Mickey Newbury – It Might As Well Be The Moon

On March 2, 1988, Mickey Newbury walked into Master’s Touch Studio in Nashville, bearing something called a photon guitar and a satchel of songs that Elektra had long before allowed to go out of print. He was accompanied by violinist Marie Rhines, and Edgar Meyer added bass to two cuts. By the end of that day they’d recorded nine tracks, straight through, and the album was done.

It was in many ways a striking performance, particularly since Newbury hadn’t released anything since 1981. It was also an act of self-defense, for the Airborne label (at the time home to Mickey Gilley and Stella Parton), perhaps inspired by Newbury’s penchant for atmospheric interludes, had assembled the first version of In A New Age from some old demos tarted up with mid-’80s new age computer babble. Apparently a few copies of that version of the LP actually were released in Canada.

Newbury and Rhines went on to play dates in support of In A New Age, including a few nights at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. Airborne went out of business, and the album, like so much of Newbury’s catalog, disappeared from sight.

It Might As Well Be The Moon restores In A New Age to print and adds a second disc in the bargain, drawn from live recordings of those San Francisco shows. And it really is a bargain, particularly for those without the money to invest in the eight-disc, ten-album Mickey Newbury Collection boxed up earlier this year by Mountain Retreat.

The first disc offers glorious versions of Newbury’s best songs (“Cortelia Clark”, “Poison Red Berries”, “San Francisco Mabel Joy”), along with his three-song medley, popularized by Elvis, “An American Trilogy”. Granted, the MIDI effects of that photon guitar give a curious cast to the sound, but Newbury, like Scott Walker, has long been prone to various forms of orchestral adornment, and it’s rarely prominent in the mix.

And, anyway, it’s his singing that matters, and the songs. Newbury wrote more than enough hits to justify his 1980 induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Certainly the characters who inhabit his songs are inescapably of the working South. But Newbury’s composition and orchestration owe precious little to rural string bands, nor to electrified honky-tonk outfits. Rather, they are ambitious, sometimes cinematic (think smart 1960s film music) structures that imbue his stories with rare and elegant grandeur. “San Francisco Mabel Joy” is, essentially, an O’Henry-esque story of a rube and a prostitute who fall in love; it is also rather more than that, for Newbury is an exceptional writer and singer.

Again, it’s his voice that stands out on these discs. It is rich and supremely confident throughout, full of power and soaring emotion, and grit. While 1973’s Live At Montezuma Hall seems tentative, and Newbury’s vocals tight, fifteen years later in San Francisco he proves a veteran performer and entertainer at the height of his powers. The 16-song live CD is a treat, repeating only “Willow Tree” from the studio disc. The pity, of course, is that he made but two records in the 1980s.

In A New Age has been remastered, and Mark Elliott has added, the liner notes say, “bass, percussion, guitar, additional strings & effects,” though in all honesty I can barely notice the difference. Some song titles have been corrected, but the dreadful painting and color scheme that adorned In A New Age have been retained.