MAD BUFFALO
''A GOOD BAD ROAD''
2004
52:10
1. Coyote Dreams/3:31
2. A Good Bad Road/4:31
3. Little Bird/5:19
4. Needles/3:41
5. Find the Time/3:10
6. Idaho/4:52
7. Julia/4:00
8. Prairie Home/4:37
9. Camp Disappointment/5:06
10. Tragedy of the Commons/3:04
11. Live Wire/3:46
12. Hell Hold/6:34
Randy Riviere/Guitars, Vocals
Michael Ward/Guitars
Gary McKenzie, Bob Glaub, Reggie McBride/Bass
Dave Hawkes, Nick Morrone, Gregg Thomas/Drums
Sherry Pedigo/Vocals
Marty Grebb/Keyboards, Sax
Lyrics
Coyote Dreams
Saw you down on that dusty road
With hair all tangled and free
You just turned and gave me a greasy smile
On your way down to Tennessee
Oh oh oh oh oh oh
It don’t take a village
To get you what you need
Red moon over smoky sky
Makes it hard to see
But you’ve got an edge on that rocky ledge
Where you know misfortune be
Oh oh oh oh oh oh
You can pay for all of Virginia
But these dogs will howl for free
You can pay for all of Virginia
But this dog will howl for free
I’m thinking about ragged jeans and coyote dreams
Out in the weeds where livin’ is free
I think I’ll buy an old truck and with a little luck
I’ll find a little edge for me
Oh oh oh oh oh oh
If you pave over Virginia
These dogs will go to Tennessee
If you pave over Virginia
This dog will go to Tennessee
© 2003 Randy Riviere
A Good Bad Road
Born in good grass and fields of stone
To me and the javelina this is our home
Where the air is blue and the sky is high
You can take a long walk and never say goodbye
Chorus
You won’t see me on your holiday
I’m out here in this silver sage alone
And all there is between us my friend
Is a good bad road
Raised on waves of sun unkind
Had to grow thorns just to survive
Where the sand can blow like a driving snow
I’ve never heard a sound that I don’t know
Hear the thunder
And I wonder
If I’m gonna make it home
Grown old on time I used for free
And giving back something is all right by me
Where the wind and raven touch the ground
There’s a place not needing another town
© 2003 Randy Riviere
Little Bird
Little bird sitting on the window sill
In that hard north wind there’s a bitter chill
You were fledged young and now out on your own
Has the air gotten colder now that you’re grown?
Hey hey, you’re out on your way
Can’t keep this world from turning
You’d better get down south today
There’s a ribbon of highway on the edge of town
Where you can hear the engines whining and see the wheels roll around
And inside there’s only concrete and buildings so tall
They keep the sun from shining and the trees don’t grow at all
Hey hey, you’re out on your way
Can’t keep this world from turning
You’d better get down south today
Chorus
Trouble’s not something you want
Trouble’s not something you need
No one gave you nothing to start
No one gives you nothing for free
Little bird you got away
From that iron hand of winter and all the crows that came your way
Outside there’s fields that grow
Seeds of truth and timber to stop the winter when it blows
Hey hey, you’re out on your way
Can’t keep this world from turning
You’d better get down south today
© 2003 Randy Riviere
Needles
I’m standing on top of the world
I’m standing on top of the world
I worked all day and schemed all night
Gotta get their ground just to get it all right
Have an ocean of cars to get through too
I’d have a notion for Mars if it would pencil out too
I’m standing on top of the world
I’m standing on top of the world
Chorus
Now I’m headed out through Needles
To light the desert night
I’m standing on top of the world
I’m standing on top of the world
If we build the supply we’ll create the need
And it will trickle on down to you and me
We’ll butter our bread while we make them go lean
My American dream is red, white, blue and green
I’m standing on top of the world
I’m standing on top of the world
A river runs wild if you let it go free
And if you take it all then there’s none for me
But the grass is green and the blades are long
And I aint feeling all right because it’s all gone wrong
I’m standing on top of the world
I’m standing on top of the world
© 2002 Randy Riviere
Find the Time
Little eyes see
When it is that I go
Little eyes need
What it is that I know
Chorus
I’m tired of all the running
What I need I can’t get with their money
I’ve got to find some time
A ranger walks the line
From the anger of his time
The crusader looks ahead
For what it was he left behind
The wind took down our oak
Up on the hill the other day
I tried to count the rings
But got lost along the way
© 2003 Randy Riviere
Idaho
Faces that you’ll never know
Places that you’ll never go
A stranger is standing in the morning haze
Is he coming to end your days?
