August 23rd, 2007The song to stop a moment
Cydney Robinson is the spokeswoman for the shoeless. She finds that toothless poverty in all of us, the barefoot truth, the humanity that is all too aware, the wisdom seldom spoken out loud, and the Kentucky weeds that grow inside.
“Jebadiah was a preacher… in… my… town…” An ominous beginning. You want the song to stop a moment. “The story of this song isn’t very nice. But the music is pretty.” Cydney Robinson spoke the warning. She opens every show with this song, opens the album with this song, and opens up the listener straight to the core.
The rockers at the Roxy were blindsided by it, the drinkers at Bordello got quiet, and most of the band stands back and watches. A pretty girl in a long sleeved white cotton dress that reaches to the floor, pure white with a little embroidery—a dress that suggests a baptismal outfit. With eyes dilated like a frightened deer, triumphant black hair, and the solemn look of Texas determination, the singer takes us into her confidence. Robinson tells the story that no family wants to hear, in a song, cause it wouldn’t come out right any other way. “He kept his word and talked good to all the people, but for himself salvation he had not found. From his mighty voice fell wisdom upon my young years of ten. He told my Momma I needed teachin’. She obliged and I followed him.” Then an astonishing, desperate, hopeful prayer of a thing, “Oh what I would change if I were queen!” Magic thought. “Oh, oh, oh, oh, old Kentucky weeds that grow inside of me.” Those weeds are poetry born of pain. “He said this looks as good a place as any for you to learn what salvation’s all about. He said through Jesus’ eye he’d been a watching and he’d seen all my evil deeds. For a taste of heaven, I was to do just what he said…” We are the family hearing this story for the first time. “Oh, what I would change if I were queen!” The voice of a ten year old.
After that slack rope walk of a song, there is no need to talk about honesty.
Robinson’s voice is an astonishing thing. Tammy Wynette has the same piercing clarity and power on the song “I Don’t Wanna Play House.” Robinson has the phrasing and honesty of Loretta Lynn singing “God Has No Mistakes.” In a song about a girl who “Comes From Louisiana,” Robinson takes it up quite a few notches to equal the unbridled force and abandon of Janice Joplin on “Piece of May Heart.” This writer first saw Robinson sing a song at a squirrelly open mic thing. Nobody was listening. Gossip and chatter filled the air. There was no band, but Robinson even abandoned her guitar. She began to stomp one foot and then the other, to a rhythm of sheer determination. She sang the song over the sound of her boots on the stage, “Even though the skies are blue, Texas I miss you…” It takes an act of God to stop the sound of three dozen singer songwriters talking away the time until they get to sing, all of them 10 empty rows from the stage, but Robinson’s voice and that song was that very rushing mighty wind.
Tony Hoffer produced this first “Alternative Mountain Music” record with a wise word to the band, “It should sound like it’s being played on the front porch.” There’s no studio endings, no unnecessary frills. Nothing that would embarrass the neighbors. Tony has produced some terrific music, in all sorts of genres—Beck, The Fratellis, The Kooks, Dean Bradfield, Idlewild, Phoenix and Belle & Sebastian. He got this one right. He knew what he was after.
