Tag: Robbie K Jones

Based in Spain with two Irishmen (frontman Garrett Wall and bassist Dave Mooney), an Englishman (trumpeter Howard Brown) and an American (Robbie K. Jones on cajon and banjo) and named for workers on the New York subway system, the quartet came together in 2006 since which time they’ve released eight albums of generally lively and upbeat songs built around the core instrumentation of acoustic guitar, electric bass, trumpet and cajon with smatterings of banjo, uke and mandolin. So Tracks Laid, Tracks Covered is a sort of taking stock retrospective and looking ahead, a double set that pulls together back catalogue material from their first six albums and numbers only previously released on EPs alongside new songs and a collection of covers mostly culled from those albums.

Tracks Laid is 20 of their own numbers and, working the assumption that you’re familiar with the band, I won’t be detailing the previously available tracks, though, if a newcomer, I’d suggest you check out ‘The Deep End’, ‘Find Me A Rose’ and ‘All Roads (Lead Me To Roam)’ to get a flavour. It’s new number that launches the disc with the flamenco urgency of ‘Amor De Mi Vida’, which, translating as the love of my life, is about finding someone to help endure the misery (“I rent a one-room hole in a downtown mess/Got a job that seems to pay less and less/In a world that shakes you down for every cent/Debts and grief since I don’t know when/Bury my head in a bottle again/You’d think our time on earth would be better spent/But every time I think I’ve reached my limit/Like a roulette wheel you make me spin it”).

Two further new numbers follow, the more straightforward 12 string folk rock strum of the hook-friendly ‘Beauty in The Mud’ and the slower, more reflective, trumpet-shaded end of a relationship ballad ‘Bridges Are All Burnt’. The remaining two new tracks are at the back end, the first, featuring Nick Haughton on banjo, being the uke ragtime shuffling ‘Year, Right’, ‘No Way Jose’ with its believe it when I see it lyric (“There’s a guy I know too well/Says his traveling life is hell/Out on the road dozens of show/Where was the last town? Nobody knows/Now he says he just might quit/Maybe slow down after one more stint/Yeah, like he’s really gonna quit it”). The second, and disc closer, is the rhythmically urgent list song (“this is hate this is joy/this is what we will destroy/this is sway this is tilt/this is innocence and guilt/this is to this is fro/this is everywhere we go”) ‘All Of The Above’ which, accompanied only by Jones’s cajon, with a percussive solo, is driven by just voices and claps.

Stating the obvious, CD2, Tracks Covered is cover versions, except when they’re not, Wall’s sustained holler of “Ruby” heading the first recording of banjo-driven live favourite ‘Ruby, Are You Mad At Your Man?’, an old bluegrass number written by Kentucky picking legend Cousin Emmy, recorded by her in 1946 and popularised by a decade later by the Osborne Brothers and Red Allen. Again two further new recordings follow, next up, Javiolìn Segui on fiddle, being the call and response ‘This Old Heart’, a bluegrass tune penned by Eddie Miller (who wrote ‘Release Me’) and Bob Morris, first recorded by Skeets McDonald in 1960 and subsequently Kitty Well and Buck Owens over the next four years. The third, an odd one out given it’s not a cover or actually new, is ‘Donna Lola’, originally from 2022’s ‘Where To Now’ and subsequently released as a single in 2024 as a full band version with Cathy Jordan on vocals, Nina Zella on vocals and piano, melodeonist Simon Care and drummer Tim Walker. Elsewhere, cover choices eclectically range from Lionel Richie (‘Easy’), Ronnie Lane (‘Ooh La La’), Nick Drake (‘Hazey Jane II’) and, hitherto only on vinyl, ‘Man Of Constant Sorrow’ while eleven are originals taken from past albums, save for the all new final number, closing time Tom Waitsy piano blues ‘Wine On The Piano’ (“Maybe they’ve still got some old cheap cigars/Hidden back there behind the bar/The kind they might give ya when everyone’s gone and the regulars know who you are”) with its warmly melancholic trumpet solo from Brown and singing and swaying together into the night finale. Infectious good time music infused with Spanish sun and wine filtered by a dash of bluegrass, this is a fabulous celebration of their last 20 years. Here’s to the next.

Mike Davies

Artists’ website:  www.trackdogsmusic.com

‘Ruby, Are You Mad At Your Man?’ – official video: