Vintage Review: Tommy Womack's There I Said It! (2006)

In a city filled to the brim with musical talent, Tommy Womack often gets overlooked. I first met Womack two decades ago when he was the frontman for late ‘80s cult band Govt. Cheese, a unique hard-rocking outfit that came roaring out of Bowling Green, Kentucky like the ghost of Hank Williams riding astride a Nipponese superbike with flaming tailpipes! The band’s momentary flirtation with stardom inspired Womack’s tale of rock ‘n’ roll woe, The Cheese Chronicles, the best book about life on the road ever written (sorry Jack Kerouac!)

After the demise of Govt. Cheese, Womack immigrated to Nashville to pursue his musical career in earnest. Womack landed a gig as one-third of the Bis-Quits, a groovy little band that included the talented Will Kimbrough and future music retail exec Mike “Grimey” Grimes, the collaboration yielding one great roots-rock album on John Prine’s Oh Boy record label. Womack would then launch his solo career, almost a decade ago, with the brilliant debut album Positively Na Na in 1998.

The life of an indie rocker is a tough one, though, especially when, like Tommy Womack, your main attribute is that you don’t fit in. Womack has always been too country, too rock ‘n’ roll, too serious, not serious enough, too wordy, too stubborn, getting older…just not marketable by today’s “standards.” Never mind that he’s always made brilliant, entertaining music with highly personal lyrics that nevertheless appeal to many people that recognize the characters in the songs from the same streets we all walk together, if separately.

Tommy Womack’s There I Said It!

After 2002’s Circus Town, shortly after his fortieth birthday, Womack hit rock bottom. As he writes in the liner notes to There I Said It!, “one morning in March ’03, God came across my teeth with a skillet of White Light Truth. Whomp! I was toast at forty and destined to die poor.” Womack had a meltdown, of sorts, the sort of life-paralyzing crisis-of-confidence that drops the strongest of men to their knees and into spirals of mind-crippling depression. Months passed by and those close to Womack began to worry; more than one “friend-of-a-friend” got in contact and asked me to talk to Tommy. We swapped emails back and forth, even talked on the phone once or twice, but I doubt that my words of encouragement did little more than add to the chorus of friends and admirers urging Tommy to “feel better.”

Truth is, the personal hell that Womack was going through was something that few people will ever experience. He thought he saw his career circling the drain, his future uncertain, a divine voice saying, as he writes, “you had yer shot, thanks a lot,” leaving him older and broke with a family to support and the kind of dreams that tear one apart. Over the following three years, Womack recovered somewhat, got a crappy job like most of us, hating it like most of us and still, always, playing music. It was the music that, in the end, pulled him through, lending a voice to his fears and emboldening him to carry on.

The result of Womack’s trials and tribulations is There, I Said It!, his fourth studio and fifth album overall, a mind-staggeringly brilliant collection of songs that literally open a window to the artist’s soul. In many ways There, I Said It! reminds me of Joe Grushecky’s equally powerful 2004 album True Companion. At the same time that Womack was living through his crisis, Grushecky was looking into his own abyss. Over fifty, overshadowed by the accomplishments of his peers, Grushecky came to the conclusion that he may never make it big in rock ‘n’ roll but, “I still got a long way to go.”              

This is Tommy Womack’s story, however, and There, I Said It! is his masterpiece. The songs here recount the last several years of his life, biographical tales with great humor and insight and a little sadness. “A Songwriter’s Prayer” is a brilliant lead-off, a somber ode from a wordsmith to a higher power asking for just one good song, something to hang your hat on and build a career around. Delivered with pious vocals, mournful pedal steel and a haunting melody, the song is both tongue-in-cheek and deadly serious, with “we got to get out of this place” urgency.

I’m Never Gonna Be A Rock Star

Written about his son Nathan, “Nice Day” takes a look at life from the high side of 40, a winsome kind of tune that concludes, at the end of the day, that life is good when you have your family around you. The country-flavored “25 Years Ago” is a semi-biographical honky-tonk tale of the search for stardom by three hopefuls, spiced up with twangy steel and Womack’s upbeat vocals, the story of everybody that has ever come to Nashville (or LA or New York) chasing a dream.

