Michael McDermott

East Jesus and Lighthouse on the Shore

 Pauper Sky

Michael McDermott is one of our best, and severely under recognized singer-songwriters over the past three decades. He’s been compared to Springsteen and those familiar with McDermott’s work know that is not hyperbole. The iconic author Stephen king even wrote the liner notes for one of his albums. This writer ranked his 2020 What in the World and his 2022 St. Paul’s Boulevard among the top roots albums of those specific years. This time out McDermott has so much to say, that he’s releasing an acoustic and electric albums simultaneously. As he says, they are reflective of his dual personalities – the quiet side and the rocking side. Yet, McDermott has always been deeply personal. Burdened earlier in his career by addiction, he has been sober now for a decade. He sums up the acoustic  Lighthouse on the Shore and the electric East Jesus this way – “everything I’ve endured in this sometimes incomprehensible journey has led to these two albums.”

 McDermott mostly taps the collaborators who appeared on his past few albums. The acoustic album has McDermott on guitars, piano, bass, and vocals; Heather Lynne Horton on fiddle and vocals; Matt Thompson on stand-up and electric bass; Will Kimbrough on guitars, banjo, and mandola; John Deaderick on piano, keyboards, organ, and Omnichord; and Katie Burns on cello. Lighthouse on the Shore was produced and mixed by McDermott with additional production by Deaderick. There is strong musical continuity between the two as mostly the same cast except Burns appear on East Jesus with the array of instruments differing a bit. Glenn Tye (guitars) and drummers Steven Gillis and Gerald Dowd join the band. The album was produced and mixed by McDermott and Gillis.

 Lighthouse on the Shore opens with “Bradbury Daydream,”  with Deaderick’s late night piano bar accompaniment to lyrics that attest to the strongest affirmation of love – “I’ll be dancing with you at the end of the world.”  Horton’s fiddle drives the faster paced “Nothing Changes,” an ode to perseverance. The lilting ballad “Goddammit Lovely” has Celtic tinges that trace to McDermott’s love of Irish music that occasionally filter into his work.  In the musically droning “I Am Not My Father” McDermott states what many of us grapple with, especially when we’ve vowed never to adopt dad’s traits we don’t like, only to find them revealing themselves surprisingly and often in the worst moments. Springsteen comparisons are impossibly evident in the mid-tempo ballad “Hey-La Hey #23” especially in these closing lyrics – “Won’t you come with me, take a little ride/Tonight’s my heart is like the Fourth of July/Hey la Hey My O’ My.” The requisite, steadfast stance to remain sober courses through the passionate “Gonna Rise Up” while the more introspective, slowly building “Where God Never Goes”  addresses the same subject more obliquely.  The penultimate track though is the title track, again with Deaderick’s piano and Horton’s otherworldly violin setting a laconic, cloudy backdrop for McDermott’s breathy, confessional vocal, a heartfelt ode to his wife, Horton, who continues, like that lighthouse beacon, to steer him in the right direction.

East Jesus is mostly a fierce battle cry to fend off the demons and maintain sobriety. Initially the strumming acoustic intro for “FCO” is a bridge to the hard driving electric sonics. Played to a faintly Celtic pop pastiche, MeDermott expounds on the weary, often blurring life of the traveling troubadour. (“Woke up in Rome/Went to sleep in Chicago”). “Berlin at Night” is similar to the pop rock found on St. Paul’s Boulevard as McDermott curiously equates the power of love, the ultimate shield from temptation, to Berlin at night. Echoing strains of Tom Petty and even the shortly lived Traveling Wilburys color “A Head Full of Rain,” where McDermott sings with conviction in a series of admonitions about staying on that righteous path.  The title track, driven by Deaderick and Horton, seems to just as easily fit on the acoustic album, reinforcing the nature of these complementary works. McDermott relies on familiar conventions to express that the war against the demons is always ongoing in these clever lyrics:

“All is quiet on the western front/In East Jesus it’s coming undone/I didn’t think I could get any lower/The greatest mistake anyone can make/Is believing the war is over.”

“Lost Paradise” ratchets up the rock with its insistent line “You never step in the same river twice.” “Quicksand,” about the ever prevalent forces trying to drag us down, sets itself apart with the harmonious chanting of McDermott and Horton to an infectious rhythm. There’s a nostalgic vibe to “Charlie Brown which pitches hope for the downtrodden before the crunching, blaring “Behind the Eight” lets loose and powers up more forcefully than any other. The piano driven closer, “Whose Life I’m Living” offers a bit of symmetry to the opener on Lighthouse on the Shore with McDermott stepping back from so many of the life affirming songs, in an existential mode with the cinching, provocative lines – “I don’t know whose life I’m living/All I know is it don’t feel like mine.” On second thought, given his well chronicled journey, it can be take as an affirmative statement.

Once again, McDermott proves to be one of our most masterful songwriters, pairing these complementary albums with rich lyrics, and thoughtful, varied music. His lyrics are in the jacket if you purchase the CD or vinyl.  It’s best to read along while listening. Not only will you be struck by the poetry, but you may find encouragement to fight against your own struggles.

– Jim Hynes

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