reviews sawbones

Don't let the guitar god posturings on opening cut "Black Eyed Girl" alarm you; insrumental whiz Shea is as rootsy as they come.

This marvelous collectio of mostly selpenned tunes by the San Benardino-bred, Dave Alvin sideman covers the gamut of folk, gospel, blues, country and even some Mexican idioms, yet each song is crafted with distictive freshness and originality. To top it off, Shea's caramel baritone is as beautifull and resonant as his multistring virtuosity is awe-inspiring.

Rick Shea is to interior California what Joe Ely is to west Texas: his music evokes deep Kern, San Bernardino ans Riverside counties the way Ely nailed down Laredo - two pinches of old Mexico, a blast of exhaust from the bossman's new Suburban and a baseline of working-stiff deperation. Whats country about his music emanates from the kind of beyond the clichés-lie-deep-truths approach to songwriting that Merle Haggard always excelled at. Throw a whomping band sound behind it (Shea plays with Dave Alvin; Alvin returns the favor here) and the best goddamn voice I've heard since Merle hisself, and you've hit the jackpot, baby. Some cuts shake with the roiling drama of an oncoming thunderstorm ("Lonesome Cannonball"), there's an ear candy instrumental ("Mesquite"), a fine 12-bar jam ("Piedmont Ridge"), and a beautifull ballad ("A Bend in the River"). Shea wrote or co-wrote 12 of the 13 cuts here; the cover is Bill Anderson's "Saginaw Michigan"

Inevititably in every sideman's career comes a moment when he finds it necessary to step up to the front. Rick Shea has had the good fortune to be hitting an enviable artistic stride at just such a moment.

Shea Has served faithfully on projects for Cody Bryant, Chris Gaffney, Katy Moffatt, Heather Myles, Christy McWilson and, most recentley, Dave Alvin, contributing dependable musicianship that is at once the bedrock and the springboard for the success of the material. Now after 20 years the multi-instrumentalist and siger-songwriter has issued an album of inspired clatity and tastefull maturity.

Sawbones, on the Wagon Wheel/AIM labe, absolutely sparkles between the grooves. Shea's guitars (nylon string, acoustic slide, electric) and mandolin, his clear baritone, and his solid arrangements place his tunes between the then and now of Amerivan heartland music. Think early John Hiatt, Ry Cooder and country Nick Lowe and you're just about there.

There's not one flashy or pointless solo on the disc - which summarizes Shea's take on music, and his career at large. "I consider myself better as a musician than as "hot instrumentalist'" he says. "I've done this for a long time in a lot of different situations - starting with truck stop bars and in hundreds of different bands - and what I've really learned are a lot of songs and how to be a good musician. I feel I've done well with that."

Sawbones is Shea's fourth solo effort, coming on the heels of last year's Shaky Ground, five years after The Buffalo Show, and 11 years after his cassette-only cult classic Outside of Nashville. Two of the new album's songs - "Black Eyed Girl" and "Magdalena" - were recorded in the aftermath of The Buffalo Show in 1997 but you'd never know by the way they fit with the newer songs. Thats not an accident, nor is it overtly intentional. "You try to pay close attention to the sound and make it sound like it comes from the same place," Shea says.

Does that means there is a mystical aspect to what he does? "In a way, I guess when I'm performing these songs, I guess so. You try to put yourself in a different frame of mind. There's a lot to pay attention to when you're performing thats not really right-brain thinking; the sound, the sound of the room, the audience response, the connection with them. they're not real apparent things that you can see, so you have to pay attention, in as many different ways as you can.

The tunes on the record have an antique hue, giving them a timeless quality. Some, particularly the Southern folk of "A Bend in the River", evoke something from around the campfire during the Civil War.

"Well I'm a big fan of anything old," Shea says, flattered by the comparison. "The Harry Smith collectio is something I've been listening to for about a year. I just love the performances. I'm a big fan of Carter Family stuff - the songs are so great and they translate so directly.

"And Jimmie Rodgers, any of that stuff - its just a window to that time. That was some body sitting in a room performing, making an emotional statement, trying to make a connectio. And through the magic of recording, 60 - 70 years later you can sit in a room and get that connection directly. I don't feel that same connection in the process the way its done today, with everyone doing bits and pieces.

Clearly Shea has the studio side of the business down pat, but he had never been on an extended road tour until he hit the highway as a member of Alvin's backing band, The Guilty Men. "I really enjoy the people we meet," he says. "The people this music appeals to that come out to these shows are the people I like to hang out with anyhow. Its a great fringe benefit."

It's easier to get out of the house for weeks at a time now that his boys, Matthew and Jesse, are 17 and 11, respectively. He and his wife Susie have been together more than twenty years. "For the first ten years I did evenings at nightclubs, which left me home during the day; Susie worked during the day, so she was home in the evening. That seemed to work out and the idea is to keep working it out."

Shea spent much of the fall touring with Alvin, opening many of the shows with his own set. Eventually, Shea would like to use his newfound connections and mount a tour of his own to promote his own disc - a true indication that the sideman is ready to step out front.

