Jon Shain – No Tag, No Tail Light
In the late 1980s, during one of North Carolinas periodic rock downswings, local music heads enjoyed a concurrent upturn on the blues scene. You couldnt turn a street festival corner without running into a rediscovered veteran like Algie Mae Hinton, Skeeter Brandon and Big Boy Henry, or younger acolytes such as Mike Lightnin Wells eager to keep the form alive. Durhams Jon Shain caught the bug during this period, subsequently going on to regional acclaim with the folk/blues proto-jamband Flyin Mice. Shains now three albums into a solo career.
Produced by Fairport Convention drummer Dave Mattacks, No Tag, No Tail Light is a beacon of sonic serenity, virtuosic in form but easygoing in delivery. Armed with an elastic set of falsetto-teasing pipes, Shain picks n grins his way through an incredibly diverse set. Among the high points: the slippery, Taj Mahal/Ry Cooder blues-groove of Worried Messenger; the faintly hilarious Deep Freeze, with a gentle guitar/dobro/harp arrangement enlivened by quirky wordplay; and a little concoction well dub cantina-grass, the Latin-flavored Getaway Car.
On the six-minute Whistle Blower, the trio ventures into darker, atmospheric, jazzier territory reminiscent of Brit folkie John Martyn (with whom, incidentally, Mattacks has played; Mattacks lends his percussion skills to this and several other songs here). Shain may revere his early role models, but this sort of willingness to step outside the box marks him as a man not tethered to the past.