ARTiST: Simon Joyner
TiTLE: Skeleton Blues
LABEL: Jagjaguwar
GENRE: Indie
TiME: 47:49 min
SiZE: 67,4 MB
BiTRATE: VBRkbps
RiP DATE: Nov-10-2006
RELEASE DATE: Nov-21-2006
WEBSiTE: n/a
Track List:
01. Open Window Blues 08:41
02. You Don't Know Me 05:46
03. Answer Night 03:02
04. Medicine Blues 06:00
05. The Only Living Boy In Omaha 08:14
06. Epilogue In D 06:02
07. My Side Of The Blues 10:04
Release Notes:
For Simon Joyner's tenth proper album, he's joined
by his working Omaha band, the Fallen Men. What
they've created is a dark, rock-and-roll, beginning
or ending of an era, seven leaf catalogue of people
(skeletons) and their troubles (blues). Sounding
like Doug Yule-era Velvet Underground, Dylan with
the Band (or is it Neil Young and Crazy Horse?), and
Sister Lovers damaged Big Star, this is unlike any
other Simon Joyner record.
The song cycle begins with a cobblestone street
inviting a man in an open window to splash the
bricks below, to the cadence of It's Alright Ma (I'm
Only Bleeding), and ends with a man walking down the
street waiting for the rain to wash him clean. In
between is all the news fit to sing. Joyner knows it
takes a worried man to sing a worried song and the
songs here are certainly worried, peopled by bruised
lives, but make no mistake, this is not hopeless
music.
Unlike recent albums recorded in studios with
professional musicians, Joyner expanded his Fallen
Men and recorded live in a vacant old train station
building in Omaha over the course of one lost
weekend. Veteran collaborator Michael Krassner flew
in to engineer and was forced to join the band on
"warehouse" piano. Chris Deden (drummer from the
early Sing, Eunuchs! records) returns, along with
the protean Alex McManus (The Bruces, Lambchop,
Bright Eyes), this time cutting his teeth on pedal
steel and sharing lead guitar duties with Dave
Hawkins. Lonnie Methe is back too, playing organ and
vibes instead of violin. Mike Tulis plays the bass.
Skeleton Blues explores themes of loyalty,
alienation, death, time, war and divorce. Like the
doctor who warns his patient in the Passenger (from
1998's Yesterday, Tomorrow and In Between), "go
forth and run and hide but you're just like all the
others I've seen, a skeleton inside," Joyner views
our struggle for beauty and meaning to be more
important than our fear of death and the unknown.
His skeletons are people in states of transition,
falling and climbing, failing sometimes but always
swimming the backstroke from the rolling graveyards.
Simon Joyner writes and makes music in Omaha,
Nebraska. Although he tours only occasionally, he
continues to charge the musical landscape each time
he releases a fresh battery of songs.