Jack Logan & Bob Kimbell – Woodshedding
Here comes Sisyphus. That’s a song title on Jack Logan’s latest album, but it could be a metaphor for his career. Nearly a decade after the release of Bulk, the 1994 double-disc debut that drew on fifteen years’ worth of Logan’s living-room recordings and spurred his somewhat infamous ascension from average-guy obscurity to a few ticks of fame, the man keeps making good records while breaking very little creative ground.
Apart from the obvious who’da-thunk-it factor, the appeal of Bulk stemmed from Logan’s stylistic sprawl. Here was a guy playing music for himself and his friends, and he played what he liked, be it rock, pop, blues or soul.
Of Logan’s several albums since then, the best might be Little Private Angel, a 1998 collaboration with Bob Kimbell (of Weird Summer) that scratched Logan’s pop itch. Now Kimbell and Logan have teamed up again, and the result is the woozy, shambling, and altogether unsurprising Woodshedding. Some albums will grab your shirt collar, snap your suspenders and slap you upside the head, but this is not one of them.
Which is not to say it is a bad record, just a modest one. Defined by down-tempo tunes — with the possible exception of “Legs And Brains”, nothing on this album really rocks — and recorded in a sleepy lo-fi haze, Woodshedding takes time to seep in. When it does, the album reveals its share of tasty sounds (the dobro on “Holes In Your Story”, for instance, and John Neff’s pedal steel on “The Only Son” and “Nothing But Sky”), subtle hooks (“Here Comes Sisyphus”), and wry humor (“I Still Miss Her Dog”).