The Bluest Sky is the latest incarnation of Chuck Melchin, following his spell of four albums and two EPs as the cornerstone of celebrated Bean Pickers Union. The self-titled album is an attempt to move on from gentler introspective feel of his earlier work to creating “music that will make you want to drive your car faster”. With the nine songs featured here, he’s definitely succeeded; there’s only one slower, more contemplative, song on the album, but more about that later. The Laurel Canyon influence is strong on ‘The Bluest Sky’ with nods to Eagles, Neil Young and maybe even Evan Dando at times. The album was put together using the post-COVID method of musicians recording parts in their own studios before being mixed and mastered by Dave Westner; the results are organic and seamless.

The opening song, ‘Belly to the Bar’ sets the tone for the rest of the album with a country rock feel driven along by a pair of electric guitars under Melchin’s slightly fragile vocal as the story unfolds of a character trying to avoid being pulled into a rebound relationship. Most of the album’s songs are about personal situations although each has a slightly different twist. ‘The Girl It Took the Universe’ is a metaphysical look at the unseen forces moulding and pulling together two people over the aeons until the time is ripe for them to meet ending on a classic sixties sus4/sus2 progression, ‘Amy Jean’ is a straightforward karma and revenge song with a Southern rock feel that hints at the Allman Brothers’ Band’s ‘Jessica’ and ‘I Am James’ is a gentle country rock story of a man too shy to get himself noticed by a woman. ‘Drive Through Confessional’, with its mainly acoustic arrangement before a soaring electric guitar joins the mix, is a powerful piece of hometown nostalgia that turns around with the realisation that that reason for going back is the death of a loved one; it’s a powerful piece of work.

The two songs that step outside the personal may or may not be connected. The slow and melancholy ‘New Berlin’, its sadness punctuated by pedal steel fills, is a snapshot of a smalltown American town destroyed by a world economy that values only profit and scale; things can only get worse. There are a couple of references to classic American songwriters, John Fogerty’s ‘The Old Man Down the Road’ and Townes Van Zandt’s ‘Waiting Round to Die’ in the lyrics. It’s a powerful song with a storyline that could ultimately lead to the apocalyptic vision of ‘Bunkhouse’, the album’s penultimate song. The story of an unspecified rebellion and survival skills is played out over a Crazy Horse-style backing to maximum sinister effect.

Chuck Melchin and his collaborators have achieved the primary aim of making us want to drive faster while creating a bunch of varied and beautifully crafted songs. Job done.

‘The Bluest Sky’ is out now.

This is ‘Bunkhouse’:

Today’s High Five contribution is from Chuck Melchin of The Bean Pickers’ Union. We reviewed his retrospective collection, “Greatest Picks” in the late summer of this year and Allan loved it. Chuck’s decided to share his appreciation of some of his favourite guitar players with us. Apologies in advance for the Emmylou video that refused to embed.

I’m a guitar player. I’m not an especially good guitar player, and my friends probably think of me more as a songwriter than a player. But I do play enough that I have developed an educated appreciation for certain guitarists and their work. To me, it’s not speed or pyrotechnics. It’s playing for the song, it’s leaving space, it’s tone, it’s complementing the vocals and, yes, it’s tearing open the sky when that’s what the song wants. I hold these guitarists in the highest regard, as they all check all the boxes and then some. They may or may not be in your top 5, but remember I’m not calling them the best guitarists, I’m calling them my favorites. In no particular order:

Buddy Miller – when I say “plays for the song” there is absolutely no one I can think of that does so as effectively and beautifully as Buddy Miller. I first heard Buddy play when I bought wife Julie Miller’s gorgeous album Blue Pony. Right from the get go, the opening riffs on A Kiss on the Lips gave me goosebumps. And later how his guitar blends together with Phil Madeira’s organ as a single instrument on the solo section of All the Pieces of Mary. I was hooked. I dove into his catalog, spent countless hours searching for information on Buddy’s gear, lusted after his Fulltone tape echo, and was in awe of his strange Wandre Davoli guitar (which he found in a pawn shop, and which years later I broke a string on while working stage crew for him. He doesn’t know, please don’t tell him!). Over the years I have listened in wonder at how he becomes integral to the sound of everyone he plays with, from Emmylou to Robert Plant. With Buddy it’s always about playing for the song, playing with great tone, and as you can see in this video of him playing in Spyboy, he can flat out shred, if that’s what the song wants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJoWLq_OibY

