There’s something distinctly urgent and grounded about L.A. based Americana artist, Brad Colerick’s new album, Tucson. If today’s singer-songwriter, by nature and necessity, is a troubadour, then it stands to reason that Colerick’s Tucson, his fourth solo release, is about a real and metaphorical road trip. But, the album is not about homecoming as much as about the transitions and the temporal nature we all experience in life. He even manages to poke a little fun at Robert Earl Keen’s classic song on the line, “they say the road goes on forever; that’s what they say until it ends.” It’s the job of the songwriter to give words to the rich texture of emotion that accompanies us on our journey through time. On this album, Colerick unflinchingly looks at both the bright and the darker pathways of that universal pilgrimage with engaging empathy and acute insight.
As a writer and a recording artist, Colerick succeeds on all levels on this collection of eleven consistently well-crafted songs. If Rosanne Cash’s acclaimed, The River and the Thread, explores the connection between her roots in the Deep South and the human spirit, then Colerick’s Tucson successfully mines the magnetism that draws the spirit to the constant movement of the Southwest. But, he comes to it by way of his own intimate feel for the contemplative rhythm of his roots in a Midwestern small town. Like Cash’s opus, Tucson is all about place, time and the interaction between the soul of the people and the land.
A native of Nebraska, Colerick relocated to Southern California in 1986. This cycle of songs begins with a lyrically visual road trip from Southern California to Arizona to bid farewell to a friend(“Tucson” by David Plenn). But, it’s not the destination that counts here as much as the immediacy of the journey itself. The solidly crafted country rock tune calls to mind Joe Ely at his best with distinctive roaming, seamless pedal steel and dobro interplay that drives the feeling of the freedom of the road in song.
The songs that follow carries on with an unassuming road trip through the interior landscape of the soul. But, each song is beautifully mirrored in the movement of place and character. “Blue Horizon,” takes us through an impressionistic tour of tragic stories inherent in the country today; from armed robbery to Native American isolation. “Late Winter Snow,” describes the regretful feeling of opportunities missed in a long-term relationship. With a soaring, soulful organ added to the guitar mix, the song haunts as it engages. “Hands of Time,” is about love that has been restored and renewed. “Hobb Thrasher,” describes an airport encounter with a 90 year-old fiddle player in much the way Jerry Jeff Walker once immortalized Bojangles. With empathetic lines like,
“If you’ve got 90 year-old fingers
You play the fiddle best you can
And when you’re stuck inside an airport
You let a stranger join the band.”
The production, by Charlie White(with additional work from Ed Tree), stays consistent with the purity of intent filling out the unique interplay between electric and acoustic instruments with an intimate ambience that keeps the songs at the center. Wisely, Colerick and White chose to leave Los Angeles recording studios in favor of an out-of the-way studio in Arkansas. This helped reflect the earthy feeling rising from the texture of the album. It’s a strategy that pays dividends in the sonic terrain the two artists have forged here.
Tucson ends, appropriately enough, with another road song, “Roll On” suggesting the essence of life is experienced in the movement through our common landscape, both internal and external. It’s the journey, not the destination that Brad Colerick invites us to, where “the passage of time is all that you’re feeling, it’s all part of the healing.” Ultimately, this is one road trip that is such a pleasure to go on, you won’t want it to end.
