TOM RUSSELL

Tom Russell is a master storyteller and Mesabi, his new release for Shout! Factory (release date September 6), corrals some of the acclaimed singer-songwriter’s most compelling tales to date. A thread runs through its songs, a zigzagging but determinedly solid line that connects the perilous bordertown of Juarez, Mexico to the real and faux glitz of L.A. and the bleak iron range of Minnesota—the Mesabi of the album’s title. The broad landscapes created by Tom Russell for Mesabi are inhabited by characters we all know—Bob Dylan, James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor—and some we may not: the now-obscure, once well-known singer Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards, the tragic Disney child star Jimmy Driscoll and the character actor Sterling Hayden. It’s a logical progression from Russell’s last album, 2009’s Blood and Candle Smoke, yet it’s like no other album Russell has made in his nearly four decades as a recording artist. Co-produced by Russell and keyboardist Barry Walsh, and recorded in several different studios in Tucson, Texas, Nashville and Los Angeles, Mesabi is the 26th album from an artist whose songs have been recorded by such icons as Johnny Cash, Dave Van Ronk, Jerry Jeff Walker, Doug Sahm and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, among others. No less than Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the legendary poet, has said that he shares “a great affinity with Tom Russell’s songs, for he is writing out of the wounded heart of America.” For Mesabi, Russell invited along several prominent friends to assist him in bringing to fruition his newest compositions, among them Lucinda Williams, Van Dyke Parks, Sir Douglas Quintet keyboardist Augie Meyers and Calexico, the band with which Russell previously collaborated on Blood and Candle Smoke. The result is a collection that may be Russell’s most cinematic and global to date, a work that instantly grips the listener and holds on as its vivid scenarios unfold from tune to tune. The consummate renegade, Tom Russell makes the music he wants to make, without intervention, and he does so without a care for trends and expectations. “My career seems to have gone in the opposite direction from a lot of people whose notoriety came over their first half dozen records,” says Russell. “Mine didn’t. My career built very slowly, and then I moved to El Paso in ’97, further outside than anybody could imagine. By not plugging into the machine, the records I’ve made in the past 10 years have been my strongest and most outside records, especially the past two. It seems that the older I get, the more I’ve been able to keep on the outside.” Mesabi—whose cover art was painted by Russell—begins with the title track, Russell’s tribute to one of his muses, Mr. Dylan. Dylan, Russell notes, came up listening to the likes of bluesmen like Howlin’ Wolf on Mexican radio stations, which Russell also heard while growing up in L.A.—an inspiration to him before he heard Bob Dylan. “I was up there once [near Dylan’s northern Minnesota birthplace] and I couldn’t believe he came out of that desolate country,” says Russell. “I was amazed. That song is about me listening to Dylan in L.A. and trying to become a better songwriter. And I’m still at it.” The next track, “When the Legends Die,” begins with the lines “I was that kid in a room, with heroes and legends tacked up over my head/Fullbacks and folksingers; matadors, troubadours and hard-running thoroughbreds.” The song, Russell explains, is about “that kid one day realizing you’ve got to do it on your own. You can’t dissolve into hero worship.” The track features a very living legend, Van Dyke Parks, one of America’s most unique songwriters and musicians. “I met him at the Edmonton Folk Festival last year,” says Russell, “and he blew me away. He went online and found Blood and Candle Smoke and he told me how much he liked it. We became friends and he played this very different keyboard approach, almost a carnival player piano, Americana approach.” Appropriately, the next five songs form a subset, each confronting the great myth of Hollywood celebrity by focusing on a different real-life personality, some, as the Kinks once put it, “that you recognize, some that you’ve hardly even heard of.” Bobby Driscoll, the subject of “Farewell Never Never Land,” is very likely one who falls into the latter category. A major Disney star, he was the voice of Peter Pan, a colossal success early in life featured in many hit films of the ’40s and ’50s. By the time he reached his twenties Driscoll’s career had disappeared and he sank into drug addiction and poverty. His body was discovered in a New York City tenement building in 1968 at the age of 31. Then there’s “The Lonesome Death of Ukulele Ike,” another big name, the voice of Disney’s Jiminy Cricket. He too came to an unfortunate demise. “Bobby Driscoll was a guy we all grew up with every Sunday, singing ‘When You Wish Upon a Star,’” says Russell. “Then we find out that Cliff Edwards, Ukulele Ike, who was the voice of Dumbo and other things, was a jazz ukulele player, and he died destitute in a rest home and was put in an unmarked grave. I was just fascinated.” “Sterling Hayden” takes its name from the actor whose credits ran the gamut from Johnny Guitar and The Asphalt Jungle to Dr. Strangelove and The Godfather. An admitted Communist, he was shunned by Hollywood after cooperating with the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy era of the early 1950s. Russell encapsulates Hayden’s life story into a four-minute vignette, concluding, “So here’s to all the tough guy actors and the false gods who made ’em/And wherever he sails tonight on the Seven Seas may the Lord sail with Sterling Hayden.” “Furious Seasons (For Liz)” was the last song written for Mesabi, following the