To date, the book on Jack Logan has tended to open with one or more of the following chapter headers:
“Born In The USA”: Logan’s just a regular-guy working-class stiff from Doraville, Georgia, repairing swimming pool motors by day, getting together with his pals at night, knocking back a few beers and knocking out a few tunes that wound up in the hands of Peter Jesperson at Medium Cool Records.
“Genuine Bootleg Series Pt. X”: The resulting record deal yielded the 1994 release on Medium Cool-Twin/Tone of the two-CD/42-song Bulk, it being extracted from some 600 demos that were crowding the Logan back catalog. This was soon followed by Mood Elevator, a 17-songer on Medium Cool/Restless culled from a 37-tune songwriting marathon. Doing the math, by the time Logan gets around to performing for The Pope there will be enough material in the vaults to keep bootleggers panning for gold until 2099.
“The New [insert rock icon of choice]”: Critics love cliches, shorthand and signifiers. While frequently burdensome for the artist, drawing parallels between Logan and, say, Springsteen, works nicely in the public’s mind, ever-eager for a morsel of unsubstantiated hype upon which to chew and then generate breathless letters to Entertainment Weekly. And to date, the critics have definitely sucked down their oxygen quotas while spewing enough effusive ink to fill a Doraville pool.
Logan, for his part, could probably care less about these hooks. He’s got more important ones — the musical kind — on his mind.
Buzz Me In, Logan’s third record — or his fourth, if you count last year’s Little Private Angel, a joint effort on Parasol Records with Weird Summer pop auteur Bob Kimbell — was recorded at Casino Studios, situated in the heart of Atlanta’s funky, boho Little Five Points section. Casino prez Kosmo Vinyl (of Clash/Stiff Records notoriety) produced the sessions, which brought together Logan’s Liquor Cabinet — longtime chums Kelly Keneipp, piano/guitar; Dave Philips, guitar; Aaron Phillips, drums — with an array of colorful locals that included the Gap Band’s Sam Skelton on sax, Curtis Mayfield conga player Luis Stefanelli, the Brains’ Tom Gray on guitar, and Vic Chesnutt, Kevn Kinney, Clay Harper and Anne Richmond Boston on backing vocals.
The first thing that strikes you about Buzz Me In is the sound. In a word (or several), it’s terrific. Expansive. Warm, with depth, perfectly matching musical motif to lyrical nuance, and perfectly complementary to Logan’s friendly, easygoing vocals (he often brings to mind a cross between Alejandro Escovedo and Dave Alvin).
Right from the start, on “I Brake For God”, there’s a richness of texture, the tune’s driving-through-the-darkness metaphor underscored by a whooshing-cars effect, a click-clack percussion track that mimics auto tires rumbling over creases in the asphalt, and the same kinds of echoey, wide-open-spaces guitar sounds that Chris Whitley employed to great effect on his Living With The Law.
Along the way arrives the album’s musical and emotional centerpiece, “Worldly Possessions”, in which Logan, singing in a weary tone and adopting the fame/fortune/emptiness schematic, recalls the past and having “so many more friends back then,” until “I grew away much like the branch of a tree/I grew and there was money growing on me” — and now he’s left with just the titular personal accumulation. The song ushers forth deliciously, like a dream-memory on a pillow of strummed acoustics, a gently twanging/chiming electric, a pulselike conga/bongo thrum, and the spooky groan of a mellotron.
This lush ambiance is maintained to album’s end, where on “Ordinary Person”, a nonspecific meditation on getting far away from it all to stay sane (“Always able to sift the sunlight from the midst of a cold, dark day/Under the surface he was changing/Changing into an ordinary person”), the languid tempo and sounds of vibraphone and tropical percussion are precisely suggestive of an island retreat.
Buzz Me In is not slick, however — just brimming with atmosphere. There’s the lachrymose (“Hit Or Miss”, whose violins and cellos, coupled with Logan’s wonderfully paced murmur, sounds like one of Escovedo’s more downcast moments); the disorienting (“Diving Deeper”, with its aquatic effects and Chesnutt’s bizarre trombone blare, is one of those drowning nightmares come to life); the down-home and rootsy (“Pearl Of Them All” is a gospelly waltz featuring the stately purr of the harmonium and the metallic twang of old-style resonator guitar); and the flat-out rocking (most notably, a Springsteenian tale tellingly named “Metropolis”, and “All Grown Up”, a Southern rock number that’s giddily over the top, right down to the honking sax solo and sassy female backing vocals).
Add to this atmosphere a plethora of the aforementioned melodic hooks, and a song sequence that positions contrasting tunes for maximum impact, and you’ve got one of the best albums of 1999.
Tinker — released in April on Backburner, a new label run by longtime Logan right-hand man Keneipp — doesn’t pretend to any grandness, and in fact, it’s a mail-order only item. Billed under the band name Jack Logan’s Compulsive Recorders, this 11-songer assembles the usual Liquor Cabinet suspects for a low-key, medium-fidelity, high-octane set of no-frills garage and pop. But don’t think eschewing craft means sacrificing quality in Logan’s world. These tunes, while at times quirky to the extreme, are all dusky gems in their own right.
Highlights include the dissonant, punkish rave-up “Zodiac Slave” (noting the Escovedo references above, this could be a Buick MacKane number); “Cosmic Janitor”, a moody, lurching number whose odd melody and subject matter demands excavation and elaboration on a future Logan album; the very Elvis Costello-like “Candyland”; and an insanely infectious tune titled “Kissin’ The Wall” (classic chord progression and “doo-doo” chorus harmonies) that no doubt is a highlight of Logan’s live show.
The Tinker sleeve comes decorated in one of Logan’s trademark pen-and-ink, R. Crumb-esque drawings depicting two grinning guys hoisting the hood of a vintage hot rod, no doubt intent on doing some tinkering on the engine. Nice touch, that. Call Tinker Logan’s little gift to the fans who’ve followed him thus far, an invite to take an informal look under the hood and watch the motor purr.
Oh, and add this chapter header to the Logan book: “Rapidly Maturing Artist Not Afraid To Cut Loose And Get Down ‘n’ Dirty Once In Awhile.”
Well, clunky or not, that’s my hook.