Rod Melancon Drags the Bayou for Dark, Deep, Gritty, and True Tales

Highway 14, the state road for which Rod Melancon named his most recent EP, runs along beside the Mississippi border in the southeastern part of Louisiana, the toe of the boot in the boot state. It starts close to Pearl River, on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain across from New Orleans, and winds its way up to a terminus in the unincorporated community of Bush, La., about 25 miles away. It’s not a road that takes you through, or to, anywhere especially exciting – just the pine forests and small towns that Melancon, a South Louisiana native, mines excellently for tough, lovely and sometimes, strange and dark stories that shine like gems.

The five songs on “LA 14” are character-driven and also, intensely masculine: tales of mud, liquor, gasoline, war and blood told with only as many words as are necessary. They’re hard rockers and gritty ballads that both in theme and sound evoke Springsteen, John Cougar Mellencamp and weirder, wilder sounds, bringing in rowdy, twisted psychobilly and even a little bit of swamp-soaked heavy metal guitar. Melancon rocks so hard that you could miss his craft as a storyteller, but don’t. These are keen, wrenching, observant windows into the world of bayou sons, fathers, brothers, cousins and friends told with uncanny perception, crackling and true transmissions from the heart of the bayou.