Waddy Wachtel – I am a liner note geek. I really miss the vinyl albums of my youth, where I would hold the record jacket and read the credits as I listened. One name kept showing up playing guitar on so many of my favorite records from folks like Karla Bonoff , Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon and James Taylor. The strangely named Waddy Wachtel (often along with the similarly strange names of Russell Kunkel on drums and Leland Sklar on bass) played again and again exactly what the song needed, with extremely tasteful lead guitar parts, and rhythm guitar that had me experimenting with open tunings trying to mimic the chord sounds he was getting. His solo on Karla Bonoff’s Someone to Lay Down Beside Me remains a benchmark of guitar solos in my mind. I finally got to see him play live just a few weeks ago when his super group, The Immediate Family, with Kunkel, Sklar, Danny Kortchmar (no slouch himself) and Steve Postell came around on tour. He is in his mid seventies and as good as ever. Here’s Waddy with a young singer named Linda Ronstadt covering Someone to Lay Down Beside Me.

David Rawlings – David Rawlings has described himself as “a guitar player in a band called Gillian Welch”. His guitar playing as her partner is instantly recognizable by his way of playing passing notes outside of the usual blues rock patterns, the tension and resolve he creates and how once he plays a run, you wonder why you hadn’t thought of that. He has influenced so many of the new wave of string band players. I find the most direct disciple that I’ve heard to be Kenneth Pattengale from the Milk Carton Kids. Like Buddy Miller, David obtained his trademark axe, a 1935 Epiphone Olympic, in an unusual way, finding it dusty and stringless in a friend’s garage. Always the consummate sideman for Gillian’s amazing songs, he has over the years earned a great deal of respect as a songwriter. But in my mind, his playing on the record Revival, the first of his playing that I ever heard, is what separated him from the pack of really excellent acoustic guitar pickers creating such beautiful sounds across the Americana genre. I hear tell he has recently purchased a “new” guitar from Gruhns on Broadway in Nashville (a 1959 D”Angelico Excel for you fellow geeks) which can be heard on 2017’s Poor David’s Almanack. Here is the “band” playing Gillian’s song Annabelle, with David providing great harmony and looking so cool:

Gary Louris – I don’t think any songwriter has influenced my songwriting more than Gary Louris. If I could be in any band from any era, it probably would be the Jayhawks in 1995. On top of the ridiculously great songs, Gary stands out as a guitarist by being everything I pointed to in my first paragraph – his solos and fills tie the songs together often with a repetitive riff that comes around again and again in prechoruses and interludes, and his solos are well thought out, and make musical sense, really elevating the songs without dumping on the rest of the instruments. He’s an amazing singer, both main vocals and harmony and his song arrangements are nearly perfect. That covers of his songs are almost always done really closely to the original, attests to his talents as arranger. I think all of this might overshadow his guitar playing, and he might be underrated. Except by me. Listen to him rip it up in this version of Tailspin, one of my favorites from the vast Jayhawks catalog:

Andy Santospago and Gary Goodlow – Tied for 5th place, I can’t mention my favorite guitarists without mentioning my favorites from my own band, the Bean Pickers Union. Gary Goodlow played guitar for the BPU for maybe 8 years before moving to Nashville, and he totally elevated the sound of everything he played on. A monster of tone, watching Gary play his guitar is like watching a prizefighter work the ring, always in motion, small tweaks to volume and tone knobs, tremolo bar, and pedals, he always has the right sound for the song. Listen on bandcamp to our Halloween show as Wilco back a few years, for example. Or the song Glory which can be found on both our Archaeology and the Greatest Picks records. As if having Gary in my band wasn’t enough good fortune for one lifetime, I have also had the distinct pleasure of having Andy Santospago play for the BPU on many shows and many recordings. Andy is probably the most versatile musician I know. An absolute virtuoso on guitar, he’s also a fantastic lap and pedal steel player, and a great bass, mandolin and banjo player. It’s Andy playing the dueling lap steel and electric guitars like Dickie Betts and Duane Allman trading leads on my song 16 Pounds of Mary. It’s also Andy tearing it up on lead guitar on the alt.country rocker Amy Jean, both on Greatest Picks. Andy is also one of the finest songwriters I have ever met, and Exhibit A when I try to make the case that there are some people who should be household names if the universe was fair. Here is maybe my favorite song of his, with him playing all the guitar bits:

