Various Artists – Americana: A Tribute To Johnny Cash
From deep within the underbelly of Seattle’s lesser-known musical subcultures comes an unexpected homage to Johnny Cash. The brainchild of label head/Kill Switch…Klick leader dA Sebastian, Americana reinterprets Cash’s music in a variety of settings.
Sometimes it’s a good notion. Dead Leaves Rising’s opening goth reworking of “Ballad Of A Teenage Queen” begs the question why the man in black hasn’t been more obviously embraced by the kids in black and white makeup. It also most successfully demonstrates the potential implicit in tributes, the possibility that songs can be recontextualized, reborn. Section One’s speed-punk take on “Wanted Man”, by immediate contrast, does nothing more than run over the music with a piece of heavy equipment.
Well, tribute discs are like that. The oddest revelation is how hard some of these bands and singers must work to make these songs sound hard. Witness Kill Switch…Klick’s “Folsom Prison Blues”: No matter how much Sebastian snarls, Cash still sounds more threatening in the original.
Cash also proves a better technical singer than one might expect. Chris Livesay and Sheelagh Harka take a valiant stab at the gorgeous duet “Jackson”, but bloody only themselves in the process. Henry Boy’s “Ring Of Fire” does nothing to eclipse Wall Of Voodoo’s version, and Courtney Hudak’s “Long Black Veil” manages none of the song’s stoic, gothic qualities.
It is also a curious assortment of bands, ranging from goth to industrial to long-running local bar band How’s Bayou. That said, at least most of the twenty acts represented here took a good running leap at this material, rather than treating it as some dusty museum piece. Sometimes in the process they leapt to fascinating conclusions.