“I’m Never Gonna Be A Rock Star,” from which There I Said It! takes its title, is a lilting, jazzy tune with Womack’s soulful, fluid vocals and muted yet lush instrumentation. The song’s reflective self-confession is both cathartic and one last shot at those who would try and bring the artist down. “My hair may go, but the dream remains,” the protagonist sings, getting older every day while his musician friends have forged moderate careers of one form or another, “buddies on tour buses, takin’ that ride, while I’m gettin’ older with an itch inside.” This reflective song parallels Joe Grushecky’s “Strange Days,” a realization that while every artistic effort through the years may not have been for naught, the lack of recognition – if not fame and fortune – is a bitter pill nonetheless.  

The bluesy “Too Much Month At the End Of The Xanax” is a bleak reflection on modern life, its otherworldly, electronically-altered vocals punching their way through a cloud of tortured electric guitars and discordant rhythms. It’s a style that Womack has always excelled at, self-referential talking blues paired with a hard rocking soundtrack that could just as easily been a Govt. Cheese song if it wasn’t so damn personal. By the time you reach “I Couldn’t Care Less,” a rollicking pop-rock rave-up inspired by the tired 9 to 5 that Womack endured during his “blue period,” things are starting to look up. Gigs are coming his way, and Womack delivers a lyrical coup de grace with more attitude and bile than any punk band I’ve been witness too, allaying his friend’s fears with “I feel alright, suicide is overrated, I’ve killed and lied, or at least I’ve mutilated.”

The centerpieces of There I Said It! are the epic stream-of-consciousness masterpiece “Alpha Male & the Canine Mystery Blood” and “A Cockroach After The Bomb.” Both songs evince the sense of humor that has always driven Womack’s best material, but they are also both songs that pack up the past in a box and put it on the shelf, saying goodbye to a time that none of us will ever again enjoy, much less revisit except in memory. “Alpha Male” is a wonderful recollection of a misspent youth and encroaching middle age that many of us can relate to (especially those of us whose age and experience parallels Womack’s). He sees a band poster while walking to work, bringing back memories of the day 20+ years ago when all of us would run out to see a show by any band that sounded even half-intriguing, a poster on a telephone pole an invite to a night of beer, women, and rock ‘n’ roll. Tying the past to the present and facing his own growing obsolescence, Womack admits that “can’t be a has-been when you never was.”    

A Cockroach After the Bomb

“A Cockroach After the Bomb,” a semi-shuffle with lively vocals and spry piano work courtesy of producer John Deaderick, is the yin to the yang of “Alpha Male.” The song begins by expressing an angst that no 20-something-year-old young pup could ever understand, confessing, “I get up every morning and I go to a job where I’ve thrown up on the john. I worry about who’s mad at me and spend a lot of time wishing I was gone.” He remembers his previous life, in a gang with a band, “I used to be somebody, I was a star, it takes a lot of guts to fall this far,” concluding that “I’m a cockroach after the bomb, carrying on…”

It’s with this refrain, however, that Womack touches the album’s truth, that in spite of the darkness, those that feel the muse are compelled to follow, to “carry on” no matter the price, and as Steve Forbert once sang, “you can not win if you do not play the game.” The singer asks, “what if Jimi’s lighter hadn’t lighted, what if Monet was just near-sighted, I’ll go to my grave knowing I took me a chance, I’m a cockroach after the bomb carryin’ on.” The song is a call to arms for all of us last-crop-baby-boomers stuck in a cubicle or middle management with a mortgage and obligations who still harbor delusions of creativity that our parents warned us against pursuing. It’s fitting that the album’s next-to-last song is “Everything’s Coming Up Roses Again;” Womack writing in the liner notes that “this record started with a prayer and ends with its answer.”

The song’s waltz-like demeanor and wistful vocals belie its message – that as long as you’re breathing, you can still follow your dreams. “I may be a 44-year-old office boy,” writes Womack, “but I’m the office boy that did Leno!” You’re never too old to sing that song, write that story, paint that picture, and thus sayeth Springsteen, “throw away the dreams that break your heart.” You’ve got one life to live, and as There Is Said It! slides to a close with the wiry, guitar-driven instrumental “Nice Day (reprise),” you get the sense that Womack, like Grushecky at the end of True Companion, has found some degree of peace in family, friends and, of course, his music.     