Chorus
In Idaho … where the tired old warrior sleeps
In Idaho … with his anger down at his feet
In Idaho … through these snows he’s marched in time
In Idaho … it’s how he feels about human kind
The children are playing in the city square
And tomorrow will be only theirs
Yesterday’s glory is barely known
But now it’s all you own
I don’t want to talk about it
Don’t even want to think about it
And I don’t ever want to die
I can regain that feeling
My arms, legs and hands are tingling
If I could only tell you why
I’ve given my blood for leaving
But only my heart is bleeding
Does it really hurt to say goodbye?
© 2003 Randy Riviere
Prairie Home
Seventy five miles from my prairie home
Where I packed up one winter and left alone
Her eyes were tender as the morning sun
One look and I knew that she was the one
Chorus
Time has got to get along
And it won’t make way for the weak or the strong
But I still miss my prairie home…its home…its home
Mother’s coffee and a fresh made bed
The sound of the chickens from the corner shed
But father’s plow had turned to rust
‘Cause his father’s ground had turned to dust
© 2001 Randy Riviere
Camp Disappointment
It’s good to see you my old friend
They’re waiting at the gates out front again
What they’re after I don’t know?
This is just Camp Disappointment
We left smoke in the valley at Rimrock Bend
We took blood on that prairie in a driving wind
What can I tell them to make them know?
This is just Camp Disappointment
We polled up that river to an open land
To watch them fill it up with their hopes of man
What can I say to make them understand?
This is just Camp Disappointment
It’s good to see you my old friend
But those days gone by can’t come again
What can I tell you that you don’t know?
This is just Camp Disappointment
© 2001 Randy Riviere
Tragedy of the Commons
We came the way our mothers came
And we’ve run from the son’s of the older ones
We see what’s been seen by those shackled & free
We dream like our fathers dreamed
And we make with our hands tools
To move the sea and the sand
Like a gun in their hands
Our children run on roads undone
That were carved from hills that went to the sun
When you blow them away
It makes it harder to stay
Silver cars and fancy bars
You can get blinded by the light in the darkest night
We can drive to the Keys
And be there by three
In the pounding rain the levee holds
‘Cause it’s built from the blood of our young & old
Put a stone in for me
And I want it for free
Sell it high and buy it low
Melt all your gold just to watch it flow
It’ll flow & flow
So you can grow & grow
We dream like our fathers dreamed
And we make with our hands tools
To move the sea & the sand
Just like a gun in their hands
© 2001 Randy Riviere
Live Wire
Trouble down the road at Sante Fe
Trouble up the coast at Redwood Bay
There’s a fire on the ridge and we better run
They’ve got a big hunger and it’s just for fun
Trouble down the road at Sante Fe
Chorus
I’ve got a hold of a live wire
I’ve gotta pretty girl and she knows just what to do
I’ve gotta pretty girl and she knows just what to do
When the lights go out we get amused
As the world goes by outside our view
I’ve gotta pretty girl and she knows just what to do
Met the devil on the banks of the Rio Grande
Met the devil on the banks of the Rio Grande
I tried to speak but was unaware
I tried to sing but it wasn’t there
Met the devil on the banks of the Rio Grande
© 2002 Randy Riviere
Hell Hold
The scene was a land
Where the sun gave life to man
And love was their need
But they came in from the sea
Chorus
For thirteen strips of iron
They’d throw you down
In that hell hold
For six thousand miles
In a five by five
In that hell hold
If you want day light
You’d get it over the side
From that hell hold
Seeds only grow
In the ground where they are sowed
They need warmth from the sky
And the care of a watchful eye
Greed only knows
What it is that will make you grow
You’re free from day to day
Since you know that there’s a better way
© 2003 Randy Riviere
BIOGRAPHY
By Bob Doershuk
January 14, 2012
Nashville, Tennessee
Where does the Mad Buffalo roam? Wherever Randy Riviere happens to be. Most of the time, that would be somewhere in Montana, where the unique singer/songwriter crafts the songs he records and performs under that soubriquet. And just as its suggestion of animal strength, dignity, loneliness and loss stirs feelings embedded in the American psyche, so does the music Riviere creates.
