So a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that on Me, Myself, Music and Mysteries one of the artist that I listened to on that Folk Monday was Rob Lutes. Over those last weeks I’ve listened to Lutes’ album Truth & Fiction many times and each time I like the album more and more!! Today it was the soundtrack for my run!
Lutes, like Tim Hus, John Wort Hannam and Lake of Stew, is a Canadian folk artist! Lutes hails from Montreal, but he knows his way around Americana music though and was a 2001 Kerrville New Folk winner! Truth & Fiction is Lutes’ fourth album and many say his most complete. All I know is I like it and am going to go back and listen to the others. The album comes on the heels of Lutes’ successful 2007 album Ride the Shadows. Greg Quill of the Toronto Star said that the albums was:
“a brilliantly understated gem distinguished by a warm and raspy voice, honest and eloquent lyrics, and evocative acoustic guitar work…among the best of the year’s roots/blues crop.” The Ottawa Citizen named the CD “one of the Top Ten in Canada for 2007”.
The success of Ride the Shadow, brought Lutes a licensing deal from Rounder Europe and a European Tour. Truth & Fiction was produced by Boston-area producer David Goodrich, who has previously worked with Chris Smither, Peter Mulvey, and Jeffrey Foucault.
While Rob’s voice is as described soulful, gritty and maybe warm and raspy, what drives this album for me are the lyrics and there are great ones in almost every song like these from “Bread”
Oh you could fly
You got those wings
You tie them down with earthly things
And treat them like they don’t belong on you
Oh we’ve all learned to hide them well
The secret that we never tell
Is usually the one that makes us blue, all the way through
or these from the opening track “I Know a Girl”
With foolish dreams and dark desires
It don’t take long to tangle entire
worlds, we’re just like little kids with big ideas
And when our lives feel uninspired
We’ll book the next best thing for hire
And for a little while we believe it’s going to free us
And the album has ten more tracks and the lyrics on each one are just as good! Now imagine them with the soulful, raspy voice and some good acoustic guitar. Better yet just go to Rob’s Myspace page and listen. See I told you! What you didn’t go! Shame on you, get over there or at least listen to ” I Know a Girl” right here!
