CD REVIEW: Reckless Kelly - Bulletproof

by Haley Forehand
(June 2008) Reckless Kelly’s long-awaited fifth studio album, Bulletproof, set to hits the shelves June 24th  and is loud and proud.  Following suit of the 2006 release Reckless Kelly Was Here, a double disc live recording CD/DVD, Bulletproof delivers and delivers hard. The band, which formed more than 11 years ago in Bend, Oregon eventually moved their base of operation to Austin, TX where they have taken an ever-growing fan base by storm.  Playing shows all over the Lone Star Sate and its surrounding areas, and more recently, the “windy city,” New York, and even Nashville, these five guys have begun what many would call a legacy that began long before they were born.  

Bulletproof, recorded at Willie Nelson’s famed Pedernales Studios just outside of Austin on Lake Travis is a collection of ragged road songs, a few ballads and two epic tributes.  The album produced under the band’s new record label Yep Roc Records consists of 14 tracks, all written or co-written by lead singer and guitarist Willy Braun, and boasts guest musicians including Lloyd Maines, Ephraim Owens, Brian Standefer and Micheal Ramos.  The five guys of Reckless Kelly, Willy Braun and brother Cody Braun, David Abeyta, Jay Nazz and Jimmy McFeely have come together to produce what is arguably their most impressive record to date. 

Kicking things off is a rocking road tune, which is already getting a lot of radio time.  “Ragged as the Road” as it is aptly titled, is a culmination of energy, guitars and descriptive lyrics which leaves you feeling the heat of the “black-top gravel” and the glow of the “faded moonlight” and seems to describe the place the band is in now.  A rocking rhythm and vivid imagery make this one of the best tracks on the record.  “ A Guy Like Me” and “Love in her Eye” carry on the revved up vibe of the first track.  The catchy rhythm and edgy feel of “a Guy Like Me” creates the image of a bad boy attitude and a great guitar riff in the middle of “Love in her Eye” make these two potential singles for the record. 

The two most captivating tracks on the record, “American Blood” and “God Forsaken Town” illuminate the reality of the roughest times in this life.  There is no mistaking the message of “American Blood” with lyrics like “Johnny can’t drink cause Johnny ain’t 21/but he’s 18 and he’s pretty handy with a gun/they sent him off to a foreign land, gave him a new pair of boots and 13 grand/and he came back home with American blood on his hands.”  The song has an incredible message and a very Bruce Springsteen kind of power to it.  “God Forsaken Town” co-written by Willy Braun and long-time friend Robert Earl Keen is a tribute to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.  The song has a heart-breaking feel to it, yet shines light on the power that we can find within our depths. “I’ll be goddamned if I’m leaving here before the day I die,” and “we’ve got a sawed off and a red hot 44/so all you looters best come heavy when you’re knocking on my door!” show that imagery of inner strength.  A heart-wrenching chorus alluding to an allegorical “higher ground” and a beautiful trumpet provided by Ephriam Owens make this song amazing, if very hard to listen to. 

Two love songs on the record, “Don’t Say Goodbye,” and “Passin’ Through” were co-written with Micky Braun, brother and lead singer of Micky and the Motorcars.  “Passin’ Through” starts as a ballad, then cranks in a rocking rhythm that has a very “windows down, rolling down the black-top” sort feel to it.  “One False Move,” another tribute to love was co-written with Dustin Welch, son of singer-songwriter Kevin Welch.

The title track for the record, “Bulletproof” is a tribute to 1870s Australian gangster and namesake of the band, Ned “Reckless Kelly.”  It lays stake to the claim that nothing is ever “bulletproof,” but as they say, life goes on. 

Bulletproof shows the guys of Reckless Kelly at their most musically mature and is sure to be a musical library staple.  The guys deliver excellent lyrics, heart-engaging melodies, and as always the signature fiddle, provide by incredible musical talent of Cody Braun.  It is rough and rugged and will leave you listening over and over again. 

by Steve Circeo

I recently drove up to San Marcos to see Adam Carroll at one of the best music venues in all the land, Cheatham Street Warehouse. On the way, I decided to call my brother, because it's still not illegal to do that. (Nor should it be. Make it illegal to eat a Big Mac while driving, and then we can talk about cell phones.)

My brother answered the phone, we chit-chatted for a bit, and I told him I was driving an hour to see Adam Carroll.

He then said, matter-of-factly, “You mean 'Adam Carolla,' right?”

