EDITOR’S NOTE: As 2018 comes to a close, we’re looking back at some releases from the year that we didn’t get a chance to write up when they were released. Dan Baird and Homemade Sin’s Screamer was released in September.
Halfway through 2018’s Screamer, Dan Baird sings with tongue-in-cheek glee, “Look at me, livin’ the charmed life / Watchin’ the rain dance around me.” It’s a typical wink of the eye from Baird that he’s doing better than expected after being diagnosed in 2017 with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a typically slow-growing cancer that starts in the marrow of the bone and extends to the blood. Baird had to ultimately bow out of dates he had booked with his band Homemade Sin for the remainder of the year, giving his blessing for guitarist Warner E. Hodges (of Jason and the Scorchers fame), drummer (and fellow ex-Georgia Satellite) Mauro Magellan, and bassist Micke Nilsson to honor the dates with friend, producer, and sometimes bandmate (in the Bluefields) Joe Blanton standing in for Baird when he could.
Baird received an outpouring of love and support from his fans as he candidly kept them updated through social media during his treatment while remaining upbeat and resilient. Proving that oncologists can be rock stars in their own way, Baird was given the all clear and was back on tour by the spring of 2018 with a new batch of red blood cells and a new album in the can.
During his convalescence, Baird composed 25 songs, 12 of which make up Screamer, the fifth studio release credited to Dan Baird and Homemade Sin, and the first with bassist Sean Savacool. (Nilsson had to bow out due to family obligations. Original bassist – and original Satellite – Keith Christopher was most recently filling the mighty boots of the late Leon Wilkeson for Lynyrd Skynyrd during their final tour.)
Screamer is both the sound of resilience and a celebration of the joy of life. This is no pensive, somber collection of minor-key dirges, it’s an in-your-face, seat-of-the-pants, ass-shakin’ non-stop blast of railroad steel. In other words, a typical Dan Baird and Homemade Sin album.
From the Dixie-fried power pop of opener “Bust Your Heart” and the hilarious (and vaguely political) “What Can I Say to Help,” to the pedal-to-the-floor “Something Like Love” (featuring Hodges on lead vocal and not coincidentally, the closest Homemade Sin has come to sounding like the Scorchers), Screamer surpasses 2017’s excellent Rollercoaster, and in fact is the best song-for-song DBHS album since Circus Life.
Whenever longtime songwriting partner (and bandmate for roots-rock supergroup the Yayhoos) Terry Anderson hangs out with Baird, they seem to conjure hillbilly magic, from “Dixie Beauxderant” from Baird’s first solo album, Love Songs for the Hearing Impaired, through the Yayhoos’ “Bottle and a Bible” and beyond. On Screamer, they team up again for the psychobilly “Mister and Ma’am” and the country-rock swagger of “You Broke It, You Bought It.” (Anderson also penned the Sats’ “Battleship Chains” and Baird’s biggest solo hit, “I Love You Period.”)
Dan Baird’s ballads of broken love always stop you in your tracks, and here he adds “Something Better” to the canon. Slow, bluesy, and crawling toward the inevitable demise of a relationship gone cold – it’s a definite highlight. The other ballad on Screamer is a co-write with Will Hoge, the swaying, masterful “Adilyda.” Reflecting on a love from long ago, the song echoes Tumbleweed Connection-era Elton John and Bernie Taupin or possibly a long-lost Band outtake. Also of note is the sunny pop of the love-happy “Up in Your Kitchen,” propelled by Magellan’s driving beat and a joyful Hodges harmony on the chorus, it’s the track that sticks with you the longest.
Screamer closes with the ferocious rocker “Good Problem to Have” – a mash-up of AC/DC and what I like to call the DB Low-E Strut (see “Julie and Lucky,” “Wake Up Jake,” etc.). It’s a song about perspective – something we all need more of in these days of constant complaining about the relatively trivial – a perfect way to close an album that’s driven by the determination to keep rockin’ through life no matter what gets in your way.
On Screamer, Dan Baird and Homemade Sin prove once again that they’re one of the last true rock and roll bands carrying the flag first hoisted by Chuck Berry, and they’ll continue to wave it regardless of whatever the flavor of the month happens to be, and no matter how tattered it looks.
