Steve Dawson

Ghosts

Pravda

Well over a decade ago, closer to two, at SXSW I witnessed an impressive performance by Steve Dawson, fronting his Chicago-based band, Dolly Varden. Yes, that Steve Dawson, not to be confused with roots, blues, and folk-rocker, Canadian and Nashville-based Steve Dawson. The former has released several solo albums too and we’re finally catching up to covering his latest and his sixth, Ghosts. Ah, this writer did cover one of Dawson’s jazz-folk-fusion project’s Funeral Bonsai Wedding albums. In any case, here Dawson recorded with a “dream band” of Chicago musicians, live in the studio calling this a ‘performance’ rather than a collection of overdubs. These are some of the most soulful, harmonious, and provocative songs that Dawson has written among his countless. The ensemble includes his longtime colleague Alton Smith on piano, and various keys, Brian Wilkie on pedal steel, John Abbey on bass with saxophonist Chris Greene and trumpeter John Moore. Tommi Zender adds baritone guitar while Gerald Dowd is on drums. Vocal harmonies come courtesy of his life partner, Diane Christiansen, Nora O’Connor (Neko Case, Andrew Bird) and Ingrid Graudins on the last track, as well as members of the band. Graudins unfortunately passed shortly after the album was recorded and thus dedicated to her memory.

Opener “Time to Let Some Light Shine In” features Smith on harmony vocals and Dawson’s slide guitar melding with Wilkie’s pedal steel in a melancholy backdrop as the narrator steadfastly swears off the past but hasn’t really convinced himself that it’s gone. The remainder of the album assures him it is indeed not gone from his thoughts. The weeping pedal steel introduces “Oh California” with O’Connor on harmony in a tune that’s seemingly wistful but ultimately tragic with the image of a gullible kid lingering in his mind. Even with the brutal lyrical ending, the instruments and voices are gloriously harmonic. He invokes the classic blues phrase, ‘hand me down my walking cane’ in a song titled with those last two words. It reads like an elegy of sorts, asking several rhetorical questions that point to our not having learned enough from the past. In the final analysis, there are no answers, just frustration and resignation. This reflective mood pushes into the acoustic “Sooner Than Expected,” Dawson singing with his wife while Smith plays accordion, rumination reaching its peak in this verse – “I still get the stab/in the center of my chest/when I remember your laughing face//loss by loss year by year/try to keep up/ try to keep pace.”

The only up-tempo country rocker comes with “Leadville,” Dowd on harmony, for a caustic narrative of a small town in Idaho where Dawson grew up as a teenager. If you’re thinking white nationalism and way too much testosterone, you’ve nailed it. Dawson has not a single nicety in his lyrics, the song beginning with “two stoplight, six churches, and a jail” and ending with “her brother was as stupid/as a sack full of doorknobs/we ran and got the hose/when he set himself on fire.” Greene and Moore and Dawson’s slide add some much-needed brightness to the deeply sad regretful tale “It Was a Mistake” while Dawson and Christiansen flip the scrip, singing blissfully in hopeful harmony on “I Am Glad to Be Alive.”

Utter despair and the sparse music to match are the essence of the devastating tale om “A Mile South of Town,” where the drunken ex-soldier and mama deer collide in the middle of the road. Dawson and his wife team again on the piano driven ballad “When I Finally Let You Down,” a series of guilt-ridden confessional lines. Lyrics and Wilkie’s pedal steel combine in the bleak closer “Weather in the Desert” as Dawson sings with Graudins, reminiscing about a past or perhaps passed friend, reminding us the as much as we may try, we can never shake the memories, especially the nightmarish kind.  The desert becomes a strong motif for the blurring of the many ghosts that grace these remarkable tales that cut to the bone. Dawson proves once again that it’s often the dark songs that draw us in. Prepare yourself to enter a tunnel that has a few splinters of light representing hope, Yet, these harrowing tales are rendered harmoniously, leaving an oddly soothing effect. We all have lingering memories we wish we could shake.

• Jim Hynes

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