recent death of screen goddess Elizabeth Taylor. It’s also the shortest, at just over a minute and a half. “I kept running into her myth and life,” says Russell. “I married a Swiss lady and we have a place in Switzerland, part-time. And near her parents’ place in the Alps, Liz Taylor had a chalet right down the street. Then I found out she lived for a short while in a penthouse in El Paso, with her first husband, Nicky Hilton. That overlooks Juarez, Mexico, and I thought, with all this stuff coming together, I’d write a quick one-minute waltz about Liz looking out on Juarez. In a strange way that arcs the album’s Hollywood material with the border material.” “A Land Called Way Out There,” recorded with Calexico, is a “lament for the death of James Dean,” says Russell, and is followed by “Roll the Credits,” one of two tracks from the album used in a new film, The Road to Nowhere, directed by Monte Hellman. One of three songs featuring background vocals by Gretchen Peters, its words capture the escapism of the Hollywood world, a world that doesn’t often spill over into our daily lives: “Roll the credits, Johnny, you up there in the projection booth/Dreamtime is over now, time to put our shoes on and hit the street/But wasn’t it beautiful? Didn’t we forget about the sad times for a while? The good guys won, the bad guys tasted bitterness and defeat.” “Heart Within a Heart,” the second track featuring Van Dyke Parks, is, says Russell, “in there as a mid-album palette cleanser. It’s very simple: digging deeper when you’re down. It’s got a pretty strong chorus and the McCrary sisters, Regina and Ann, from Dylan’s gospel days. I don’t want every song to be heavy or thematic. I think you have to have a point that lets the pressure off. It’s a hopeful song.” The next tune, “And God Created Bordertowns,” was co-written with Augie Meyers, best known for his keyboard work with the late Doug Sahm. “It was a rap at first, and I liked Augie’s piano thing,” says Russell. “It sounds like it was done in a Juarez bar. It has Jacob Valenzuela from Calexico on trumpet. It’s kind of stating the facts. They’re selling us the drugs, we’re giving them the guns and 30,000 people have died. The puzzle is it’s the most dangerous city in the world and El Paso, just over the bridge, is the safest city in the United States.” Also featuring Calexico, along with accordionist Joel Guzman, “Goodnight Juarez,” is another lament: “Juarez I used to paint the town,” sings Russell, “Now you’ve gone and turned it upside down/Into a dark and bloody battleground/Goodnight, Juarez, goodnight.” Mesabi continues with “Jai Alai,” about the sport, once popular below the border, described as “the fastest game on Earth.” It features Jacob Mossman on backing vocals, flamenco guitars, palmas and jaleos, Eric Boseman on cajon and percussion and Mike Minarjez on bass. Following is “Love Abides,” a reprise of the song that originally concluded Russell’s 1999 album The Man From God Knows Where. “My wife urged me to do it,” says Russell about the latter. “I demoed it in Tucson with a funky old guitar. It’s a positive song and remains relevant today.” Two bonus tracks wrap up Mesabi. The first is Russell’s single-take interpretation of one of Dylan’s most poignant songs ever, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” and the title track from the previously mentioned Hellman film. Both feature Calexico, and the Dylan cover also spotlights Lucinda Williams. “Years ago I toured with her,” says Russell. “She went on to well-deserved fame but we always kept in touch. I thought of Lucinda’s perfectly edgy voice. She loves Dylan. She was really into it and did a great job.” As lyrically potent as Mesabi is, props must also be given to the high level of musicality on the album. In addition to the folks from Calexico and the various guests, Russell and producer Walsh utilized several talented players to bring life to the songs. Walsh himself plays piano and other keyboards on several tracks, and the ace guitarists Will Kimbrough and Thad Beckman also lend their vision. Viktor Krauss and Bob Glaub (bass), John Gardner and Don Heffington (drums), David Henry (percussion, mandolin and cello), engineer Craig Schumacher (trumpet and percussion), Fats Kaplin (ukulele, oud, viola and accordion), Tony Rosano (euphonium), Marco Rosano (tenor saxophone) and Chris Schultz, who provides ambient guitar on the Dylan cover, flesh out the diverse arrangements. “In this day and age it’s become harder and harder to get people, especially young people, to listen to a full album,” says Russell, “and especially one with 15 songs. People now are used to downloading one song at a time. But when somebody does listen, you have a breakthrough. This is a long album, a big album,” he says, “but hopefully the writing carries it through.” That would be something of an understatement. Songwriting and performance at the level of Mesabi is a rarity today, and when Russell notes that the size of his overall audience has doubled over the past five years, he’s not so much boasting as affirming that there is still a huge hunger for the kind of quality, the kind of thoughtfulness and substance, that he can be counted upon to deliver each time out. Even as he prepares to tour behind Mesabi, Russell is also looking forward to the release this fall of a new Eric Temple-directed documentary about his life and work, Don’t Look Down (its title a takeoff on the Dylan doc Don’t Look Back), described as the definitive history of Tom Russell, and to Blue Horse/Red Desert, a collection of Russell’s art. And as if he’s not already prolific enough, he’s already thinking beyond this current flurry of activity to what the studio might offer him the next time he’s ready. “I think I have quite a few records left,” he says. We should all hope so—that can only be a win-win all around.