow Corncob Trio member Matt (“I didn’t expect much of me/I didn’t expect much of life/But when you came along with your hobo poetry/Was no chore to be your teenage wife”), his father’s reservations about her being catholic soon resolved by her father’s home brew), as she relates getting pregnant and her husband’s restless spirit (“Should’a noticed it then you were leaving again/You just didn’t know which way to go”). They would have three children before, given the ultimatum of joining him on the road or go back to Texas. She chose Texas and divorce.

Another swayer with barroom piano and thumping drum march beat, sung from his father’s perspective, ‘I Sent For A Wife’ is an amusing song about a mail order bride who, like many a dating app, turns out not to be what the singer expected (“I looked for a slim blonde haired angel in vain/She was built like a sailor her pretty days had passed”) The line “the mother of my children went crazy and died” does of course refer to Woody’s mother, the song deriving from the fact, after her death, Charley wrote off to a Lonely Hearts Club, resulting in him marrying Bettie Jean McPherson, who claimed to be nurse but was actually a snake oil seller involved in all kinds of mumbo jumbo and who had invented something she called Electro-Magnetic healing. Nevertheless, though he says “I stayed clear of her nursing cos I valued my life”, she filled the emotional void and “the kids seem to like her she’s kind and she’s clean”. Inevitably, it didn’t end well, she realising Charley wasn’t any sort of meal ticket, she encouraging him to tale off for Texas looking for a lost silver mine!

The first of the Guthrie numbers, Whitehouse on backing, comes with the jaunty sway of ‘So Long It’s Been Good To Know Ya’, the others, in track order, being a ruminatively melancholic ‘Ain’t Got No Home’, the anthemic ‘This Land Is Your Land’ and a simple fingerpicked ‘Deportee’. The latter has thematic echoes, Townshend on backing, in the earlier Meuross-penned accordion-coloured bluesy chug and shuffle of ‘Fit For Work (Illegal Hands)’ (“For twenty years I’ve crossed the Rio Bravo/I know just how that river pulls and flows/But for its grace we live and for its grace we die/But without a well in our land nothing grows…. In Charco I am Senor Guadalupe/I plough the earth as straight as any man/But here I’m just another Enganchados/And I make a dollar any way I can/So I’m working in the fields in California/If I live ‘til fifty I’ll retire/I’ve seen so many taken by that river/Fit for work – illegal hands for hire”).

Likewise, Porter adding vocals, its narrative resonates in the poignant imagery of ‘Red Shoes’ (“She sees their poor scared faces she’ll calm them down somehow/ Maria says to Lupe “You wanna cure these deport blues?”… Maria could be happy in those red shoes…When the plane came down Bobby heard the sound/Of prayers and grown men crying to be saved/She called Frank’s name he pulled her close/And in the screaming begged her to be brave/He pulled the throttle one last time but the broken bird refused…and falling from the wreckage were those red shoes”).

Two songs have Guthrie’s name in their title, the first, ‘Woody Come Home’, balances those calling on him as an activist (“Come out Woody boy come sing us your song/Out here on the lines is where you belong/Sing against prejudice sing against hate/Sing against fascists before it’s too late”) with Mary’s plea to her husband (“I’m lonely and broke in this desolate place loving words in your letters and love in your life/Bring some love home to your kids and your wife/Well you bought us a freezer kids eat snow every day/But their teardrops are warm when their papa’s away”).

The other is ‘Woody Guthrie’s Chains’, sung in his voice as he speaks of his calling (“From the day my eyes were opened when my earthly soul was born/I’ve been chained to the forsaken the forgotten and forlorn/To the patch of blue that haunts them on the dew of my own breath/I will raise my song to meet them when they have no singing left”), the lyric referencing his father’s alleged affiliations with the KKK and the infamous postcard of a Black mother and child hanging from a railway bridge on the Canadian River , his dedication to fighting for freedom “and their right to walk this land” hooked to a reference to his autobiography, Bound For Glory.

Which is what’s presumably being referred to in the line “I’m trying to finish this book ‘bout the time that I went off to sea/Angry torpedoes and plenty of beer/My pal Cisco Houston and me”, which opens ‘Stackabones & Runaway Boy’ which, titled for the nickname given his fourth child, Cathy, a daughter by second wife, dancer Marjorie Greenblatt Kazia, concerns her need for a father (“Sit with your face close to mine Daddy please/And sing me a runaway song/Paint me a picture and make it with love/Hold me tight all the night long”), now a Merchant Seaman, who’s always got his eyes on some other horizon (“I’ve been gone in the barroom too late/I’ve been out on the highway too long… All I ever wanted is right here right now/The girl and the child of my dreams/So what is this longing this ache in my heart”). In a subtext to the album title, fire was the cause of two tragedies in the family, his sister Clara accidentally setting herself alight and Cathy dying at age four due to faulty wiring.

Clara’s death (“How did the fire get ya gal?/I poured oil on my dress”) and his mother’s insanity are directly mentioned in ‘I Ain’t Dead’, reportedly the words Guthrie spoke to Dylan on their meeting, fire and dust meeting in a self-accusatory number about his failings as husband and father (“Where are the wages for his gal?/He drank ‘em all away/Why do you sleep alone at night/Some bar girl’s got his pay – oh lord some bar girl’s got his pay….Why doesn’t daddy sing tonight?/He’s gone to organise …He’s saving jobs for the working man/When will we be saved?/He saves their homes he saves their land/When will we be saved?”).

Beer and Fleetwood both on fiddle the strummed, organ-backed ‘Riding To Jerusalem’ draws on Christian imagery to pose the question of whether dedication to the craft (“If it was your work to make a cross to feed the family table/Would you not make the finest cross as well as you are able?/And if you were a smith in iron to craft the nail and sword/Would you not make your sabre fine to gain the most reward?”) is at the expense of those for whom it’s tasked (“If holy robes defined you then but some God made you naked/What cost your pride in lives of men to keep your temple sacred?”).

It ends with ‘The Gypsy Singer’, a song in the voice of Dylan and mirroring the scene in the film where he visits Guthrie in hospital (“His lungs could barely hold a breath his body frail and weak”) and is about his legacy (“All these coffee bar folk singers singing for you/These are your children and this is your wife/The breath of their love is the breath of your life”) and the passing of the torch (“And so I wore the gypsy’s suit when my turn came around/And on that night the lightening flashed I heard the thunder pound/But all the while the song of stars played gentle in my head/I went to see the gypsy singer he whispered ‘I ain’t dead’”).

Townshend says he saw the project drawing a direct line from Guthrie to Dylan to Meuross as the protest voices of their day. The times may be a changing, but, like those two predecessors, Meuross always ensures the truth is never their victim.

Mike Davies

Artist’s website: www.regmeuross.com

‘Woody Guthrie’s Chains’ – live: