Flatlanders – Wheels Of Fortune

Much as I liked Now Again, the reunited Flatlanders’ 2002 album, it was also a somewhat frustrating set that in the long run seems a bit slight. Songs such as “Pay The Alligator” at first came across as throwaway goofs, grew in my mind into great goofs, and then slipped again from memory, all in a matter of months; the best thing about “Down In The Light Of The Melon Moon” proved to be its title. Like many, I may have initially brought too many expectations to the record — being first disappointed, then compensating with too much enthusiasm — but even after getting past all that, I eventually found it simply lacked sufficient staying power. The same won’t happen with Wheels Of Fortune.

These songs have the depth and breadth you’d expect from three strong-voiced writers like Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock. I can’t help but think that’s because they didn’t triple-co-write, as they did last time, and so none of the tunes are softened by the too-many-cooks syndrome. Hancock and Gilmore collaborated on “See The Way”, but all other songs are from a single composer, including one from a semi-outsider (if that’s a fair way to describe their old standby Al Strehli) and several more already familiar to fans of the three men’s solo work.

What delights even more is the ease with which they slip into each others’ shoes; some of the best performances come on songs written by someone other than the lead singer. Recorded like its predecessor in Ely’s home studio, Wheels Of Fortune is somehow simultaneously more tradition-rooted and more pop-progressive, with a warm acoustic feel even though it’s mostly electric and sometimes surprisingly raucous. Like little other folk-based music, this stuff rocks, raggedy edges and all.

To that degree, you could say that overall, Ely’s sensibility stands out a little more than the others’, even if not always on the songs he actually fronts. Indeed, probably the two loudest tracks feature Gilmore — Strehli’s tempestuous “Whistle Blues” and “Back To My Old Molehill”, which might be the best thing here. It has both groove and breakneck momentum, as well as a true sense of panic created by Steve Wesson’s musical saw and Rob Gjersoe’s thrusting slide guitar, all in support of the hapless Gilmore ruminating on the paradoxes of his life as he does so well (he desires this but gets that, he tries to do this but that happens, etc.). There’s just one catch: quintessentially Gilmore as it sounds, Ely wrote it.

Meanwhile, Gilmore penned the more Ely-like “Midnight Train”, a raunchy-sounding, admonitory blues on which Ely’s menacing vocals threaten to break into hellfire preaching. But Ely is good for some laughs, too, on his own “I’m Gonna Strangle You Shorty”. Hancock, meanwhile, offers up his trademark lyricism and longing on the likes of “Do You Love Me Still”, while his reading of Ely’s “Indian Cowboy” makes it the tragic western circus ballad to end all tragic western circus ballads. Or check Hancock out on his own “Eggs Of Your Chickens”, which is not the novelty I was expecting from the title: “I heard you say little darlin’ we must do or die/Now everything I’m doin’ I been dyin’ to try.”

Who can resist gems like that? Wheels Of Fortune is aces in the good old-fashioned way: because its songs are aces. And the performances live up to them, and then some.