At that point it became disturbingly evident to me that Adam Carroll's fame has not spread to Snohomish, Washington — or, perhaps more disturbingly, that Adam Carolla's has — providing proof positive that talent is not necessarily a determiner of financial reward in our society.

Whatever.

If you've attended an Adam Carroll show, you may have noticed the way he shuffles up to the stage, shyly avoiding eye contact, taking his place at the front of the audience, always seeming a bit surprised that people are actually there to listen to him. I can feel that attitude as I listen to Old Town Rock N Roll. The album is very unassuming, unmistakably humble.

Bubbling beneath this lowkey attitude, though, is an energy that has not been seen before in an Adam Carroll studio record. Much of this album, in fact, was quite obviously recorded live in the studio, as indicated by Adam's vocalizing “here we go” to indicate to the other players that the end of a tune has arrived. The live band feel helps keep the album exciting, while the variety of Adam's vocal performances help sustain the interesting sound.

The song “HiFi Love” finds Adam vocally at his most vulnerable. His voice is sweet, but not cloyingly so. He stumbles over the lyrics at one point, just as he does in his live shows, often when he's composing new lyrics on the spot. Were parts of this album really written as they were recorded? How great is that? There's a bit in the song about “Cosby fearing, Oprah lovin', Fat Albert HiFi Love.” Catch one oa Adam's live shows, so you can hear the story behind the lyric.

Loosing himself from the previously necessary reins of Lloyd Maines, who superbly produced Carroll's first three studio efforts, Adam feels free to experiment a bit more, and, by doing that, it seems to me that is able to establish a better connection with the people paying his bills, his fans. Every minor misstep endears us more to the man who writes those songs we love, reminds us that though he may be able to write a song better than we can, he's just as human as we are. He is, indeed, just one of us.

I don't mean to imply with these comments, by the way, that this record sounds like it was recorded through tincan microphones on your dad's old cassette recorder. There is an element of that, best exemplified in the album's coda, a raucous cover of “Black Flag Blues” by the record's producer, Canadian singer-songwriter Scott “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart” Nolan. But for the most part, Old Town Rock N Roll sounds as good, if not better, than any of Carroll's previous studio records.

As you may expect, wordplay, Adam's strongsuit, is very evident throughout Old Town Rock N Roll.

“Black Flag Blues” finds Adam at his most playful, a song about pirates, that includes,

“I know a girl from Kentucky,
She rolls pecan logs down at the Stuckey's.
Long in the tooth with a sideways grin.
She makes me feel worried about the shape I'm in.”

What is notable to me about the lyric is the last phrase, which fits the mood very nicely, but doesn't fit the meter. Could it have been polished further? Sure. Did it need to be polished before being published? No. I rather enjoy being given this glimpse into the mind of one of my favorite songwriters, catching him in mid-song with, perhaps, unfinished business.

How about this lyric from "Oklahoma Gypsy Shuffler":

“Snorting cocaine off a buck knife.
He was 3-2 drinkin', singin' 4-4 time.
Trying hard to get it just right.
With a honkytonk angel hangin' on every line.”

Juxtaposing “3-2 drinkin'” with “4-4 time” is good enough, but then, wrapping it all up with the women “hangin' on every line” is simply amazing. How does that wrap things up you ask? Well, tell me this: is that last word, “line,” a reference to a lyric or to the cocaine referenced earlier? Beautiful songwriting.

The song "Rain" includes the phrase “sometimes two adds up to nothing.” The meaning is clear, but the simplicity of the lyric merits further examination. We may have expected the lyric to be, “Sometimes one and one add up to nothing,” a phrase with the same clarity of meaning, plus, as we all know, you must have something and something to add up to anything. But Carroll chooses to simplify the equation and skips a step, eliminating the “1 + 1” calculation and taking us straight to “two adds up to nothing,” which delivers the same irony, but in a much more imaginative way. It seems like a natural progression when I spell it out like this, but who would come up with that? Adam Carroll, that's who.

While I really enjoy the slightly more polished sheen of Adam's previous releases, I like Old Town Rock N Roll better than them all, because I am finally able to see Adam for what he really is: a flawed icon, a shiny pan with a bit of rust, plucking gold nuggets from the stream.  Old Town Rock N Roll puts Adam Carroll fully on display and he seems to be saying, “I'm really a lot like you. Accept me as I am.” You needn't be concerned, Adam. We do, we do.

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