If you’ve heard the work of Riviere/Mad Buffalo on his three previous albums A Good Bad Road, Fool Stand and Wilderness, then you understand this connection. A wildlife biologist who has worked independently and in official positions to preserve the integrity of threatened environments, Riviere (pronounced “Ri-VEER”) is also a student of American history – not just through the names of presidents and battlefields but also in the sense of its spirit and soul. You don’t have to live in the heartland to feel this in his work. From city centers to suburban sprawls, coastlines to mountaintops, we all can sense something in his poetry of his lyrics and raw, rootsy sound that captures part of who we are as a people.
This timelessness is a precious exception to much of the musical “product” being manufactured today. Yet Riviere lives in our present too, as his latest album demonstrates. For all its grounding in tradition, Red and Blue is tuned into the challenges of today.
“We’ve gone through an economy that’s been the worst in my lifetime and we’re not out of it yet,” says Riviere. “It’s affected all of us: neighbors, friends and us too. This sent me back to writers who’ve thought about the human condition and how we can integrate ourselves with the landscape. So my family and I are working now on how to sustain ourselves and be as self-sufficient as possible.”
This decision represents not a retreat from contemporary uncertainties but rather a return to the sources of our national identity. “I’ve gone back to our rural country roots,” Riviere says. “You don’t have to go very far back in time to when there were lots of farmers in America, a lot of folks working and living off the land. It’s a major part of our framework. It’s the quilt of our tradition, if you will.”
Recorded in the studio of his co-producer Chad Cromwell and performed by some of Nashville’s most empathetic musicians, Red and Blue reflects on this dissonance between what once brought us together and what divides us nowadays. Each of its songs is a story, not so much relayed in specific details as suggested through vivid, sometimes dreamlike images. “Tides” is a down-tempo monolog in which observations about threatening weather (“It rained some today and there’s more that’s on the way”) intersperse with enigmatic asides and images (“Found a note slid under my door: ‘You ain’t coming here no more.’”) A story unfolds not through traditional means but through implication.
Similarly, the ambitious title track evokes places that aren’t specific and yet somehow feel familiar. We’re “up on the family farm, over by Eagle Run and out on the prairie sun.” And then Riviere takes us “up on the boulevard. We got our start with a union card.” Moment by moment, over keening steel guitar and a steady, slow beat, he lays out a series of pictures: houses built by honest labor, babies being cradled, people surviving floods and draughts. There’s no plot, no beginning and end, but every track on Red and Blue is a journey that’s both elusive and powerfully emotional.
Where does this technique come from? “I took a writing class in school – ‘Literature of the American West,’” Riviere remembers. “One thing that struck home with me was the professor saying, ‘If you can write like a Native American talks, you would really be something.’ Native Americans often paint pictures with their words. They talk in metaphor. It’s like, ‘September is the moon of the falling leaves.’ I try to do things like that.”
Underlying this is Riviere’s reverence for the land and its meaning in our history, a theme that takes its clearest shape on “Big Joe Walker,” whose striding rhythm and mythic protagonist conjure the romantic optimism of Johnny Appleseed. “I think a lot about the landscape,” he says. “It’s the only one we have. If we use it up, it’s done. These resources are finite. And I also think a lot about the human condition. It’s not about politics and all that manipulation, which I try to address in ‘Emily’: ‘pissing down our back and trying to tell us it’s raining.’”
