After a series of collaborative album over the past decade, Ring-A-Bellin’ is the Nashville-based German singer-songwriter’s first solo album in six years, albeit here joined by fiddler Tammy Rogers bassists Mark Fain and, on upright, Michael Rinne, Jeff Taylor on accordion, Laura Boosinger on clawhammer banjo with both Mike Compton and Tim O’Brien, contributing mandolin, the latter also playing banjo and mandola. Drawing on such influences as Charlie Poole, Jimmie Rodgers and Norman Blake, embracing bluegrass, folk, blues and Americana, and informed by his interest in the work of Carl Jung and the concept of alchemy, which he suggests mirrors the work of a songwriter, it’s an 18 track set of songs with personal roots that firmly showcases his talent as writer, singer and guitarist.
Opening up with the fingerpicked ‘Too Many Walls’ which, with a melody line that echoes ‘Long Black Veil’, is a personal number that draws on the different houses in which he’s lived, three of which were cursed by deaths. As he puts it “Life is so simple/Till it all falls apart” and the song speaks of time and space and what moves in and what stays out with each transition.
Thinking back to growing up in Germany, the bluesy ‘Mourning Moon’ speaks of those memories that get into your head and you can’t shake (“Just takes one bad dream/To make you cold with sweat/One memory/To make you hate your bed/One ghost you’ve seen/And it stays there in your head the whole night through”). Jutz and his guitar took to the road at nineteen, and, with banjo and fiddle, the ragtime picked ‘Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Blues’ talks of that sense of rolling with life as it comes and making your own luck (“I’m a rambling gambling man from Tennessee/Looking for a game of cards/Four aces in a deck and one up my sleeve/Makes the winning not so hard”). Plucked banjo is again to the fore on the pizzicato-rhythm ‘Sharpen Your Knife’, the message of which is that “A dull blade will cut you more than a sharp one , so, no matter your plans, sharpen your knife”, or given the nature of the music business, never rest on your laurels because you don’t know what’s coming.
Inspired by Cormac McCarthy’s semi-autobiographical novel ‘Suttree’, the dobro picking ‘Knockin’ Around Knoxville’ recalls spending time there after moving Tennessee, feeling lost and despondent (“Dirty windows, broken doors/Day don’t even get in anymore/When it rains here, you know it pours …Could go to Nashville, but Nashville’s tough/Could go to Bristol, try my luck/They say you sing for the record man/He’ll put a new pineapple your hand/It ain’t much of no kind of plan… I don’t know/Might just go knockin’ around Knoxville again”), although the defeatist “I started pretty good, but turned out bad” is offset by the brighter side of “There’s a graveyard behind the church/Bunch of guys digging around in the cold hard dirt/Cheer up boys, could be worse”.
‘Stirring Up The Ghosts’ has a funkier groove to its blues while, by contrast, a childhood memory of a couple of scrap iron collectors (one he extends as a metaphor for the songwriter’s craft) and from whence the album derives its title, ‘Rag And Bone with its wheezing accordion and fingerpicked acoustic carries the scent of Appalachian pines and sports the wonderful lines “A wagon is a castle when the rain falls hard/A pipe is a lantern when the night gets dark… I just ain’t got the heart to turn anything down/That ain’t all broken”.
A co-write with Mando Saenz, featuring banjo and cast in the same dirty track as Townes Van Zandy, the backwoods gospel ‘Holy Mother Mountain’ is an album standout with its message that storms will always blow and you just have to head for higher ground. In similar vein, opening with distant fiddle and featuring banjo, a virtually unaccompanied intro and the repeated title refrain, ‘Road To Damascus’ draws on the Bible story of Paul as a reminder to himself that all growth has to happen within the framework of his life as he sings “If you find yourself alone with many miles behind you/Wondering how many more to go/Remember how the light once shone and let that story guide you”.
Unless you attain bulletproof status as a musician (and not even always then),there’ll always be days when it all seems a pointless uphill struggle and the chorus of ‘Bitter Change’ is a mantra to “Keep my head down, bend to the work”. There are, though, moments when you turn dirt into gold, ideas into songs, something that underpins the piano tinkling and circling guitar notes of the troubadour folk-coloured ‘The Alchemist’s Way’, the four steps also relating to personal development (“If it worked with the metal, it could work with the soul/You start with the darkness of shadows and crows/Melt it to ashes so something can grow”). It’s also the only song that comes with a political point too (“The wicked and weak only use the craft to/Make a quick coin just to fill up their purse/But their purchase is poisoned, their commerce is cursed/They’ll give you the dungeon for breaking the law/The king doesn’t give a God’s Hooks what you saw/All they can see is the sulphur and smoke/Your magnum opus is their dirty joke”). I don’t know if Trump or Musk were on his mind, but they may be on yours.
Having passed the halfway point, rather than dissect all of the remaining tracks, let me direct you to particular highlights, such as the goodtime banjo picking ‘There’s A Rock In The Middle’ which, a bit like a children’s playground number, is another about how obstacles only make you stronger, while the ruminative ‘Way Past Whiskey Time’ talks about not relying on crutches to get through the darker hours (“My glass is never empty/My glass is never filled/I live on prayers and curses/Dark forces and free will”). As the title might suggest ‘Out Jumped The Devil’ is a bluesy number, inspired by another childhood memory, about a weird and usually drunk guy who’d pass by his parents’ house, scaring the shit out of the young Thomm by saying the devil was after him.
It ends with, first, the circling notes of the five-minute ‘The Hammer And The Anvil’ with its alchemical creative process imagery (“It took half a lifetime of swinging and sweating/The master apprentice finally learning the lesson/That fire and forge bring forth so it’s seen/I’m the hammer, I’m the anvil, I’m the iron between”) and finally the wistfully picked ‘Settle Me Down’ which plays as a hymn to musical creativity and its purpose (“Play a tune that’s smooth like water…Words that soothe like sweet salvation…Pick us out a little old, old song/Something sweet that’ll roll like a river/Carry my worries till they’re long, long gone”), quite literally singing for the sake of the song. In the last line he says there’s “nothing that I’d rather do”. These are 18 good reasons he shouldn’t stop.
Note: There’s also a 40 page hardback book companion printed on beautiful, heavy art paper with lyrics, liner notes, essays that speak to the nature of each song, and quotes that correspond to the tracks on the album with each song lyric and essay accompanied by an original piece of artwork either inspired by or inspiring the songs.
Mike Davies
Artist’s website: www.thommjutz.com
‘Settle Me Down’ – live:
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