ALBUM REVIEW: Scott H. Biram Keeps True to Himself on ‘The One & Only Scott H. Biram’
Grant Britt
Posted On March 27, 2024
On his latest outing, he bills himself as the one and only, but Scott H. Biram is still connected to a gang of outlaws. Waylon and Willie and later on Dale Watson paved the way for the unfettered chronicles of low-down livin’ that permeates Biram’s music. But Biram’s stuff is about as rough as anybody outlawing for a musical living can get as he gouges out a muddy, swampy trench befitting his self-proclaimed “dirty old one man band” persona.
His 2005 album with that title set the tone and technique for his studio creations since, as evidenced on his newest release, The One & Only Scott H. Biram, with the artist providing all the music on his own, with a little instrumental help from guitar and stompboard.
But this is no raggedy street-corner aggregation. Biram unleashes a fully fleshed-out, impressive accompaniment to his quirky lyrics narrating the other side of life. The ghosts of “A Boy Named Sue” author Shel Silverstein, Dave Dudley (“Six Days on the Road,”) and John Prine are all lurking around Biram’s lyrics, and the spirits of Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash haunt his vocals.
On “Inside a Bar,” Biram sounds like a road-wearier version of Willie Nelson: “Blood-sweat-and-tears / too many beers / too much too soon / yeah I guess I took it too far / lonely as you are … inside a bar.”
But what sets Biram’s drunkathon ode apart from most cry-in-your-beer drinking songs is the sense of sheer misery and hopelessness as the booze numbs, distorts, and destroys time and reason: “I guess it’s Friday or is it Monday? Tuesday, Wednesday? Hell, it might even be Sunday / You know it all runs together in the end / My glass is empty / Let’s have another.”
His guitar shimmying and howling like a lost soul, Biram goes honky-tonkin’ through the badlands on “No Man’s Land,” sounding like a grave dirt-garglin’ take on Omar and the Howlers tangled up in hoodoo and white trash carrying-on.
Scott H. Biram (photo by Ray Redding)
All but two songs here are originals. Biram, backing off on the hard-core stuff somewhat, shows off his considerable picking talents with his acoustic cover of Rev. Gary Davis’ “Death Have No Mercy in This Land.” And he sounds like a choir of Birams on “Easy Rider,” overlaying vocals on a rousing version you could second-line or two-step to. The song’s muddy past has it entwined with “C.C. Rider,” recorded by a slew of artists who have swapped the two titles back and forth. Ma Rainey cut the earliest recorded version of “Easy Rider” in 1925, and Mississippi John Hurt, Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Eric Burdon did their own takes on it, with one of the best known a loping, laid-back stroll with the “C.C. Rider” title by Chuck Willis in 1957. Biram, of course, follows none of these predecessors, rocking this gospel-flavored take down the aisle and right out the church’s front doors into a juke joint.
Not for the faint of heart or the squeamish, Biram’s convoluted, style-stirring mixture is a slap upside the head and a kick in the ass to get the blood pumping and all your senses riled up and screaming for more.
Scott H. Biram’s The One & Only Scott H. Biram is out March 29 on Bloodshot Records.