Political issues do surface in Red and Blue, but only within the construct that defines Riviere’s artistry. “Set the World on Fire,” driven by Dave Roe’s slap-back acoustic bass, looks at the darker side of American can-do ambition. Then the haunting song “Shiloh” draws from one particularly bloody and tragic time, but again its power comes from images more than exposition. Over an insistent guitar rhythm punctuated by the a drum booming low like distant artillery, Riviere sings at the top, “Sun and thunder cross the sky … Blood and thunder rode the wind down at Shiloh. Could it happen again?” The message is in the rhetorical question, but the magic is in the context in which it’s asked.
Many questions are left unanswered throughout Red and Blue. It’s a technique of Riviere’s to append them onto the titles of his songs: “Be Here Tomorrow,” for example, addresses on the illusory lure of materialism (“If I were born rich in a fancy home, would we Be Here Tomorrow?”), “Tides” meditates on the larger scope of life and fate (“I want to know why the Tides ebb and flow. Why do they come and go?”). And the sauntering “Walk This Life Alone,” a drama that positions a privileged young man before the tainted legacy of his birthright, personalizes the choices we all make when confronted with the consequences of our actions (“Do I Walk This Life Alone?”).
“Maybe I took too many philosophy classes in college,” Riviere says, laughing. “But the truth is that there isn’t any recipe to life. It’s not like you want to raise a kid so you find a book and read ‘Chapter One: How to Raise a Kid’ and you’ll be fine. There are so many ways to go and so many things to ponder. Life is full of questions. How we answer them or don’t answer them is how we end up living.”
By creating vivid scenes and leaving it to listeners to consider the riddles of our time, Riviere opens his music to us all as few writers are able to do. The eloquence of his lyric and the simple elegance of his composition brand him as a distinctive voice in modern Americana. And thanks to Red and Blue, he stands as well at that crossroads between timelessness and the urgent present, with a perspective that’s too rarely attained yet more critical than ever.
''A GOOD BAD ROAD''
2004
52:10
1. Coyote Dreams/3:31
2. A Good Bad Road/4:31
3. Little Bird/5:19
4. Needles/3:41
5. Find the Time/3:10
6. Idaho/4:52
7. Julia/4:00
8. Prairie Home/4:37
9. Camp Disappointment/5:06
10. Tragedy of the Commons/3:04
11. Live Wire/3:46
12. Hell Hold/6:34
Randy Riviere/Guitars, Vocals
Michael Ward/Guitars
Gary McKenzie, Bob Glaub, Reggie McBride/Bass
Dave Hawkes, Nick Morrone, Gregg Thomas/Drums
Sherry Pedigo/Vocals
Marty Grebb/Keyboards, Sax
Lyrics
Coyote Dreams
Saw you down on that dusty road
With hair all tangled and free
You just turned and gave me a greasy smile
On your way down to Tennessee
Oh oh oh oh oh oh
It don’t take a village
To get you what you need
Red moon over smoky sky
Makes it hard to see
But you’ve got an edge on that rocky ledge
Where you know misfortune be
Oh oh oh oh oh oh
You can pay for all of Virginia
But these dogs will howl for free
You can pay for all of Virginia
But this dog will howl for free
I’m thinking about ragged jeans and coyote dreams
Out in the weeds where livin’ is free
I think I’ll buy an old truck and with a little luck
I’ll find a little edge for me
Oh oh oh oh oh oh
If you pave over Virginia
These dogs will go to Tennessee
If you pave over Virginia
This dog will go to Tennessee
© 2003 Randy Riviere
A Good Bad Road
Born in good grass and fields of stone
To me and the javelina this is our home
Where the air is blue and the sky is high
You can take a long walk and never say goodbye
Chorus
You won’t see me on your holiday
I’m out here in this silver sage alone
And all there is between us my friend
Is a good bad road
Raised on waves of sun unkind
Had to grow thorns just to survive
Where the sand can blow like a driving snow
I’ve never heard a sound that I don’t know
Hear the thunder
And I wonder
If I’m gonna make it home
Grown old on time I used for free
And giving back something is all right by me
Where the wind and raven touch the ground
There’s a place not needing another town
© 2003 Randy Riviere
Little Bird
Little bird sitting on the window sill
In that hard north wind there’s a bitter chill
You were fledged young and now out on your own
Has the air gotten colder now that you’re grown?
