Fate had a different hand to deal Womack, however, and enough listeners connected with his confessional story-songs to thankfully write another chapter to this story. In the five years since the release of There, I Said It!, Womack teamed up with fellow wordsmith and underrated six-string maestro Will Kimbrough as Daddy, the duo joined by some friends to record 2009’s acclaimed For A Second Time. Now, a half-decade after receiving his second (third?) shot at the brass ring, the former Government Cheese frontman has delivered the wonderful, wry, and playfully entertaining Now What!
Tommy Womack’s Now What!
With Now What!, Womack continues in a musical vein similar to that he pursued on There, I Said It!, with a few notable exceptions. Again, the singer is the main protagonist in his own finely-crafted stories, but while Womack’s witty lyrics remains front and center, he takes a few more chances here musically than ever before, and with exciting results. The album opener, “Play That Cheap Trick, Cheap Trick Play,” is pure power-pop magic with personalized lyrics that blend an infectious melody with lyrical snapshots of domestic life mixed with the seemingly endless gigs of the itinerant musician, all delivered with an undeniable élan.
“Bye & Bye” is a stark, deliberately-paced autobiographical ballad that tells a familiar story for the hopeless romantics in the audience, a random encounter with an old love that sets the mind to wandering and wondering what might have been. Womack’s perfectly-wistful vocals are laid atop a gently-strummed guitar, accompanied by John Deaderick’s subtle keyboard flourishes, the lyrics themselves brilliantly insightful while crashing back to earth with an inevitable conclusion. “I’m Too Old To Feel That Way Right Now” is the flip-side of that encounter, more ruminations on love and lust that are plagued by an uneasy slide into middle age angst and grudging acceptance.
Womack’s flirtations with the demon alcohol are the stuff of legend amidst the sheltered Nashville rock scene, rivaling stories of the Reverend’s own tilting at that particular windmill for tall tales shared by wagging tongues across suburban fences. The singer’s “On & Off the Wagon” wins the competition hands down, the song’s twangy, Lambchop-styled, fractured alt-country soundtrack matched only by its clever, melancholy wordplay. Singing of his battle with the bottle as Bill Huber’s tuba staggers prominently behind the vocals, Womack tosses off sharply-phrased passages like “sometimes I like the wagon, sometimes I like to walk”; “I’ve learned to know my limit, I’ve learned to pass it by”; and “I’m smart as a whip, I’m dumb as wood” as part of a wild mea culpa that is rooted firmly in the country tradition by Jim Hoke’s weeping pedal steel guitar.
90 Miles An Hour Down A Dead-End Street
By contrast, Womack’s spoken word rant “90 Miles An Hour Down A Dead-End Street” is a continuation of the previous album’s wonderfully wry “Alpha Male & the Canine Mystery Blood,” both autobiographical raps delivered with more than a little Hunter S. Thompson-styled gonzo spirit. In this case, Womack’s dialogue is accompanied by a lone brassy drumbeat, the singer tossing off stream-of-consciousness thoughts like a 21st century Bukowski while telling his sordid tale. Prefacing the rant with the introductory “went to Indy, in the rain, to a club that was never going to have me again, a bottle of Chianti in the passenger seat, driving 90 miles per hour down a dead-end street,” Womack delivers such lyrical bon mots as “I work for myself and I still get fired”; “now I just drink, except when I don’t, and you’re either going to get a good show or you won’t”; and the sparkling nihilism “I’ve done everything I could to kill myself and take other people with me,” with tongue only partially in cheek.
Lest one think Tommy Womack as just another hipster with a penchant for lyrical self-immolation, he blows up that misconception with the low-slung rocker “I Love You To Pieces.” Womack’s playful, oblique lyrics here are matched by a mid-tempo soundtrack that blends the Southern-fried funk of Dan Baird and the Georgia Satellites with the reckless, bristling rock ‘n’ roll of the Replacements, offering up plenty of greasy fretwork and blasts of harmonica. The introspective “Wishes Do Come True” is an acoustic ballad that benefits from Lisa Oliver-Gray’s subtle backing vocals echoing Womack’s own, while “Over the Hill” is a trademark Tommy Womack construct, tilted slightly towards Tom Waits territory with an oddly discordant guitar strum and lilting vocals sliding uneasily across the tinkling piano keys and squalls of tuba.
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
Less a sequel than a bookend to the desperate “Hail Mary” pass that was There, I Said It!, Womack’s Now What! imagines a career beyond the soul-destroying 9 to 5 dead-end the singer saw himself trapped in for the rest of his miserable existence. Displaying a disarming optimism amidst the introspective double-clutching and romantic daydreams than previously, Now What! offers up more of what Tommy Womack does best – working class blues from the street-view seats of the restless American dream. (Cedar Creek Music, released February 12, 2012)
Review originally published by Blurt magazine, 2012
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