Check out Gary cranking out the lead guitar on Warrior and Andy bringing the voodoo to the song Burning Sky right here:

Gary –

Andy:

We’ve seen artists cope in many different ways with the pressures of the pandemic and lockdown; here’s another one. Chuck Melchin has already done the long-distance collaboration thing with Michael Spaly of Green Monroe as the Los Brujos project in 2019, so now he’s pulled together another project. It’s a Bean Pickers Union retrospective, pulling songs from the albums “Potlatch” (2007), “Better the Devil” (2012), “Caterwaul” (2017) and “Archaeology” (2019), As an added bonus, there are four unreleased bonus tracks. With a total of eighteen songs, it’s into double-album territory; fortunately there’s so much great material to choose from over the fourteen-year period that the album has a very cohesive feel that retrospectives often lack.

Describe the album in one word? Varied; there’s a long list of players and an even longer list of instruments used. The arrangements and stylings cover most of the Americana spectrum and a bit more besides; “Independence Day” is a full-on rock band arrangement with over-driven guitars and keyboards, hinting at Bruce and the E Street Band musically and even lyrically with a story of cars, girls, beer and marriage in a small American town. Chuck Melchin is a songwriter who knows how to tell a story in a 3-minute song and has a sure touch with his subjects, picking out uncommon themes that are still relatively easy to relate to.

A perfect example is “Philemon”, the story of a survivalist left stranded in the wilderness when Armageddon didn’t actually come. The minimalist backing sets the tone beautifully for the quiet desperation of a man left with only his bible, his ammunition and his shattered illusions. The menacing “Reaper”, starting with sampled surface noise, is a murder ballad telling the story of two friends who take different paths with tragic consequences and ends with violent death. “Warrior” is, on the surface, the tale of a Confederate soldier returning after the Civil War. The martial drums set the tone for the piece, while the intro hints at Al Wilson’s soul classic, “The Snake”. It’s a familiar tale, and a very angry one, of the wounded warrior spurned by society that still happens today with veterans from Vietnam, the Gulf and Afghanistan.

These offbeat tales are mixed with personal material and acute observations, leaving a very rounded and satisfying impression. It’s eighteen well-crafted songs covering a wide range of styles and themes and that’s more than enough to keep any serious music fan happy.

“Greatest Picks” is out now.

Here’s the video for “Warrior”:

We reviewed the latest EP by Los Brujos (Chuck Melchin of Bean Pickers Union and Michael Spaly of Green Monroe) just over a month ago and Allan was impressed with the five songs created by online collaboration reflecting the conditions the world’s enduring at the moment. The EP’s full of great songs, understated playing and some lovely harmonies and you really should give it a listen. Chuck Melchin has returned the compliment by sharing his five lockdown lifesavers:

 Five things that made 2020 tolerable, even enjoyable:

 The Critter Cam – We live in a pretty rural part of New Hampshire, a small state in the northeastern US. Our house is built into the side of a large hill, and is surrounded by forest on three sides. The music studio is in the back on the basement level, and has a sliding glass door to the outside, from which the view, because of the slope of the land, looks like you are standing about halfway up the trees. So, I call the studio the Tree House. Anyway, we occasionally see deer up near the house and wondered who else is living nearby. So I installed a critter cam – a night vision, motion detection camera that takes stills and video of anything moving near it. So far we have recorded raccoons, possums, porcupines, snowshoe hare, foxes, coyotes, a weasel and, of course, lots of deer. We walk an old logging road for about a mile down to the camera about twice a month and change out the disc, then come back and spend a couple of hours going through the results. It’s fascinating. We have also captured video of a human animal, attempting to steal the camera, and not being able to figure out how to untie the straps. He actually waves as he gives up and walks away. It’s a small town, I suspect we will see him around at some point. That should be an interesting conversation!

