Vintage Review: Ken McMahan's Ball & Chain (1998)

Ken McMahan is a friend of mine. In the interest of honesty, I have to begin any review of his work with such a disclaimer. I’ve gotten drunk with Ken, broken bread with him (or, in our case, shared pizza), talked about music, his career, the universe in general. He’s a great guy…and with all that ethical bullshit out of the way, I can also honestly say that McMahan is one hell of a rocker as well.

Case in point: Ball & Chain, McMahan’s third album for the French Dixie Frog label. With each subsequent outing, Kenny’s songwriting gets tighter, more structured, and more interesting. His consistently invigorating six-string work improves with each album and on Ball & Chain he’s added some interesting flourishes, musical dimensions that are absent from his earlier work. Throw in a backing band that’s as tight as a fist and as scary as an I.R.S. audit and add the musical and intellectual contributions of McMahan’s partner-in-crime, Dan Baird, and you’ve got one helluva foot-stomping rock ‘n’ roll record.    

With his former band, the power-blues trio the dusters, McMahan earned a well-deserved reputation across the Southeast as a fine blues guitarist. His solo stuff tends to run more towards the rock end of the spectrum, however, Kenny cranking up Ball & Chain with “Way of the World,” a fiery little number that sets the tone for the rest of the set. The world-weary lyrics of “Something I’ll Never Know” are punctuated by constant swamp-rock guitar riff that is literally drenched in saltwater and cypress. McMahan’s traditional cover song this time out is Robert Johnson’s “Kindhearted Woman,” a song Kenny claims for his own with a fat, looping guitar line that creates an instrumental cadence for the vocals.

The title track is one of two McMahan co-wrote with fellow Nashville talent Tommy Womack. Opening with some nifty honky-tonk piano, the song becomes a rollicking working-class anthem, a sort of “why me, Lord?” plea for the everyman. My favorite cut on the album, however, is “Wicked World.” Written by Dan Baird, ex-Georgia Satellite, acclaimed solo artist and member of Nashville band Betty Rocker, Baird knows his way around a song, and “Wicked World” is no exception. A bad-ass slice of dark-hued rock, McMahan’s haunted vocals and the accompanying concertina-wire sharp guitar licks combine to make for a powerful musical moment. McMahan sounds like he’s got Robert Johnson’s fabled hell-hounds on his trail, his guitar howling while bassist Kyle Miller and former dusters’ drummer Jeff Perkins provide a steady heartbeat to fuel Baird’s tale of secular woe and spiritual despair.

Even though much of what McMahan sings about is, well, kind of depressing – stuff like lost and unrequited love, romantic betrayal, and a man’s burden to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders – he does so with such style and energy that you never realize the somber nature of the material. Unlike a lot of today’s wet-behind-the-ears “one hit wonders,” young musicians who have barely ventured outside their hometown, McMahan has experienced a bit of the world. He’s been following the dream longer than he’d probably care to admit, but what comes across in his music and on CD is the sheer, unadulterated joy of being able to play rock ‘n’ roll. It’s this element that’s missing from contemporary music and it’s something that McMahan has in abundance. Ball & Chain is a strong tonic, a fresh breath of life for a flaccid rock corpse in sore need of the stiff kick in the ass McMahan provides. Now, will somebody stateside please pick up this record before I have to come to your house and do something impolite? (Dixie Frog Records, 1998)   

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™, 1998