Honky-Tonk Redemption
Rick Shea keeps it country
by Jonny Whiteside

Rick Shea: Just sing the notes.
(Photo by Anne Fishbein)

WEST COAST COUNTRY, FORMERLY A GLORIOUS and deeply influential movement with a sound as distinct as Memphis soul, is indisputably in its sorriest-ever shape. Once a thriving, nationally renowned community of California-based million-sellers (Bob Wills, Gene Autry, Tex Williams, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Ferlin Husky and Jean Shepard, Buck Owens, Merle Haggard) and less successful but equally high-impact performers (Merle Travis, Maddox Brothers & Rose, Wynn Stewart), California country singers today are an increasingly endangered species. Nationally, there are only two Coast representatives -- Haggard and Dwight Yoakam; locally, there's an army of them, but the vast majority are either chained to the Hot Country Top 40, crippled by the New Depression's hillbilly-cliché mentality or falling into the self-indulgent Americana singer-songwriter bag. For fans reared on a previously intoxicating variety of talent (and who take all this country music stuff deadly serious), it is a terrible, depressing mess.

When one of us gets lucky enough to stray into a spot where Rick Shea is performing, it's like entering a dream state. Shea's mix of almost reverent dignity and sensitive interpretation, put over with one of the finest, most natural-born country baritones in the business, is stunning. The 45-year-old, San Gabriel Valleybased singer-guitarist's mix of Coast country standards, original songs and Tin Pan Alley numbers plays out like a pilgrimage to honky-tonk Holy Land. His guitar style is tasteful, skilled and vivid, gently recalling the intricacy of Bakersfield's Roy Nichols, and his low-key vocals, all warmth and simplicity, create an ideal showcase for any lyric.

Considering all the country mediocrity that surrounds him, it's notable that Shea owes little to the Golden State's torchbearers Haggard and Yoakam. Shea may worship the former, but not to the point of becoming another cut-and-paste sound-alike; he's the complete opposite of the latter, whose West Hollywood wardrobe, highbrow vocabulary and messages of deep personal pain appeal as much to rock fans as they do to contemporary-country listeners. Shea's understated approach is a talent earned in the late-night, Benzedrine-driven realm of San Bernardino roadhouses during the '70s and '80s, a time and place where he worked from 9 till closing, six nights a week, and could at any given time find himself sharing the bandstand with everyone from Fred Maddox to Johnny Rodriguez to the Palomino's cross-dressing C&W renegade Troy Walker.

"I used to work at Clyde's, Loretta's, the Fontana Inn -- most of those places are gone now," the Maryland-born, San Berdooraised Shea says. "And none of them were as rough as you might think. They were an older crowd, and they'd been goin' to these places since the days when they could go see Wynn Stewart. Basically, it was just hardcore working-class, a bunch of truck drivers and whores, there to do what they were doin', and they all seemed to like us a lot. The truck stops were different in that you could play more slow songs than I ever thought possible. Every other song was a slow one, because these guys were there to dance -- and none of 'em were good dancers. They were there to hang out with these girls -- well, a little more than hang out."

The need to appeal to such a crowd and his own sense of craft forced Shea to develop a sincere country style: "The vocals were just a matter of trying to sing the songs, to try to enunciate, get the lyrics across clearly and just sing the notes. That's what singing is -- you're basically working around your limitations. I pretty much sang the way I sing before I was really too familiar with any of this stuff. I was familiar with Merle Haggard from a pretty early age, but I was more connected to Buffalo Springfield and the Band when I was in high school. But that was also when I started listening to country radio, getting to know the songs. I'm such a huge fan of these older songs that even with my own writing I just try to structure them along those lines. After a certain point, they set their own mood, in a certain time, so I just try to stay in that, with the language and images I use."

APART FROM THE BRILLIANT FIDDLER-MANDOLINIST Brantley Kearns, honky-tonk gal Kathy Robertson, not to forget Los Angeles stalwarts Cody Bryant, Heather Myles and Patti Booker, there are precious few other L.A. country artists focused more on expression than formula. Shea has an ongoing collaborative relationship with most all of these performers, but it's Kearns, who first came to national attention as a key member of Dwight Yoakam's band in the late 1980s, who provides the most fertile and ongoing partnership.

"I met Brantley in '90 or '91, through Heather Myles," he says. "We played some places out in Riverside, did that for a while, then she did her first HighTone album. We went on the road a little, then Brantley and I just kept it goin'. A lot of us are so into that old country, but to me, Brantley seems to be of that era, like Eck Robertson or some '30s guy -- a man out of time. He's amazing -- has a solid background in jazz and R&B, knows the music and the performers. Brantley's got great control, great range as a singer, and he sings like nobody but himself. He's a direct connection -- he's from High Point, North Carolina, grew up singing in church, he knows all those songs."

