What's in your CDP tonight? the minority report

I posted about this album on another thread, but it’s too good to get missed, so here it is again. It’s Walk Through Walls by Brian Capps, released on Hightone Records in 2005, when that label was amongst the best in the world (it’s now out of business). I recently got the last copy Waterloo Records in Austin had, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find.

And it will be worth the effort. Capps was a member of the Roots Rock band The Domino Kings, and after leaving formed The True Liars with members of the best unknown band in the country, The Morells (who had their own album on Hightone, also excellent and well worth looking for), out of Springfield Missouri. Morells’ bassist Lou Whitney produces Walk Through Walls, the other members of the band providing exactly the kind of accompaniment I crave. Guitarist D. Clinton Thompson has worked extensively as a sideman for artists such as Steve Forbert, Jonathan Richman, Scott Kemper, The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Robbie Fulks, Andy Shernoff, and The Del-Lords; he is GREAT! Drummer Bobby Lloyd Hicks has been with Dave Alvin (The Blasters) for years, and his parts are really cool.

The music is 100% American Roots---Sun Records Rockabilly (especially Johnny Cash), early Rock ’n’ Roll, a touch of Hillbilly, early-60’s Frat Rock and Instrumental R & R touches, but also some Singer/Songwriter influences. Capps is a good songwriter and an okay singer, but it is the musicianship of The Morells (a favorite band of the hippest musicians I know, as a well as those I don’t---Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello have expressed their appreciation) that I love about the album. Aspiring young Rockers, THIS is how to play the music!

@ghosthouse, I used the term hip in the sense of being hip to what makes a musician a good one, a band a good one, a song a good one. Dave, Nick, EC have real good taste, loving NRBQ and Los Lobos as well as The Morells.

There are moments in every musicians life when he realizes he has outgrown those around him, and he moves on, being offered opportunities denied to those he leaves behind. I saw this for the first time when my musical world became divided in two: those who "got" The Band (and others like them), and those who didn’t. Those who didn’t stayed mired in the "old" musical world, those who did kept progressing.

Awhile back there was a reunion of old musician friends in San Jose, and both factions were there. I knew what became of the latter group, as they and I had crossed paths over the years, sometimes working together. The former group was still in a 1967-8 mindset, still playing "Rock" music. I was played some of their demo tapes, and they had obviously not moved beyond the Jefferson Starship and Journey mentality. You feel pity for them.

One listen to The Morells and you instantly know how cool they are. They also made music as The Skeletons and The Symptoms, and guitarist D. Clinton Thompson put out some great 7" 45’s. Their musical instincts are impeccable, right up there with Buddy Miller, Rodney Crowell, John Hiatt, Marty Stuart, and the rest of the Americana crowd. Bassist/producer Lou Whitney and drummer Bobby Lloyd Hicks have both died of lung cancer (from guess what ;-), as has my old bandmate Paul Skelton of Austin’s Cornell Hurd Band, one of whose albums Lou Whitney produced. He was a national treasure, greatly missed in my world.