In a city filled to the brim with musical talent, Tommy Womack has often been overlooked. Age and experience has broadened his lyrical palette, however, the songs on There, I Said It! among the best he’s ever written. A skilled songwriter and charismatic performer, Womack peppers his songs with musical scraps of roots-rock, Americana, blues, and hard-rock. Ironically, initial acclaim for this album, and the positive response afforded it by nearly everybody that has heard it, could end up reviving a career that Womack thought was on life support. By any measure, There, I Said It! is the work of an artist yet to hit his peak, an emotionally moving song-cycle that defies the industry gatekeepers and rocks with élan, guts, and intelligence. (Cedar Creek Music, released 2006)

Review originally published by the Trademark of Quality (TMQ) blog…

Vintage Review: The Dusters’ Dang! (2002)

Known as the home of country music, Nashville had a thriving rock scene back during the mid-to-late 1980s, with bands like Jason & the Scorchers (country-punk), the Shakers (Goth-folk), Afrikan Dreamland (blu-reggae), and Practical Stylists (power pop), among many others, exploring various musical styles and stylistic fusions. One of the most popular outfits on the scene at the time was the Dusters, a no-frills blues-rock band whose hard-charging sound was fueled by frontman Ken McMahan’s raging fretwork and soul-twang vocals.

At the band’s early 1990s peak, the Dusters received airplay on college radio and toured steadily throughout the South, songs like “This Ain’t No Jukebox…We’re A Rock ‘n’ Roll Band” and an incendiary cover of Savoy Brown’s “Hellbound Train” thrilling audiences from one side of Dixie to the other. Signed to an independent label in the Music City, the band was unable to break out of the Nashville rock ghetto in spite of a touring sponsorship from Miller Beer, and by the mid-‘90s the Dusters, like so many indie rockers, were crushed by the murky sounds coming out of Seattle. McMahan launched a solo career that resulted in three acclaimed albums for the French Dixie Frog label (which had also released the Dusters’ 1992 album, Unlisted Number) before touring as part of Dan Baird’s (the Georgia Satellites) band.

The Dusters’ Dang!

In 2002, the best and brightest Dusters line-up – guitarist McMahan, bassist David Barnette, and drummer Jeff Perkins – reunited for some Nashville-area shows which, in turn, led to a return to the studio by the band to record Dang! with Baird producing. Although the CD went out of print nearly as rapidly as it was released, it’s well worth digging up for the dedicated fan of roots/blues-rock, and is currently available digitally. McMahan leads his classic power trio line-up through a baker’s dozen of red-hot blues-rock romps, about 90% of them original tunes, with only a sparse handful of covers thrown in for flavor.

Dang! cranks up the amps with the album-opening “Goin’ Up Easy,” a McMahan co-write with esteemed Music City scribe Tommy Womack, the song a steamy slab of locomotive piledriver rhythms and blistering fretwork. The menacing “Mexico,” co-written with Baird, who also adds rhythm guitar if I’m not mistaken, is the best ZZ Top song that that lil’ old band from Texas never recorded, full of muscular riffs, endless swagger, and a sordid storyline that would make the Senoritas blush. The song’s uber-cool false ending is complimented by a hot, brief bluesy outro. McMahan’s “Red Sun” is a funky little sucker, with a sly rhythmic undercurrent, a mind-bending recurring riff, and rolling guitar solos that are warmer than a runaway bonfire.  

Cadillac Blues

You’ll find more than a little Delta blues spirit in the dark-hued “Killin’ Time,” a malevolent tale of violence and retribution with a swamp-blues vibe, a slow-burning groove, and McMahan’s shimmy-shake rattletrap guitar. The discerning ear will pick up all sorts of influences here, overt and covert alike, from Robert Johnson to Savoy Brown, from John Lee Hooker to the aforementioned ZZ Top. “Night Is Gone” offers up some of McMahan’s best guitar tone, kind of a cross between Bluesbreakers-era Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan, the song evincing just a hint of boogie-rock within its emotional, lovestruck lyrics. McMahan’s six-string work here is taut and structured but still imaginative within the rhythmic framework

McMahan’s “Poison Love” is built on a classic Bo Diddley beat, but quickly beats it into submission with a revved-up rhythm that would sound positively punkish (think Black Keys or Immortal Lee County Killers) if not for McMahan’s soulful Southern workingman’s twang vox and the song’s femme fatale subject matter. “Barn Door” has a heart that is pure Chicago blues, the song itself mixing its metaphors with an urban soundtrack and a storyline that has one foot in roots-rock and the other in country-blues, while another McMahan original, “Cadillac Blues,” is a smoldering sample of barroom blues, wearing its heart on its sleeve with low-slung guitar licks and subtle rhythms. One of the album’s few covers, of the great Chuck Berry’s “Don’t You Lie To Me,” throws a little New Orleans barrelhouse flavor in with Neal Cappellino’s spirited piano-pounding running like the Mississippi beneath McMahan’s fluid vocals and a sturdy rhythmic framework.  
   

