Bill Jackson – The Wayside Ballads Vol. 2

Bill Jackson is either the most Americanized Aussie ever or the most Australianized American. To listen to his music he was raised either by dingoes or wolves, drives either a Holden or a Ford, eats either Vegemite or Southern Fried Chicken, votes— well, both Australian and American political parties have pretty much isolated people who vote their conscience, so I would have to say votes his heart. Bill Jackson is an open book when it comes to right and wrong and it takes only a few listens to his two latest albums to know it. He lives in the past and worries about the future but knows the only hope is in the present.   

He is as universal a musician as I have ever known and his music thrives because of it. He writes like he grew up in Brisbane or Melbourne or Canberra but has roots solidly in Nashville and Memphis and Chicago. He rocks, he cries and he laughs with a down under sensibility that most Americans understand and reaches across continental boundaries with ease. He is one of them and yet is one of us.

Now, I cannot confess to knowing much about music in Australia but for a handful of artists and albums which have made their ways to my collection but I do know American music and The Wayside Ballads, both volumes 1 & 2, are as deep in American roots as I’ve heard from anyone not born and raised here.  

But before we go there, allow me to explain that Bill Jackson is not just Bill Jackson. He is, in fact, three musicians and composers— Bill, of course, and lap guitar genius Pete Fidler (every bit as much a part of Jackson as is Sergio Webb with David Olney or David Lindley with Jackson Browne or Tom Brumley with Rick Nelson). The third is none other than Ross Jackson, Bill’s brother, a lyricist of consequence and who brings real depth to many of Bill’s songs. When you hear Bill play, the chances are that Pete will be there alongside and that Ross is there in spirit.  

I “met” Jackson through his second solo release, Steel + Bone, an album which caught me totally off-guard. It was a baptism of Australian music, the history and feel something a bit different than I had ever heard. I had always been fascinated with Australia, my father having said that if he had to fight alongside anyone, he wanted it to be the Aussies (he was a WWII vet). I dug the accent, met a beautiful Australian girl who was hitchhiking through The States not long after I had terminated my Army involvement and took it to heart when she told me I needed to move there because the girls down under loved Americans, especially their accent (I had to correct her because everyone knows that it is the Aussies with the accent), and I would have my pick of a thousand. God, she was so beautiful I almost made the move.

So when I heard Steel + Bone, I was ready. Jackson overwhelmed me with songs about Australia and drugs and life and tossed in an anti-war song, to boot (the classic “Bring ‘Em On Home.”). I heard John Prine and Steve Goodman and a host of American folkies on that album and I was hooked. Bill Jackson was a force. No doubt about it. From there it was The Nashville Session EP, which included “CSS Shenandoah,” a song about (true story) Australia’s involvement in America’s Civil War and “Honeymoon Gully,” a tale of young love forbidden by a community which I assume ended in tragedy (Jackson leaves it for us to guess). Then there was Jerilderie, another beauty of an album with just enough love and life to keep the interest.

Jackson had been working on songs for some time after Jerilderie and I had assumed he had hit the brick wall in terms of his songs when I got a message which asked if I would like to hear rough tracks of songs which he hoped would be on his next album. I jumped at the chance and heard Jackson at the top of his game. Roots-based songs meet the minds of Jackson-Fidler-Jackson. Now, these were rough, as he’d said, which meant that they simply were just not in final form. They could have been released as such, though, and I let Jackson know that I thought so, but he had other things in mind. He had more songs and wanted to ride out the inspiration and when he finally went into the studio with Shannon Bourne at the helm, he came out with a real gem.

The Wayside Ballads Vol. 1 made me a true believer. Not only were the few tracks I had heard in their rough form more fleshed out, they were magnificent. They were roots-driven to the max and sounded like they had been recorded in Memphis in the heydays of rock ‘n’ roll. It was partially Bourne’s guitar— that dung,diggy dung, diggy dung chop which graced more than a few hits back in the fifties and early sixties. It was mostly Jackson’s grasp of rock ‘n’ roll the way it had started— controlled but electric. I also heard ghosts of Jerry Jeff Walker and John Prine and Tom Paxton— references more because I knew them than any other reason. The playing is exceptional, Bourne and Pete Fidler playing circles around one another but in a real musical sense. Most notable are “Kate’s Pretty Green Dress,” Kate being Ned Kelly’s sister who evidently pled Ned’s case before authorities, and “The Last Buccaneer,” just because I love the music.

Which brings me to the new one— The Wayside Ballads Vol. 2. And to the real genius of Bill Jackson. He had left a couple of my favorite tracks off of Vol. 1, which would not have bothered me so much had I not made it clear to him that these were cornerstone tracks of the bunch he had sent. One was “Silver Screen Cowboys” which takes me back to my childhood every time I hear it. Life as a child was movies and the advent of TV and playing outside, a lot of which revolved around “Cops & Robbers” and “Cowboys & Indians.” “Silver Screen Cowboys” is a gentle remembrance of that life, one which I remember with true fondness. Fidler’s exceptional dobro work takes the song to another level as Jackson sings lines like “It was stick ’em up, wooden guns, dixie cups, aliens and cowboys…” Jackson’s nod to childhood and one hell of a song.  

The album is very impressive, indeed. The lightly jazzy and thirties-sounding “Three China Ducks” is a study in memories, “Rollin’ Into Rosine” inspired by Bill Monroe— Jackson writes this about the song— “This track was written after Pete, Nat and Ross visited Bill Monroe’s birthplace in February 2011 and we have been playing it ‘live’ ever since. Thomm (Jutz) gave this the full bluegrass instrumentation treatment with Pete (Dobro), Sierra Hull (Mandolin), Justin Moses (Fiddle), Daniel Dan’l Kimbro (Upright Bass), Lynn Williams (Drums/Percussion) and Thomm on Acoustic Guitar. I completed the circle on Acoustic Guitar and Vocals. Thomm did an amazing job mixing this track which is like a beautiful cracked mosaic – everything shines in the right place…” “Every Day’s a Drinkin’ Day” is what you might expect out of any one of the folk greats of the sixties and seventies— a look at a life gone astray, “Ghost of His Own” pushed along with the outstanding work of the musicians, “Time Will Judge” rides on the feel of “In the Mines” but with more of a Jim Reeves approach.

One thing I find intriguing is how close together and yet how far apart are Volumes 1 and 2. I have tried to understand why and I think it applies to the genius who is Bill Jackson. He knew the subtle difference between American and Australian roots. He knew that recording one volume in The States and the other in Australia was going to separate the two. You have to listen hard for that separation, true, but it is there and in a way makes all the difference.

Am I impressed? How could I not be? Bill Jackson is well on his way to becoming a favorite of two nations— two countries not all that far apart in ideals politically, musically, and socially. My father thought so or he would not have made the aforementioned statement coerced by war. I think so because of all countries, with the exception of Canada which I look upon as part of The States, Australia holds my values. And, no, that’s not why I love Bill Jackson’s music. I love it because not only is it good, it is sometimes great. And it will last. Bill Jackson, long after I am gone and him too, I suppose, will be remembered for his music. And I hope his humanity, for there is humanity in every song he writes.