One of the most remarkable aspects of Shea's career is the fact that he's not only survived but managed to earn a living and raise a family with neither a day job nor the traditional country artists' other economic booster, the annual European tour. Country music is about as far from being a viable meal ticket as one can get in the music business, and for a frontline honky-tonk man like Shea, survival translates into ceaseless toil at a sometimes marginal pay scale. Not that he's without cachet; Shea frequently tours as a sideman with Americana flag-bearer Dave Alvin, a job that's taken him to the stage of Madison Square Garden (where Alvin opened on a recent Bob DylanJoni Mitchell tour). Back home, opportunities remain slim. Shea and Kearns' mainstay booking is at a Burbank Mexican restaurant, Viva Fresh, where they set up on the cantina floor and wow the tequila-happy patrons several times monthly.

"Viva's is like home base now," he says. "They treat us good, nobody has anything to say about what we do. It reminds me of some little place in Texas . . . There's nothing else like that around here anymore. I wish some other places would loosen up a little. There's a lot of talented people who'd come out to play just for fun. It is fun."

Shea represents one of a very few tenuous links to an almost lost art form, yet his blend of industrious commitment and pure enjoyment in his work keeps him not only focused but constantly improving himself: "That's what you have to do -- play these songs to stay familiar with them. I feel like I keep some sort of connection. Because if you get away from playing the songs for a while, then you're lost . . ."

RICK SHEA
Sawbones (Wagon Wheel/Aim)
Reviewed by Shaun Dale

   Rick Shea is a veteran of the Southern California C&W scene, from Bakerfield roadhouses to the Palamino, and a key figure in Dave Alvin's Guilty Men. Sawbones is his third album under his own name, and while the others have had considerable critical support, he's still looking for the one that will bring as much commercial as critical success. If quality is the criteria, it would have happened a while back, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Sawbones, because this is one fine CD.
   His approach here is better described under the broader heading "roots music" than straight country, but it's country enough to satisfy the most particular kicker. A lot of that has to do with Shea's rich baritone, which can summon up that aura of impending heartache that's so central to great C&W vocals. The line between impending heartache and whiney despair is a thin one, and Shea consistently stays on the right side of the line. On the other hand, when the tune and occasion calls for it, he's fully capable of delivering rock 'n roll grit or soulful blues. Rick Shea is a fine, expressive singer.

   He's also a fine, expressive songwriter, writing or having a hand in writing all but one track on Sawbones (the cover is a terrific version of Lefty Frizzell's "Saginaw Michigan). On top of all that, he's a first rate talent on guitar and mandolin, the skills that have made him an indispensable part of Dave Alvin's recordings and shows in recent years.

   Alvin may have to learn to dispense with Shea's talents, though, no matter how hard that may be. Rick Shea deserves a full time career as a headliner in his own right, and by all rights Sawbone should provide the breakthrough that makes that possible.

© 2000 - Shaun Dale

Rick Shea has spent a lot of time the past few years on the road as a member of Dave Alvin's backing band, the Guilty Men. A talented guitarist, Shea makes his solo recording debut with Sawbones . It's a tasty album of country, folk and rock songs, with some blues and Tejano influence thrown in for good measure. Throughout, Shea plays electric and acoustic guitar and mandolin with equal amounts of skill and taste, never overplaying or showing off, and always making the playing serve the song.

The two opening tracks, "Black-Eyed Girl" and "Magdalena," are quite different songs that tell both sides of the folk standard of forbidden love, the former from the man's point of view, the latter from the woman's. "Magdalena," featuring Shea on a classical-style guitar, was inspired by a legend told at the mission at San Juan Capistrano, and has an appropriate south-of-the-border sound.

Shea has a good backing band, including Brantley Kearns on fiddle, David Jackson on acoustic bass, Dave Hall on electric bass, Wyman Reese on keyboards and Don Heffington on percussion. Dave Alvin guests on lead guitar on two songs, the folk rock "Lonesome Cannonball" and the gritty blues "Piedmont Ridge." Katy Moffatt, who has also toured and recorded with Alvin, sings a tasteful harmony part on the Celtic tinged "Deep Within the Well" which also has some nice fiddle work from Kearns and some sharp mandolin picking by Shea. The band jumps into a zippy instrumental reel on the fadeout that leaves you wanting more of this unidentified tune.

"Emperor of the North" is a rocking, shuffling, fiddle driven ballad about a musician and rider of the rails called Guitar Whitey, with a catchy melody, especially on the chorus. Shea turns in some languid slide work on a resonator guitar on the most inspired track, "Walkin' to Jerusalem," a song of longing and desolation in waltz time that would fit well on Emmylou Harris' next album.

The band cranks it up on the title track, a mid tempo rocker, followed by a western style acoustic instrumental tune, "Mesquite," on which Shea turns in some more excellent mandolin playing, as well as some fine flat picking on the guitar. The whole thing is over too soon with "Camellia," a bluesy, soulful rocker on the final track.

Shea wrote or co-wrote all of the songs on Sawbones except the Lefty Frizzell hit "Saginaw Michigan," which he covers faithfully. Shea has a pleasant baritone similar to Frizzell's, but may not have entirely found his own vocal style yet. It's a little tentative at times, particularly on the "Piedmont Ridge" blues.

With Sawbones , an impressive country rock debut, Shea demonstrates the potential to make that difficult transition from sideman to front man.