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Blowing back onto the blues scene like a tornado, the Dusters have made major strides during the band’s ten or so years apart. Whereas the band had been enjoyable on record, if sometimes derivative in their approach, they were never anything less than devastating while on stage, and they could never capture their live performance dynamic on tape. As the three band members continued to grow and evolve while playing with other musicians during the ensuing years, however, they brought this maturity to the studio when making Dang!

McMahan’s guitarplay, always the band’s strong suite, has been honed to a dangerous edge through the years. The rhythm section of David Barnette and Jeffrey Perkins has developed into an explosive combination, unobtrusive when need be, a brick to your face when the situation calls for such. But the Dusters’ secret weapon may be McMahan’s skilled songwriting chops, seasoned by life and experience into an impressive bit of street poetry that combines a Southern rock heart with the soul of the blues. Dang! proves, without a doubt, that the Dusters are bad to the bone, with a black cat moan, and a lucky mojo hand. Can you dig it? (Lucky Hand Records, released October 21, 2002)

Vintage Review: Tommy Womack's Stubborn (2000)

After listening steadily to Tommy Womack’s debut album, Positively Ya-Ya, constantly for over a year I’ve finally figured it out, put my finger on Womack’s place in this great rock ‘n’ roll whatsis. The recent arrival of Stubborn, Womack’s brilliant sophomore effort, reinforces my conclusion: Tommy Womack is the new Harry Nielsen! Now, now, stay with me here – much like that maligned and often-overlooked pop genius, Womack is capable of performing in a number of musical genres, from rock and blues to country and everywhere in between.

Both artists write great songs with slightly skewed lyrical perspectives, and both have a keen eye for skilled sidemen. Whereas Nielsen would enter the studio with various Beatles in tow, Womack records with the cream of Nashville’s underrated rock music scene, talents like Will Kimbrough, George Bradfute, Mike Grimes, Ross Rice, and Brad Jones. Womack may have a more southern-fried perspective than Nielsen, but the parallels are obvious.  

Tommy Womack’s Stubborn

Womack’s Stubborn opens with the chaotic “Rubbermaid,” a short stream-of-consciousness rant similar to Captain Beefheart or John Trubee, backed by syncopated drums and flailing harmonica. It jumps from there right into “Up Memphis Blues,” an energetic rocker with a blues edge that includes some tasty slide guitar courtesy of Al Perkins. “Christian Rocker” is a hilarious interlude with fantastic imagery dropped in between songs while “I Don’t Have A Gun” is an angry blues tune featuring appropriately tortured vocals from Womack and some southern rock styled six-string work from Womack and George Bradfute.

“For The Battered,” a song from Womack’s old band and Southeast legends Govt. Cheese, is recycled here as an electric blues with some wicked, dark-hued slide guitar from Will Kimbrough supporting the story. It’s the most powerful musical statement that I’ve heard on domestic violence and I still get chills every time the asshole girlfriend beater’s karma catches up with him. Stubborn’s lone cover is of the Kink’s “Berkeley Mews,” a somewhat obscure Ray Davies gem offered here in a fairly straight-forward rendition that says as much about Womack’s sophisticated musical tastes as it does about his ability to pull the song off on record.

Junkies, Whores, and Ne’er-do-wells…

Most critics, when writing of Womack, praise his songwriting abilities, pointing out the numerous characters that live in his songs. They’re really missing Womack’s strongest skill, however – any hack can people their songs with junkies, whores, and ne’er-do-wells of various stripes (listen to any heavy metal lately?). Womack’s strength is in his composition of memorable lines, clever and intelligent lyrical bombs often thrown into the middle of songs to infect the listener’s consciousness days after hearing a song. Witness some of the poetic explosives hidden in the songs on Stubborn: “I’d crawl back in the womb right now if Jesus would show up and point the way.” “Gonna find me a woman who won’t fall apart on the witness stand.” “I want to be a Christian rocker but the devil’s got all the good drummers.” “She was a Presbyterian in a porno picture, tossing her values aside.” “You can all go straight to hell, you’d better cut and run, get on your knees and thank the lord that I don’t have a gun.”