Hey hey, you’re out on your way
Can’t keep this world from turning
You’d better get down south today
There’s a ribbon of highway on the edge of town
Where you can hear the engines whining and see the wheels roll around
And inside there’s only concrete and buildings so tall
They keep the sun from shining and the trees don’t grow at all
Hey hey, you’re out on your way
Can’t keep this world from turning
You’d better get down south today
Chorus
Trouble’s not something you want
Trouble’s not something you need
No one gave you nothing to start
No one gives you nothing for free
Little bird you got away
From that iron hand of winter and all the crows that came your way
Outside there’s fields that grow
Seeds of truth and timber to stop the winter when it blows
Hey hey, you’re out on your way
Can’t keep this world from turning
You’d better get down south today
© 2003 Randy Riviere
Needles
I’m standing on top of the world
I’m standing on top of the world
I worked all day and schemed all night
Gotta get their ground just to get it all right
Have an ocean of cars to get through too
I’d have a notion for Mars if it would pencil out too
I’m standing on top of the world
I’m standing on top of the world
Chorus
Now I’m headed out through Needles
To light the desert night
I’m standing on top of the world
I’m standing on top of the world
If we build the supply we’ll create the need
And it will trickle on down to you and me
We’ll butter our bread while we make them go lean
My American dream is red, white, blue and green
I’m standing on top of the world
I’m standing on top of the world
A river runs wild if you let it go free
And if you take it all then there’s none for me
But the grass is green and the blades are long
And I aint feeling all right because it’s all gone wrong
I’m standing on top of the world
I’m standing on top of the world
© 2002 Randy Riviere
Find the Time
Little eyes see
When it is that I go
Little eyes need
What it is that I know
Chorus
I’m tired of all the running
What I need I can’t get with their money
I’ve got to find some time
A ranger walks the line
From the anger of his time
The crusader looks ahead
For what it was he left behind
The wind took down our oak
Up on the hill the other day
I tried to count the rings
But got lost along the way
© 2003 Randy Riviere
Idaho
Faces that you’ll never know
Places that you’ll never go
A stranger is standing in the morning haze
Is he coming to end your days?
Chorus
In Idaho … where the tired old warrior sleeps
In Idaho … with his anger down at his feet
In Idaho … through these snows he’s marched in time
In Idaho … it’s how he feels about human kind
The children are playing in the city square
And tomorrow will be only theirs
Yesterday’s glory is barely known
But now it’s all you own
I don’t want to talk about it
Don’t even want to think about it
And I don’t ever want to die
I can regain that feeling
My arms, legs and hands are tingling
If I could only tell you why
I’ve given my blood for leaving
But only my heart is bleeding
Does it really hurt to say goodbye?
© 2003 Randy Riviere
Prairie Home
Seventy five miles from my prairie home
Where I packed up one winter and left alone
Her eyes were tender as the morning sun
One look and I knew that she was the one
Chorus
Time has got to get along
And it won’t make way for the weak or the strong
But I still miss my prairie home…its home…its home
Mother’s coffee and a fresh made bed
The sound of the chickens from the corner shed
But father’s plow had turned to rust
‘Cause his father’s ground had turned to dust
© 2001 Randy Riviere
Camp Disappointment
It’s good to see you my old friend
They’re waiting at the gates out front again
What they’re after I don’t know?
This is just Camp Disappointment
We left smoke in the valley at Rimrock Bend
We took blood on that prairie in a driving wind
What can I tell them to make them know?
This is just Camp Disappointment
We polled up that river to an open land
To watch them fill it up with their hopes of man
What can I say to make them understand?
