A classic “songwriter’s songwriter” (he’s been covered by Joe Ely, Steve Young, Dave Alvin, Nanci Griffith, Peter Case, Suzy Bogguss, Doug Sahm, Katy Moffat, Tom Paxton, Ian & Sylvia Tyson, Jerry Jeff Walker and Bob Neuwirth), Tom Russell has assembled an uncompromising body of work exploring the American mythos.
Employing a sturdy, no-nonsense vocal delivery and a near-cinematic approach to spinning tales, Russell and guitarist Andrew Hardin (his longtime sidekick) attach flesh and blood to the bare bones of history, all the while conjuring a palpable sense of time and place. Russell’s most recent visceral entries addressed cowboy legends (1995’s The Rose Of The San Joaquin and 1997’s Songs Of The West), immigration and westward expansion (1999’s sprawling, multi-vocalist epic The Man From God Knows Where), and geographic/emotional borders (2001’s often rollicking Borderland).
On Modern Art, Russell and Hardin are joined by guest vocalists Nanci Griffith and Elyza Gilkyson, Hot Club Of Cowtown fiddler Elana Fremerman, and frequent fellow travelers Gurf Morlix, Glen Fukunaga, Mark Hallman and Steve Samuel.
The subject matter for most of the thirteen tracks is the boomer turf of post-WWII — Mickey Mantle, Muhammad Ali, Raymond Chandler, Charles Bukowski, etc. — but despite the modern time frame, Russell and crew eschew the rock ‘n’ roll breakouts that leavened Borderland, opting instead for a stately folk-troubadour presentation. The result is another beautiful, if lower-key, set of passionate illuminations breathing life and soul into an American pop culture too easily relegated to two-dimensional pigeonholing.