It’s a skill that separates Womack from the mundane “Music Row” factory writers in Nashville even as it marginalizes him from the whitebread world of radio and mainstream music. It also shows his Southern heritage as religious tradition and rock ‘n’ roll yearnings clash for the soul of the songwriter with the resulting imagery creating some of rock’s best rhymes. Among southern rockers, only Jason & the Scorchers’ Jason Ringenburg and, perhaps, Alex Chilton match Womack word for word.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

The material and performances on Stubborn sound more confident, Womack’s talents sharply honed by a couple of years of live shows and collaborations with other artists. A gifted storyteller, an amazing songwriter and an energetic performer, Womack is one of Nashville’s best and brightest. Although an indie rocker in style and attitude, Womack’s work deserves the widest audience possible, distribution and promotion that only a major label could provide – if any of the corporate A&R geeks could get their collective heads out of their respective boss’ rear ends long enough to listen. Personally, as long as Womack gets to keep making records like Stubborn, I’ll be happy enough. (Sideburn Records, released 2000)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™ zine

Vintage Review: Daddy's For A Second Time (2009)

Back when you kiddies were still watching Saturday morning cartoons in your spidey PJs and eating chocolate-frosted sugar bombs by the boxful, two nice young men from Kentucky, and another from Alabama, were playing in a critically-acclaimed rock ‘n’ roll band called the Bis-quits. Although these three gents had spun a wonderful collection of intelligent garage-pop with blues-rock overtones and a soupcon of country twang, they were soon forgotten, lost in the enormous commercial shadow of a bunch o’ guys from Seattle named Kurt, Eddie, Chris and their, well, kinda grungy, flannel-clad friends.

Fast forward 16 years, and you’ll find Daddy, which is, really, mathematically two-thirds of the Bis-quits playing with some (talented) friends. Over the past decade-and-a-half or so, the three nice young men – Will Kimbrough, Tommy Womack, and Mike “Grimey” Grimes – have pursued various fates in and out of the music biz. Grimes played for a while with alt-country cut-ups Bare Jr. before escaping the industry’s clutches only to open his much-lauded record store in Nashville (Grimey’s Music – tell ‘em the Reverend sent ya!).

Kimbrough has toyed around with a critically-acclaimed solo career that has yielded four solid albums (and an EP), but his real bread-and-butter has been touring and recording as a guitar-for-hire for folks like Jimmy Buffett, Rodney Crowell, Todd Snider, and others. Womack, on the other hand, has put his experience with the Bis-quits and, previously, the much beloved Kentucky cult band Govt. Cheese, to good use as a whipsmart, slightly neurotic, constantly embattled solo troubadour, also with four acclaimed studio albums (and a live disc) under his belt.

Daddy’s For A Second Time

Daddy began as a one-off between friends and former bandmates, their live 2005 album At The Woman’s Club documenting two nights’ shows in Frankfort, Kentucky. As these things are wont to do, demand for Daddy and the band’s growing popularity has resulted in For A Second Time, the official and righteous Daddy studio debut. A ten-song collection of various Kimbrough and Womack originals and a handful of collaborations between the two (and one excellent total band effort), For A Second Time may well be the best collection of pure music-making that you’ll hear come out of Nashville this year.

As they say in Nashville, it all begins with a song – something forgotten long ago by the industry’s Music Row – and Kimbrough and Womack are two of the best wordsmiths ever snubbed by the biz. Both songwriters have been around the block a time or three and suffered through the indignities and ignorance of men in suits with corporate smiles, and their experience shines through their songs. The semi-biographical “Nobody From Nowhere,” for instance, sounds like a John Hiatt outtake circa Slow Turning, but with Kimbrough’s slinky fretwork and great harmony singing between Kimbrough and Womack. The song perfectly sums up the isolation of growing up in the rural South, where everything is miles away from anything else, and dreams of the big-time are tempered by simple pleasures.

Much of the rest of For A Second Time follows a similar tact, Kimbrough and Womack swapping lead vocals on songs that are built around the former’s tempered optimism and the latter’s wry sense of humor and joyful cynicism. “Early To Bed, Early To Rise” is Womack’s advice to a younger generation, an only-slightly-tongue-in-cheek warning about the rat race from a man that has lived it firsthand. The New Orleans-tinged “Wash & Fold” possesses all the funky soul of the Meters, Kimbrough mouthing a sly come-on to a young lovely that is equal parts Ray Davies and Aaron Neville.

