JOHNNY DOWD
''THAT'S YOUR WIFE ON THE BACK OF MY HORSE''
MARCH 9 2015
45:13
1 That's Your Wife On The Back Of My Horse 02:32
2 White Dolemite 03:32
3 Cadillac Hearse 02:41
4 The Devil Don't Bother Me 03:09
5 Empty Purse 02:46
6 Why 03:29
7 Sunglasses 02:57
8 Nasty Mouth 03:18
9 Words Are Birds 02:32
10 My Old Flame 03:14
11 Dear John Letter 02:56
12 Female Jesus 03:02
13 Poor, But Proud 03:24
14 Teardrops 05:36
Anna Coogan/Backing Vocals
Willie B/Drums On 14
Johnny Dowd/Guitar, Bass, Keyboards, Lead Vocals
Mike Edmondson/Keyboards On 14
REVIEW
bY Paul Kerr, paulkerr.wordpress.com
A scrofulous screaming desert storm of guitar noise and a forlorn saloon bar piano are the first sounds you will encounter on That’s Your Wife On The Back Of My Horse, the latest album from Ithaca’s Johnny Dowd. Amid this maelstrom he gravely intones
“That’s your wife on the back of my horse. That’s my hand in your pocket. Around my neck is your mother’s locket. Your sisters will dance at my wake. Your brother will blow out the candles on my birthday cake. That’s your wife on the back of my horse.”
Sounding like the late William Burroughs howling in an electric dust storm Dowd immediately stakes his claim to be one of the most left field candidates in the field of Americana with this opening gambit. It might scare some folk away but for those who stay the course the album is a hell of a ride.
Dowd recorded most of the album himself playing guitar, bass and keyboards with an electronic drum kit and the whole was then mixed and produced by “voodooman” Matt Saccuccimorano. The end result is a gripping kaleidoscope of thrills that mixes Southern Gothic with synth sounds that fart and burp. Tales of the devil bump up against gangster braggadocio and cosmic weirdness. Listening to the album cinema references kept coming to mind, Repo Man, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Wise Blood, all mutated and mashed in Dowd’s leering imagination. As on his last Album, Do The Gargon, Dowd adopts various musical styles, sixties TV cop themes in Cadillac Hearse and Iggy Pop’s The Passenger on The Devil Don’t Bother Me while Words are Birds is reminiscent of Snakefinger’s work with the Residents. This might all sound on paper a bit of a mess but Dowd has a firm hand on the tiller, his voice and drawl, deranged, modified, discombobulated throughout, cuts through and is immediately recognisable.
The lyrics for the title song are inspired by the boasting of Johnny Guitar Watson on Gangster of Love where he baits a sheriff saying, by the way, that’s your wife on the back of my horse. This cocksure bravado is revisited on the buzzed up funk of White Dolemite, a nod to a Blaxploitation movie from the seventies which gets down and dirty with Anna Coogan singing hot pants, he needs a spanking throughout as Dowd lists his love powers and is then updated on the rap of My Old Flame. Coogan turns up again on Poor, But Proud, a defiant rail against poverty and aging. Delving into the South The Devil Don’t Bother Me is an awesome mix of Teutonic synth discipline and Baptist hell fearing belief while Empty Purse is a nightmarish whirligig fairground ride of a song that again reminds one of a cinematic equivalent, in black and white, the carousel out of control in Hitchcock’s Stranger On A Train or the scenes where Janet Leigh is drugged in Welles’ Touch Of Evil. Whatever, it is scary. Akin to this is the voodoo soaked tale of Female Jesus who makes her living on her back and who used to play in a punk rock band, a succubus to avoid surely but the song sucks one in.
In the midst of all of this musical mayhem there’s an absolute nugget of a song that encapsulates the album. Why is, on the face of it, a lonesome love story that is played relatively straight as far as the rest of the songs go with a regular rhythm, country guitar stylings and a male female call and response. However the routine breakup stuff soon swoops into alien territory with the lyrics and the music climbing into cosmic consciousness. Ana Coogan appears again and her vocals are sublime as she pits her disembodied self against Dowd’s cowboy spaceman on what is the best song I’ve heard this year.
BIOGRAPHY/AMG
by Richie Unterberger
Singer/songwriter Johnny Dowd was almost 50 when Wrong Side of Memphis, his debut solo record of wracked country-folk-rock tunes, drew comparisons to Nick Cave in the alternative press. To a degree, that parallel was justified, as Wrong Side of Memphis devoted itself to murder songs and tales of doomed sinners. Dowd had grown up in Texas, Memphis, and Oklahoma before operating a trucking business in upstate New York, and his songs veered close to the source of American creepiness. Yet gallows humor and Dowd's crackly voice tended to undercut any traces of self-importance, while his debut album -- dominated by his singing and guitar, yet featuring spooky dabs of organ and synthesizer that placed him outside of the rootsy Americana camp -- immediately established Dowd as an important cult figure whose weirdness seemed to be wrought from true experience. On his second album, 1999's Pictures from Life's Other Side, Dowd edged slightly away from the cliff, using a full band of musicians and a female backup singer to craft a punchier and less folk-rooted sound. His singing and lyrics, however, remained nearly as disquieting as they were the first time around. Temporary Shelter, issued in early 2001, and The Pawnbroker's Wife, from the following year, were more accessible, produced records. Cemetery Shoes followed in 2004, while A Drunkard's Masterpiece (comprised of three opuses that flaunt Dowd's patented mix of dark, mutant alt-country) arrived four years later. The following year, in 2010, Dowd released Wake Up The Snakes.
