Michael Rudd – Going To the Mountain
This self-produced sophomore & sophisticatedly charged album was recorded in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Ten delightful paths that explore Going To the Mountain (Drops March 28/Invisible Road Records/48:28).
The topics include people in search of meaning & understanding (that search started back in the ’60s? didn’t it) about who they are & how they arrived at this moment in time. It’s a viable song idea with wide wings & is still true today. It’s a search that perhaps will never end. It makes for interesting ballad fodder since every singer-songwriter who runs the ball takes a different route down the field.
The LP isn’t a downer. Michael Rudd has assembled plenty of optimistic melodies. It’s a narrative wish to find some alternative that is elusive at best. Almost a hippie-like philosophy. It’s something some individuals try to discover & some do through Buddhism, meditation & hitting the road with a knapsack & a good pair of boots.
Rudd isn’t reinventing anything. He’s an artist who understands that not everything has a happy ending. Not all questions have answers. Not all mysteries are solved. And these inspired songs came to Michael Rudd (vocals/acoustic & electric guitar) naturally. While sleeping or upon awakening. Maybe Rudd’s just trying to justify the search. That’s the excitement.
J.J. Cale & Tony Joe White were considered in some quarters as swamp rock. With Mr. Rudd’s opener “Before the Demon Came” I sense a bit of desert rock. A hot, dry, potent & ominous prickle of danger. His voice perfectly suits the genre since it waves & changes shape like a dune.
The music continues in that style with “My Love Is True” as it breezes through with a warm guitar that’s the only precipitation in the performance. Rudd applies this with skill since it certainly holds a listener’s interest. It isn’t a ballad as much as an intense narrative. A regular singer could never get this type of song across by merely singing its notes. There’s a delicacy to Rudd’s composition & he exudes this with finesse. He has the necessary voice (“Going To the Mountain”) for these kinds of tunes – that are not dependent on rock, folk, country, or MOR. It’s a universal desert fauna-type voice. That’s it.
What’s peculiar to my ears is that Rudd has a contemporary almost Burl Ives voice on “They All Flew Away.” I always liked Ives’ voice (“Mr. In-Between”) but here it’s applied to a more serious penetrating lyric.
Good music doesn’t have to make the walls shake.
Highlights – “Before the Demon Came,” “My Love Is True,” “Going To the Mountain,” “They All Flew Away”& ”Walk My Way.”
Musicians – Pat Malone (electric & acoustic guitars), Mark Clark (drums), Brant Leeper (Hammond organ/piano), Asher Barreras (upright & electric bass/cello) & Jen Bixby (vocals).
Color image courtesy of Mr. Rudd’s website gallery & photographer David Rosenfield. CD at https://www.michaelrudd.com/
