Dave Perkins Powderhead
Dave Perkins is a multi media artist who paints, writes, plays guitar and writes songs, with a new album of dark Southern Gothic pieces, Powderhead. His whiskey-soaked vocals are gritty and sometimes Dylanesque but they can also rise powerfully to fill a whole room. Stripped down with acoustic guitar some of the time and pumped up to full volume with electric guitar for a portion of the songs too, there’s eerie violin and an echoey, haunted sound in these songs that never push or race beyond what’s needed to make the dark, truthful and sometimes macabre point.
Album opener “Hole” is about that deep hole that generations upon generations of men have fallen into. It’s a classic Southern Gothic tale of flawed characters disappointing those around them – the women are crying, and the men repeat the cycle in a seemingly perpetual pattern of doom despite witnessing the past, it continues to haunt, and haunt some more. Acoustic guitar and a touch of harmonica ground the song and launch the album with a sobering authentic vibe.
In “Violence” some deed has lead to death row, and it’s an eerie prisoner’s lament: “as I lay awake in this cell, my fear is twisting like a scab, tomorrow I will leave this place I’ve come to know so well, and my next bed will be a slab.” In “Just Like Jesse James” there’s murder and another twisted character: “Mr Ashton Bates slipped a shiv between my ribs underneath a big Magnolia, that’s what friends are for, sweet mercy.”
On “Tell Daddy” there’s a discomfort, addiction and regrets, things to run away from and a way to ease the pain as Dave plays acoustic guitar with electric guitar respectfully playing behind him, and “even all your lies are lies.”
“Disturbator” is an interesting dark and driving piece with prominent electric guitar and heightened violin and a sinister feel: “despite how much I coax, my ghost has yet to come out of the closet…” and then later “wild is the night and narrow is the game…” and the great line, “tell me what is best, the last laugh or the last word?”
“The Line” lays it all out in the opening lyrics: “Honey when I see the parade of old faces and I think on all the trouble in all those other places, when I let my mind wander on what might have been, and who it is who could have been there on the other end of the line…” and then it’s some adept really cool acoustic guitar playing. Life goes on, the line reels you in, and this song explores the passage of time.
In “Real Money” there’s the memorable line: “Downward mobility please take my car.” “Hero’s Wine” is the album closer and a little less dark but no less complex than the rest of the album as it probes the inner workings of the inner struggles of human experience: “I tell you bravery is not my curse, though I never look for anywhere to hide.”
This is a powerful, gritty, dark and enjoyable album that pulls together rootsy Americana vibes and Southern Gothic concepts. Dave Perkins is a real master on the guitar and, clearly, in songwriting as well. Powderhead is a heavy hitter all the way around. He has played guitar with with Vassar Clements, Jerry Jeff Walker, Carole King, Guy Clark, Papa John Creach and Bobby Bare. This album is pure Southern Gothic, with family secrets, morally bereft characters who are flawed and twisted, and a haunting legacy. There’s trauma, darkness, depravity, violence, and unresolved trauma. And through it all there’s great music, there’s cold realism, and there’s honesty.
More information is available here on his website: http://www.daveperkinsart.com and on BandCamp: https://daveperkinsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/powderhead
Musicians on Powderhead are Dave Perkins on vocals, acoustic and electric guitars; Antoine Silverman on violin; Garry Tallent on bass (Journey to the End of the Night); Lynn Nichols on guitar (Just Like Jesse James); Phil Madeira on organ (Journey to the End of the Night); guitar and background vocal (True Fan); TJ Klay on harmonica (Hole, Real Money); Greg Morrow on drums (Journey to the End of the Night); Kenny Meeks on bass and background vocal (True Fan); Jim Foster on drums (True Fan); and Chris Donohue on bass (Disturbator, Just Like Jesse James).
The album was recorded and mixed on the Reelsound Bus at Garden of Eden (Nashville, TN), and mastered by Alex McCollough at True East Mastering.
The cover painting “Double-Ought Self Portrait” was done by Dave Perkins, with back cover photo by Michael Wilson and cover design by Tom Gulotta.