Two generations of blues, country, and Kiwi individuality come together in Delaney Davidson and Barry Saunders' new album Word Gets Around.
And so it should! says William Dart.
Delaney Davidson and Barry Saunders Photo: Supplied
Watching the video for The Warratahs' song "Maureen", Nik Brown’s fiddle is the first ear- and eye-catcher, as Barry Saunders cruises the Capital in his convertible. But it’s not too long before the band is primed and ready.
The Warratahs are a bit of an institution in this country. So much so that, when the group released its 30th anniversary CD last year, the sleeve featured an impressively crammed collage of all the places they’d played. From Carterton and Cass to Okere Falls and Ruakaka. Delivering songs that can go down just as well in a country barn as in big-city town halls.
The Warratahs’ main songwriter, Barry Saunders has sustained a solo career as well, and he’s not afraid to take a detour from well-worn country paths.
Back in 2008, there was this startling track from his Zodiac album, in which the actual song – half-spoken, half-sung – emerged after two minutes of what sounded like rough-hewn piano improv.
It was this album, eleven years ago, that saw Saunders reaching out to some of the new bands in town, with a cover of a song by The Phoenix Foundation.
Its title, “Going Fishing”, might suggest an uncomplicated riverbank ramble, but it’s a good deal deeper than that.
Barry Saunders’ latest musical adventuring sees him teamed him up as a sort of offbeat country duo with Delaney Davidson, well known for digging out the dark and the doom from the heart of a song.
Five years ago, we heard Davidson’s grizzled vox alongside the honeyed tenor of Marlon Williams, in their marvelous Sad but True album ... a disc that came with the wry byline of Juke Box B-sides.
They opened the outing with one of two co-written numbers, titled "Candyman", which has nothing at all to do with bluesman Mississippi John Hurt.
But the sense of unease that the pair concoct is positively shiversome, with its perilous chord progressions and eerie whistling. Not to mention a few seconds of introduction that seem to suggest that, any time, boots are about to start walking.
Delaney Davidson has had his own unexpected musical adventures too. One came last year when he joined the collaborator-list in an album by composer Eve de Castro-Robinson, titled The Gristle of Knuckles. The disc went on to take the prize for best classical release of 2018 at the Vodafone Music Awards.
Davidson pulled one of the songs from de Castro-Robinson’s Len Lye opera, making it gleam with a new menace, against electronic witchery and haunted riffs. It’s quite something.
Delaney Davidson and Barry Saunders make quite a pair and quite a team.
One of the Ebony Lamb portraits on the sleeve of their new album (seen above) makes them look as if they just might be sloping home after a pretty rough party: Davidson’s arms hang down as if they’ve been through a mangle; Saunders assuring us, with two fingers, that everything’s OK.
Is the casual dishevelment a hint of the music to come one wonders, as both men loosen their ties and Saunders goes giddy-giddy-gout with his white shirt.
The album’s title song, "Word gets around", is a bated breath scorcher. Rumours fly indeed, against the brutal slam of Jol Mulholland percussion and tungsten-tough electric guitar from Davidson, working up to and breaking out into a unbridled chorus that comes back over and over again, like wild West coast waves.
The mood of Delaney Davidson and Barry Saunders’ new album is nothing if not direct and urgent.
It's pinned down from its very first song. "Nineteen Days" sketches in the goings-on of bad boys looking for good times on the road, within the time limit of the title, which perhaps promises something of a reunion in due course.
The introduction says it all, with a swoop, a whoop, and a circle of edgy chords, setting us on our way. It's a number that evokes the raw energy of the early Stones. We’re off on our joyride along State Highway One.
Delaney Davidson and Barry Saunders are as lean and laconic with their words as they are with their music. A press release from their aptly titled Rough Diamond label has Saunders talking of throwing words and ideas at his song-mate and watching them bounce off his head.
Davidson himself comes up with the image of ideas appearing out of the kitchen air, reminding us that some of the recording started off in that room of the singer’s home.
Davidson goes on to explain that these grabbed ideas were worked on quickly, aiming at an immediacy that can be heard in the music, an immediacy that’s hard to find in music, an immediacy that creates real songs about real things.
One of these is "Stolen River", brought on by Saunders revisiting the Selwyn district and being told that a dried up, barren riverbed was the result of someone having stolen the river.
This is certainly one of the album’s most immediate songs – so much so that I’m imagining the old Warratahs line-up fleshing it out, including some Nik Brown fiddle and a few Floyd Cramer licks from Wayne Mason’s piano.
The video of "Stolen River" doesn’t pull any punches, from a gambling table with loaded giant dice to Saunders’ drawn face, etched with the eco-tragedy in which our world has found itself.
A frightening finality is caught in the last seconds of the song, as the sound is teased out into a single fragile harmonica note.
I’ve been living with Delaney Davidson and Barry Saunders’ Word Gets Around for a few weeks now and, the more I listen to it, the more I’m taken with the way that the two men blend and work their voices together. Sometimes it’s a matter of moving in and out of harmony from a blustering unison. At other times you sense them enjoying the essential difference of their vocal instruments and the varying types of music that they bring to play.
The song "Special Rider Blues" is a case in point, with Saunders handling the main body of the song and Delaney making himself felt on its borders, with jabs of guitar and vocalising that ranges from gruff muttering to what could be a touch of Tuvan throat-singing.
With nine songs clocking in at just 36 minutes, Word Gets Around might have some people weighing up minutes against dollars but there’s no cheating going on here. This is an album that grips like an anaconda – never less than a smoulder and often surging to full blaze.
Perhaps its final track is a welcome relaxation. "Long Way Home" is the sort of closer that could have rounded off a Warratahs concert, with a bit of Dylan being channeled and guitars being strummed. For a moment, we could be back in 1987 if it weren’t for the unsettling theremin-like wail that reminds us that three decades have slipped by.
Music Details
'Song title' (Composer) – Performers
Album title
(Label)
'Maureen' (Mason, Saunders) – The Warratahs
Pagan Gold
(Pagan)
'Walking New Year' (Saunders) – Barry Saunders
Zodiac
(Pagan)
'Going Fishing' (Buda et al) – Barry Saunders
Zodiac
(Pagan)
'Candyman' (Davidson, Williams) – Delaney Davidson & Marlon Williams
Sad But True Volume 3: Juke B-Sides
(Lyttleton)
'Trouble, Trouble Mind' (De Castro-Robinson) – Delaney Davidson
The Gristle of Knuckles
(Rattle)
'Word Gets Around' (Davidson, Saunders) – Delaney Davidson And Barry Saunders
Word Gets Around
(Rough Diamond)
'Nineteen Days' (Davidson, Saunders) – Delaney Davidson And Barry Saunders
Word Gets Around
(Rough Diamond)
'Stolen River' (Davidson, Saunders) – Delaney Davidson And Barry Saunders
Word Gets Around
(Rough Diamond)
'Special Rider Blues' (Davidson, Saunders) – Delaney Davidson And Barry Saunders
Word Gets Around
(Rough Diamond)
'Long Way Home' (Davidson, Saunders) – Delaney Davidson And Barry Saunders
Word Gets Around
(Rough Diamond)