This is just Camp Disappointment
It’s good to see you my old friend
But those days gone by can’t come again
What can I tell you that you don’t know?
This is just Camp Disappointment
© 2001 Randy Riviere
Tragedy of the Commons
We came the way our mothers came
And we’ve run from the son’s of the older ones
We see what’s been seen by those shackled & free
We dream like our fathers dreamed
And we make with our hands tools
To move the sea and the sand
Like a gun in their hands
Our children run on roads undone
That were carved from hills that went to the sun
When you blow them away
It makes it harder to stay
Silver cars and fancy bars
You can get blinded by the light in the darkest night
We can drive to the Keys
And be there by three
In the pounding rain the levee holds
‘Cause it’s built from the blood of our young & old
Put a stone in for me
And I want it for free
Sell it high and buy it low
Melt all your gold just to watch it flow
It’ll flow & flow
So you can grow & grow
We dream like our fathers dreamed
And we make with our hands tools
To move the sea & the sand
Just like a gun in their hands
© 2001 Randy Riviere
Live Wire
Trouble down the road at Sante Fe
Trouble up the coast at Redwood Bay
There’s a fire on the ridge and we better run
They’ve got a big hunger and it’s just for fun
Trouble down the road at Sante Fe
Chorus
I’ve got a hold of a live wire
I’ve gotta pretty girl and she knows just what to do
I’ve gotta pretty girl and she knows just what to do
When the lights go out we get amused
As the world goes by outside our view
I’ve gotta pretty girl and she knows just what to do
Met the devil on the banks of the Rio Grande
Met the devil on the banks of the Rio Grande
I tried to speak but was unaware
I tried to sing but it wasn’t there
Met the devil on the banks of the Rio Grande
© 2002 Randy Riviere
Hell Hold
The scene was a land
Where the sun gave life to man
And love was their need
But they came in from the sea
Chorus
For thirteen strips of iron
They’d throw you down
In that hell hold
For six thousand miles
In a five by five
In that hell hold
If you want day light
You’d get it over the side
From that hell hold
Seeds only grow
In the ground where they are sowed
They need warmth from the sky
And the care of a watchful eye
Greed only knows
What it is that will make you grow
You’re free from day to day
Since you know that there’s a better way
© 2003 Randy Riviere
BIOGRAPHY
By Bob Doershuk
January 14, 2012
Nashville, Tennessee
Where does the Mad Buffalo roam? Wherever Randy Riviere happens to be. Most of the time, that would be somewhere in Montana, where the unique singer/songwriter crafts the songs he records and performs under that soubriquet. And just as its suggestion of animal strength, dignity, loneliness and loss stirs feelings embedded in the American psyche, so does the music Riviere creates.
If you’ve heard the work of Riviere/Mad Buffalo on his three previous albums A Good Bad Road, Fool Stand and Wilderness, then you understand this connection. A wildlife biologist who has worked independently and in official positions to preserve the integrity of threatened environments, Riviere (pronounced “Ri-VEER”) is also a student of American history – not just through the names of presidents and battlefields but also in the sense of its spirit and soul. You don’t have to live in the heartland to feel this in his work. From city centers to suburban sprawls, coastlines to mountaintops, we all can sense something in his poetry of his lyrics and raw, rootsy sound that captures part of who we are as a people.
This timelessness is a precious exception to much of the musical “product” being manufactured today. Yet Riviere lives in our present too, as his latest album demonstrates. For all its grounding in tradition, Red and Blue is tuned into the challenges of today.
“We’ve gone through an economy that’s been the worst in my lifetime and we’re not out of it yet,” says Riviere. “It’s affected all of us: neighbors, friends and us too. This sent me back to writers who’ve thought about the human condition and how we can integrate ourselves with the landscape. So my family and I are working now on how to sustain ourselves and be as self-sufficient as possible.”
This decision represents not a retreat from contemporary uncertainties but rather a return to the sources of our national identity. “I’ve gone back to our rural country roots,” Riviere says. “You don’t have to go very far back in time to when there were lots of farmers in America, a lot of folks working and living off the land. It’s a major part of our framework. It’s the quilt of our tradition, if you will.”