Food – For most of 2020, the restaurants have been closed, and grocery stores have been somewhere with a strong potential to contract the virus, so we have avoided both as best we can. About once a month Suzanne drives into town and is at the grocery store when they open. She sketches out the layout of the aisles ahead of time and moves through the store like a prizefighter, no wasted time, no unavoidable contact with other humans. She gets our non-food goods – toilet paper, paper towels, cleaning products, etc. We have almost all of our meats and produce delivered weekly by our local farm cooperative. Schwan’s delivers ice cream and frozen fish twice a month. We have always enjoyed cooking but in 2020 we have upped our game. We have made some epic meals these last few months. Scallop pie, Mexican lasagna, lamb meatballs. We play a game where we try to guess what we would have paid in a restaurant, and then compare to what it cost us to make it. Friday nights are now free and have become pizza night. We put on music and hang in the kitchen, slowly assembling the pies and cooking, and talking. The Spanish have a word for it – sobremesa. It’s the time you spend after a meal, hanging out and enjoying each other’s company without hurry. We make Fridays a night-long sobremesa.

Our Dogs – when you apply to a rescue agency to adopt an Australian Cattle Dog they always ask if you have any experience with the breed. For good reason. Cattledogs are highly intelligent, high energy, busy and strong. Strong physically and strong willed. They have been bred to work, so they need a job. If you don’t give them one, they will make up their own, and you might not like it. We have two. Mr BoJangles (you can call him Bo) is a three year old male Cattledog / Border Collie mix. Hatty is a three year old female Cattledog / Cattledog mix.  By which I mean she’s got lots of cattledog sass. I call it Hattitude. They are absolutely wonderful dogs, endlessly entertaining. Loyal and brave. Protective around strangers at first but will give you their whole hearts once they meet you. We had Bo first, and recognized that he really needed a friend, because he loves to play so much that he goes crazy when he sees another dog on a hike or walk. Hatty is now his best bud, and they play hard inside of our huge fenced in yard, and keep the property free of those dangerous rabbits. They are the best songwriting partners, are fantastic on hikes (you can not wear them out!) and are always ready for an adventure. They keep us grounded in reality in this seemingly unreal time, reminding us to stay in the moment. If you could ask them what time it is, they would tell you it is right now.

Here’s a video featuring Bo and Hatty:

The Time Before – YouTube

Remote recording – When I started playing in bands as a kid, there was no way we could have made a record. You needed to be signed to a record contract, and have someone else pay for the studio time. Now of course anybody with a cheap mic and a computer can make a record. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is debatable, but during this isolation time, I’m awfully glad to have a studio at home. For the last few years I have been slowly improving the quality of my gear, and learning more about the engineering and producing end of music making, with the goal of transitioning from gigging musician to more of a producer for solo artists looking to make demos or to add instrumentation to an existing demo. Previously I was mostly using my home setup to record my new songs for me to refine them or for band mates to learn them.  Last year I did a few tracks at home for a record that was mostly recorded at a studio, and it worked out really well. This year, things ramped up. I did two full – length records and an EP with almost everything recorded here at the Tree House. One record was sort of hastily done just to document some tunes in case the world ended. When the world didn’t end, I did another record of songs I wrote for a band I was in back in the 90’s, with lots of help from friends adding parts in their home studios. That record exceeded my expectations. And this fall, I just released a collaborative EP with my pal Michael in which we co-wrote the songs, and exchanged audio files over the internet, using We Transfer or Google Drive. We did have the mixing and mastering done by a friend at a pro studio, but all the raw tracks were done in the comfort of our own homes. Dogs at my feet, children at Mike’s. I also did some vocal, mandolin and guitar tracks for other folks’ records during the year without changing out of my sweatpants. But don’t tell them that.

Suzanne – I have gone days if not weeks this year without speaking to another soul outside of my home. I would have guessed that the lack of human interaction would make me a little stir crazy. And with both Suzanne and I working from home, that we might need a break from one another, or that the stress and frustrations we are feeling this year would cause us to bicker with each other. Nope. We met in 2001, when she came out from Chicago for the wedding of my bass player and her good friend. I was immediately mesmerized. Nearly 20 years on and that feeling hasn’t changed. I don’t believe I could have endured the challenges of this year without her. Simply put, she is the best person I know. Smart, funny, interesting, empathetic, caring, hard working, honest, and the prettiest girl I have ever seen. I’m feeling like 2021 is going to be alright, but if it wants to try to top 2020, bring it on. I have her on my side.