Buy this now: Brother Sal “Blood and Dust”
I was on cnn.com again this week, doing my best not to cuss when I was talking about Carrie Underwood and preaching the Gospel of Brother Sal. At this point I’m a little shocked that people are still surprised to hear that all this pop-country bullshit is soullessly assembled by a committee of businessmen that flip through a catalog and pick and choose pre-fabricated, dumbed-down, re-purposed renditions of both last month’s hit record and the “grief” section on a Hallmark card rack. Then they combine some little piece of ass with the best Pro-Tools mason in Nashville and a group of day players trying to earn enough scratch to pay alimony with their guitar, regardless of the quality of the product (which is, admittedly, still a large accomplishment).
The result is just more and more soulless, sterile shit, produced by the machine. I’ll try not to go off on yet another rant about this, but if you still don’t get what’s wrong with the mass-produced, cookie cutter, fetid terd squeezed out of big box stores and mini-malls that is Country Radio/ CMT/VH1, message me with your phone number, and I’ll call you and explain it personally. I’ll do this shit one American at a time if I have to.
They may have killed John Henry, but I can still stab the motherfucker who built that God damn machine.
Brother Sal is the opposite of everything I just described. Every one of the songs on Blood and Dust was written for a reason and sung and played with passion. Brian Wright produced the album masterfully and his buddies from the Waco Tragedies and their extended family play with a purpose on these songs (and every time they take the stage).
Sal calls his music “Whorehouse Gospel,” which may be the most accurate label I’ve ever heard for any music in a long time. The anchors on cnn.com asked me what “Whorehouse Gospel” meant, and I pointed out that, in fact, Jesus himself preached whorehouse Gospel. Neither of them would touch that with a ten foot cross, but we all know that Mary Magdalene had a job that didn’t involve an office. And most everyone knows Jesus didn’t hang out with the most savory characters. That was the point: he surrounded himself with the common man, the down and out, the scoundrels, which is why Christianity spread so well: we’re all scoundrels on some level.
Rock n Roll came from the Church. The early stuff rooted in Gospel is the epitome of making a joyous noise. Some brave pioneers took the sound of redemption, the sound of letting your worries and problems go, the sound of letting that little light of yours shine, out of the uncomfortable wooden chairs and judgment of Sunday morning and brought it to the people every night. And that’s where Brother Sal fits in. There is salvation in his songs.
Brother Sal writes about personal stories and feelings in such an honest and sincere way that even if you haven’t been through what he’s been through or lived his life, you can still relate to the earnest emotions pouring out of your speakers.
I can’t emphasize enough what a brilliant job Brian Wright did producing and arranging this album, and the band plays like all of America and Russia’s nuclear weapons are in midflight across the Pacific Ocean, there’s a meteor hurdling towards Earth, UFO’s are hovering over all our major cities, and the swine flu just crossed with Ebola and is running rampant in pig-monkey hybrids attacking children and sharing dirty needles. Every guitar, piano, organ, horn, bass, drum, mandolin, fiddle, and hand clap rings like there are only five minutes until Armageddon, and they came up with something better to do than fucking. It’s Rock n Roll in its truest form.
Now go get you some.