Recorded in the studio of his co-producer Chad Cromwell and performed by some of Nashville’s most empathetic musicians, Red and Blue reflects on this dissonance between what once brought us together and what divides us nowadays. Each of its songs is a story, not so much relayed in specific details as suggested through vivid, sometimes dreamlike images. “Tides” is a down-tempo monolog in which observations about threatening weather (“It rained some today and there’s more that’s on the way”) intersperse with enigmatic asides and images (“Found a note slid under my door: ‘You ain’t coming here no more.’”) A story unfolds not through traditional means but through implication.
Similarly, the ambitious title track evokes places that aren’t specific and yet somehow feel familiar. We’re “up on the family farm, over by Eagle Run and out on the prairie sun.” And then Riviere takes us “up on the boulevard. We got our start with a union card.” Moment by moment, over keening steel guitar and a steady, slow beat, he lays out a series of pictures: houses built by honest labor, babies being cradled, people surviving floods and draughts. There’s no plot, no beginning and end, but every track on Red and Blue is a journey that’s both elusive and powerfully emotional.
Where does this technique come from? “I took a writing class in school – ‘Literature of the American West,’” Riviere remembers. “One thing that struck home with me was the professor saying, ‘If you can write like a Native American talks, you would really be something.’ Native Americans often paint pictures with their words. They talk in metaphor. It’s like, ‘September is the moon of the falling leaves.’ I try to do things like that.”
Underlying this is Riviere’s reverence for the land and its meaning in our history, a theme that takes its clearest shape on “Big Joe Walker,” whose striding rhythm and mythic protagonist conjure the romantic optimism of Johnny Appleseed. “I think a lot about the landscape,” he says. “It’s the only one we have. If we use it up, it’s done. These resources are finite. And I also think a lot about the human condition. It’s not about politics and all that manipulation, which I try to address in ‘Emily’: ‘pissing down our back and trying to tell us it’s raining.’”
Political issues do surface in Red and Blue, but only within the construct that defines Riviere’s artistry. “Set the World on Fire,” driven by Dave Roe’s slap-back acoustic bass, looks at the darker side of American can-do ambition. Then the haunting song “Shiloh” draws from one particularly bloody and tragic time, but again its power comes from images more than exposition. Over an insistent guitar rhythm punctuated by the a drum booming low like distant artillery, Riviere sings at the top, “Sun and thunder cross the sky … Blood and thunder rode the wind down at Shiloh. Could it happen again?” The message is in the rhetorical question, but the magic is in the context in which it’s asked.
Many questions are left unanswered throughout Red and Blue. It’s a technique of Riviere’s to append them onto the titles of his songs: “Be Here Tomorrow,” for example, addresses on the illusory lure of materialism (“If I were born rich in a fancy home, would we Be Here Tomorrow?”), “Tides” meditates on the larger scope of life and fate (“I want to know why the Tides ebb and flow. Why do they come and go?”). And the sauntering “Walk This Life Alone,” a drama that positions a privileged young man before the tainted legacy of his birthright, personalizes the choices we all make when confronted with the consequences of our actions (“Do I Walk This Life Alone?”).
“Maybe I took too many philosophy classes in college,” Riviere says, laughing. “But the truth is that there isn’t any recipe to life. It’s not like you want to raise a kid so you find a book and read ‘Chapter One: How to Raise a Kid’ and you’ll be fine. There are so many ways to go and so many things to ponder. Life is full of questions. How we answer them or don’t answer them is how we end up living.”
By creating vivid scenes and leaving it to listeners to consider the riddles of our time, Riviere opens his music to us all as few writers are able to do. The eloquence of his lyric and the simple elegance of his composition brand him as a distinctive voice in modern Americana. And thanks to Red and Blue, he stands as well at that crossroads between timelessness and the urgent present, with a perspective that’s too rarely attained yet more critical than ever.
