Kip Boardman – Boardman

Kip Boardman’s back. I know it doesn’t mean much to most of you, judging by the lack of response to his earlier albums, but it should. You missed out, plain and simple. Not that there isn’t time to right your wrongs. Boardman’s previous albums are still available (at least, I hope they are) and after hearing his latest, Boardman, some of you will trek back to hear them and probably wonder how you missed them the first time around.

Me, I have friends, and one of them (Justin Smith, then pounding drums for Old Californio and now Nocona) pointed me toward The Long Weight back in 2010 or so. Friends are good to have, let me tell you. The Long Weight was evidently just what I was looking for back then and I set about writing a glowing review which I am sure few, if any, read. So allow me to plagiarize myself with a few lines from that review. You see, I took a road trip expecting to hear a few albums needing review. The Long Weight was the first and never left the player.

“I should be able to give you a hundred reasons why I dig Kip,” I wrote, “but I can’t. As I listened, I wasn’t even sure I liked the album that much but something kept me from replacing the disc and by the end of the trip, I was sold. This guy is amalgamation of so many things I have liked about music over the years and it is hard to separate them. There are bits and pieces which drew me to artists like Finnigan & Wood, Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, and even Phillip Goodhand-Tait and Nick Holmes, whose Soulful Crooner album remains one of my real treasures to this day. (Boardman) sings with an ease which puts you at your ease and, holy crap, can the guy write!”

I go on to highlight certain of the tracks and compare them to songs by artists such as those listed above and as obscure as Ophelia Hope, a group based in Norway which put out a beauty of an album and then stepped off the musical escalator, as far as I can tell. I do not compare anyone to bands I love as much as Ophelia Hope for no reason. Trust me!

The new album is at least as good as The Long Weight. Here’s what you need to know. The band is small and simple— keyboards, two guitars (Dave Gleason and Eric Heywood, who doubles on pedal steel), bass (Rob Douglas), drums (Steve Mugalian), and Boardman, who plays the Wurlitzer piano. A Wurlitzer! I love the Wurlitzer and to hear it as pretty much the keyboard makes me happy, indeed. And in case you didn’t know it (or don’t know it), that is one extremely talented group of musicians. Heywood is much sought after as a session man as are all of these musicians, but I know Gleason from his own albums and songs such as “If You’re Going Through Hell” and “The Rails Don’t Run Here” and the much earlier but equally as impressive “Midnight, California.” The guy is a monster guitarist and a telecasting picker of note.

But back to Boardman. As on The Long Weight, Boardman serves up a very impressive string of songs, some bordering on compositions. All lyrically solid and formed to the music. Of all the tracks, the capper (“Oh The Ache”) is my favorite, though a few others did their part. “Oh the Ache” is an anthem of sorts, the kind of song bands use to finish a set— long, driving, a bedrock on which to allow Gleason and Heywood and even Boardman to experiment, using sound chambers and tremolo to their hearts’ content. If any song demand an encore, it is this one. Worth it for Heywood’s pedal steel alone.

We owe thanks to Nelson Bragg for this one. He stopped by a club one night and watched Boardman and band toss these songs out to an almost empty room and was enthralled. He asked Boardman if he could do that in a studio. The rest is history. A pat on the back to Bragg and the rest of the crew. Another one to add to my Album of the Year list.