Of course, the Daddy guys also recognize a good song when they hear it, and their loving cover of ‘60s-era folkie Mike Millius’ “The Ballad of Martin Luther King” provides the sort of intricate wordplay that Womack excels at spitting out. The ode to the African-American hero is especially ironic provided the band’s deep-rooted Dixie sound, but these boys have always embraced equality in all things – especially music – and the song’s folkie origins are amped up with squalls of harmonica, bluesy guitarwork, and more than a little introspection.

The full band collaboration “I Went To Heaven In A Dream Last Night” is a syncopated, almost stream-of-consciousness tale of Womack’s brush with the almighty that evinces a dark sense of humor, manic vocals, and more great throwaway lines and imagery than we can recount here (although “a funny thing happened on my way to the grave, I didn’t burn out and I didn’t fade away, my heart kept beating until the end of the ride” is a pretty damn funny line). The band backs it up with a funky-cool, twang-jazz soundtrack with lighter-than-feather cymbal brushing, scraps of honky-tonky piano, and Kimbrough’s piercing six-string notes. “He Ain’t Right” is another semi-autobiographical look back at childhood and what it’s like to be smalltown different, the lyrics pounded home above a muscular rhythm, bee-sting fretwork, and potent, gospel-tinged keyboards.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Will Kimbrough and Tommy Womack bring the best out of each other, creatively, and with nearly two decades of friendship and shared musical history to work off of, it should come as no surprise that they’re able to come up with gem after gem. The background guys in Daddy are no slouch, either, but rather talented pros able to cut loose from their day jobs and spin some fun, complex, and satisfying music behind their charismatic frontmen. Altogether, For A Second Time adds up to more than the sum of the individual band member’s talents; Daddy the best band that you’ve never heard (yet). (Cedar Creek Music, released 2009)

Review originally published by Blurt magazine, 2009

Vintage Review: Governent Cheese's Government Cheese 1985-1995 (2010)

Chances are, unless you happened to be attending college in the Southeast U.S. or lived in the region during the late 1980s, you’ve never heard of Government Cheese. Inspired by influences like the Replacements, Husker Du, R.E.M. and especially Nashville’s Jason & the Scorchers, Government Cheese was formed in Bowling Green, Kentucky by WKU students Tommy Womack and Skot Willis (guitars and vocals). The two added a strong, stealthy rhythm section in bassist Billy Mack Hill and drummer Joe King, and promptly set out to conquer the world with their own unique brand of rock ‘n’ roll, a curious mix of 1960s-era garage, vintage 1970s classic rock, and contemporary ‘80s college rock delivered without guile and with a fair amount of tongue-in-cheek humor.

The band spent the better part of a decade banging the gong, playing every smoky dive and college frat house that called on them, earning a reputation across Dixie as a rowdy and entertaining live band. While the Government Cheese story has been accounted at length in Womack’s wonderful book The Cheese Chronicles, to date the band’s musical history is largely unknown. During their day, Government Cheese released a handful of vinyl EPs and albums for Nashville-based indie label Reptile Records, while a long out-of-print CD that included much of their best material has become a sought-after collectors’ item. Supported by a handful of true believers, Womack managed to raise the cash to put together the comprehensive anthology Government Cheese 1985-1995, a two-disc compilation that chisels into concrete the band’s underrated and overlooked musical legacy.        

Government Cheese 1985-1995

Government Cheese were college radio staples throughout much of the Southeast during the late 1980s, and a video for the delightful power-pop ballad “Face To Face” earned frequent MTV airplay at the time. While Womack was the band’s primary wordsmith, Willis and Hill contributed significantly to the band’s repertoire, and the songs seemingly just poured out…for instance, longtime audience fave “Camping On Acid” sounds like Camper Van Beethoven on speed and steroids, Womack’s surrealistic lyrics matched by a jumble of jangling guitars, explosive rhythms, and overall musical chaos. The hard-rocking “Fish Stick Day” was another crowd-pleaser, this live version offering up a chanted absurdist chorus, droning guitar-feedback, and King’s powerful, tribal drumbeats.