WEBSITE
TO THE TOP
''THAT'S YOUR WIFE ON THE BACK OF MY HORSE''
MARCH 9 2015
45:13
1 That's Your Wife On The Back Of My Horse 02:32
2 White Dolemite 03:32
3 Cadillac Hearse 02:41
4 The Devil Don't Bother Me 03:09
5 Empty Purse 02:46
6 Why 03:29
7 Sunglasses 02:57
8 Nasty Mouth 03:18
9 Words Are Birds 02:32
10 My Old Flame 03:14
11 Dear John Letter 02:56
12 Female Jesus 03:02
13 Poor, But Proud 03:24
14 Teardrops 05:36
Anna Coogan/Backing Vocals
Willie B/Drums On 14
Johnny Dowd/Guitar, Bass, Keyboards, Lead Vocals
Mike Edmondson/Keyboards On 14
REVIEW
bY Paul Kerr, paulkerr.wordpress.com
A scrofulous screaming desert storm of guitar noise and a forlorn saloon bar piano are the first sounds you will encounter on That’s Your Wife On The Back Of My Horse, the latest album from Ithaca’s Johnny Dowd. Amid this maelstrom he gravely intones
“That’s your wife on the back of my horse. That’s my hand in your pocket. Around my neck is your mother’s locket. Your sisters will dance at my wake. Your brother will blow out the candles on my birthday cake. That’s your wife on the back of my horse.”
Sounding like the late William Burroughs howling in an electric dust storm Dowd immediately stakes his claim to be one of the most left field candidates in the field of Americana with this opening gambit. It might scare some folk away but for those who stay the course the album is a hell of a ride.
Dowd recorded most of the album himself playing guitar, bass and keyboards with an electronic drum kit and the whole was then mixed and produced by “voodooman” Matt Saccuccimorano. The end result is a gripping kaleidoscope of thrills that mixes Southern Gothic with synth sounds that fart and burp. Tales of the devil bump up against gangster braggadocio and cosmic weirdness. Listening to the album cinema references kept coming to mind, Repo Man, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Wise Blood, all mutated and mashed in Dowd’s leering imagination. As on his last Album, Do The Gargon, Dowd adopts various musical styles, sixties TV cop themes in Cadillac Hearse and Iggy Pop’s The Passenger on The Devil Don’t Bother Me while Words are Birds is reminiscent of Snakefinger’s work with the Residents. This might all sound on paper a bit of a mess but Dowd has a firm hand on the tiller, his voice and drawl, deranged, modified, discombobulated throughout, cuts through and is immediately recognisable.
The lyrics for the title song are inspired by the boasting of Johnny Guitar Watson on Gangster of Love where he baits a sheriff saying, by the way, that’s your wife on the back of my horse. This cocksure bravado is revisited on the buzzed up funk of White Dolemite, a nod to a Blaxploitation movie from the seventies which gets down and dirty with Anna Coogan singing hot pants, he needs a spanking throughout as Dowd lists his love powers and is then updated on the rap of My Old Flame. Coogan turns up again on Poor, But Proud, a defiant rail against poverty and aging. Delving into the South The Devil Don’t Bother Me is an awesome mix of Teutonic synth discipline and Baptist hell fearing belief while Empty Purse is a nightmarish whirligig fairground ride of a song that again reminds one of a cinematic equivalent, in black and white, the carousel out of control in Hitchcock’s Stranger On A Train or the scenes where Janet Leigh is drugged in Welles’ Touch Of Evil. Whatever, it is scary. Akin to this is the voodoo soaked tale of Female Jesus who makes her living on her back and who used to play in a punk rock band, a succubus to avoid surely but the song sucks one in.
In the midst of all of this musical mayhem there’s an absolute nugget of a song that encapsulates the album. Why is, on the face of it, a lonesome love story that is played relatively straight as far as the rest of the songs go with a regular rhythm, country guitar stylings and a male female call and response. However the routine breakup stuff soon swoops into alien territory with the lyrics and the music climbing into cosmic consciousness. Ana Coogan appears again and her vocals are sublime as she pits her disembodied self against Dowd’s cowboy spaceman on what is the best song I’ve heard this year.
BIOGRAPHY/AMG
by Richie Unterberger
Singer/songwriter Johnny Dowd was almost 50 when Wrong Side of Memphis, his debut solo record of wracked country-folk-rock tunes, drew comparisons to Nick Cave in the alternative press. To a degree, that parallel was justified, as Wrong Side of Memphis devoted itself to murder songs and tales of doomed sinners. Dowd had grown up in Texas, Memphis, and Oklahoma before operating a trucking business in upstate New York, and his songs veered close to the source of American creepiness. Yet gallows humor and Dowd's crackly voice tended to undercut any traces of self-importance, while his debut album -- dominated by his singing and guitar, yet featuring spooky dabs of organ and synthesizer that placed him outside of the rootsy Americana camp -- immediately established Dowd as an important cult figure whose weirdness seemed to be wrought from true experience. On his second album, 1999's Pictures from Life's Other Side, Dowd edged slightly away from the cliff, using a full band of musicians and a female backup singer to craft a punchier and less folk-rooted sound. His singing and lyrics, however, remained nearly as disquieting as they were the first time around. Temporary Shelter, issued in early 2001, and The Pawnbroker's Wife, from the following year, were more accessible, produced records. Cemetery Shoes followed in 2004, while A Drunkard's Masterpiece (comprised of three opuses that flaunt Dowd's patented mix of dark, mutant alt-country) arrived four years later. The following year, in 2010, Dowd released Wake Up The Snakes.
WEBSITE
TO THE TOP
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