Like a battered old suitcase encrusted with layers of peeling destination stickers, Steve Young is the embodiment of the well-traveled, been-there/done-that troubadour. The places he’s been and the wonders he’s seen are reflected in his 57-year-old visage; the hardships he’s survived reverberate in his inimitable, reedy voice.
Georgia-born and reared across the South, Young dipped briefly into the burgeoning Greenwich Village folk scene before heading to California in 1964. Rock Salt & Nails, his 1969 solo debut, found him at the country-rock vanguard; his subsequent, fairly prolific output through the ’70s provided the likes of Waylon Jennings (“Lonesome, On’ry And Mean”), Hank Jr. (“Montgomery In The Rain”) and The Eagles (“Seven Bridges Road”) with enduring signature songs. Young’s reputation as a songwriter’s songwriter has sustained him ever since, yet his own profile has remained discouragingly low.
Primal Young is his first collection of new recordings since 1993’s wonderful Switchblades Of Love and, despite its languid pace, it finds Young weathered but unbowed, still a master of lyrical insight and musical understatement.
Six of the eleven tracks are originals, but — much as Young’s own songs have illuminated other artists — it’s the remarkable covers here that reveal the singer’s core. There’s a feisty, jaw-jutting take on Ed Pickford’s “Worker’s Song (Handful Of Earth)”, an easygoing stroll through Frankie Miller’s “Black Land Farmer”, a pungent roll-yer-own of Tom T. Hall’s “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died”, a soulful deconstruction of Lloyd Price’s “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”, and a nakedly honest version of Merle Haggard’s confessional “Sometimes I Dream”.
Young’s own entries are beautiful as well, but it was already clear he could flat-out write a song. Maybe it’s about time he was recognized as a songwriter’s singer, too.