Another Cheese fan favorite was “C’mon Back to Bowling Green,” a rollicking slice of lovesick blue-collar blues with a honky-tonk heart and electrified twang, sort of Duane Eddy meets Jerry Lee Lewis in a back-alley dive. “Single” just flat-out rocks, with plenty of ringing guitar tone, clashing instruments, lofty power-pop styled vocals, and a driving rhythm. The syncopated rhythms and folkish guitar strum behind the vocals on “No Sleeping In Penn Station” are a fine accompaniment to the song’s real-life lyrical inspiration while the metallic “Jailbait” proves that the Cheese could knock heads with any of the decade’s nerf-metal cretins, raging guitars and a blistering wall-of-sound barely concealing the song’s whip-smart pop-rock lyrics and gorgeous underlying melody.        

The band was never afraid to take a stand on issues, either, which sometimes resulted in an unexpected response. The emotionally-powerful “For the Battered,” and its dark-hued instrumental intro “Before The Battered,” tackled the then hush-hush subject of domestic abuse with brutal simplicity and a menacing soundtrack of crashing instruments and noisy Sturm und Drang. Surprisingly, the disturbing revenge fantasy connected with the listeners of Nashville radio station WKDF’s local music show, becoming its most-requested song. “The Shrubbery’s Dead (Where Danny Used To Fall)” is a brilliant story of the toll of alcoholism on an individual and family, Hill’s lyrics bolstered by a roughneck instrumental background. The class warfare of the spoken-word ode “The Yuppie Is Dead” leads into the deeply introspective “Nothing Feels Good,” a hard rock 1970s throwback (I’m thinking Starz) that speaks of the dissatisfaction of too many years on the road. 

The KKK Took My Baby Away

For us original “cheeseheads,” the album includes a wealth of previously-unreleased material, starting with the band’s raucous, off-tilt cover of Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died.” Delivered with punkish intensity and chaotic energy, Government Cheese manages to capture the spirit of the original while adding a menacing edge…or, as Womack says in the liner notes, “we took Jim Carroll’s song and did it like the Scorchers.” The band’s semi-biographical “Kentucky Home” has never made it onto disc until now, a Replacements-styled triumph that speaks of growing up with rock ‘n’ roll dreams in Podunk, U.S.A. “I Can Make You Love Me” lopes into your consciousness with a hearty bassline and wiry guitar leading into a sort of alt-rock dirge with sparse harmony vocals and an undeniable rhythm.

Government Cheese was always known for its spirited covers, which ranged from classic rock (an unreleased and raucous take of Grand Funk’s “We’re An American Band” is cranked out at twice the speed of the original in a white light haze) to critical faves (the Stooges’ “Search & Destroy” totally demolishes the thousand and one versions done by mundane punkers, the band’s reckless, ramshackle performance capturing the white heat fervor of Iggy’s worst nightmares). A live cover of the Dictators “Stay With Me” retains the heartfelt innocence intended by writer Andy Shernoff while adding the Cheese’s own bit of emotional longing to the mix, and a live romp through the Ramones’ “The KKK Took My Baby Away” keeps about 90% of the original’s breakneck pace and energy while retaining Joey’s sweetness and light.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

There’s plenty more to like on Government Cheese 1985-1995, forty-three songs altogether from the best band that you never heard. If Government Cheese had hailed from Athens, Georgia like their friends R.E.M. or maybe even from Austin, Texas they might today be a household name. Instead, they remain a fond memory for a few thousand loyal fans scattered across the Southeast. The very definition of “cult band” and D.I.Y. poster children for the indie-rock aesthetic, Government Cheese flirted with the big time but never got the break they deserved…none of which makes this music any less entertaining, the songs any less brilliant, or the performances any less rocking. Although Tommy Womack has since forged an acclaimed, if modest career as an indie-rock troubadour, the music he made with Government Cheese has withstood the test of time and is ready to receive the long overdue respect it demands. (Cedar Creek Music, released 2010)

Review originally published by Blurt magazine, 2010

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Vintage Review: Tommy Womack’s Now What! (2012)

With his acclaimed, semi-autobiographical 2007 album There, I Said It!, Nashville-based singer-songwriter Tommy Womack partially resuscitated a career that was going nowhere in a hurry. Brimming over with self-doubt, stark personal realizations, and boldly defiant statements, the album bared Womack’s soul in a way that many self-absorbed indie-rockers could only pretend to offer. The songs on There, I Said It! were funny, sad, angst-ridden, frustrating, witty, and emotionally-charged. The album seemed, at the time, to provide a final punctuation mark to the brilliant artist’s tumultuous career.

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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