Tom Armstrong – Songs That Make The Jukebox Play

Obviously, musical styles develop and change over time. But just as obviously, to establish a style is to establish a permanent possibility of expression. If you really want to play like Bob Marley, or the Rolling Stones, or Elmore James, or the Ramones, or for that matter Beethoven, you can.

That is of course not to say that youre going to be as good as those folks, or that playing music in that style will mean exactly now what it did then; in fact, it will necessarily mean something a bit different, if for no other reason than that youve consciously revived an existing style, and people will hear that.

And often that very fact can make the music sound forced or haunted. Think of Mandy Barnett trance-channeling Patsy, and youll see what I mean: Shes too conscious and too devoted, and the stuff sounds stilted even though it does in some sense sound like Patsy.

Tom Armstrongs Songs That Make The Jukebox Play is, hence, an astonishing achievement. There is no doubt that it is a perfectly self-conscious resuscitation of an old style: Here, its classic honky-tonk and Bakersfield a la Wynn Stewart. But Armstrongs reading is so natural he finds so effortlessly his own expression within the existing form that the result is to bring the style to a perfection that it did not quite possess even in its heyday.

That, in fact, is the advantage postmodern honky-tonk has over the late 1950s and early 1960s: weve had 40 years to understand the style and evaluate its products, which means that potentially we have better or more consistent taste than they did then. Certainly Armstrong, who comes from San Francisco, does, and there is not a weak cut on the album.

What is perhaps most surprising is that all the songs but one are originals, though they could all have been written circa 1963. There are no references to cell phones, Hummers, Zima, or big screen televisions. But its obvious that themes such as drinking and sinking and loving and losing are eternal elements of the human condition. Ill Match You Tear For Tear could hardly be bettered as a honky-tonk composition.

Every Gesture is assured. The cover art is itself a sweet evocation of Armstrongs chosen era. The arrangements are simple, traditional, perfect. The playing is understated but excellent. And Armstrongs singing is right on target. Songs The Make The Jukebox Play offers hope that perhaps a new Elmore James and a new Beethoven are likewise lurking somewhere in San Francisco.