Steve Earle is standing in the shadows by the side of the club stage enraptured as he watches the young artist win over a crowd of rowdy young men here to see the headliner.
Every once in a while, he casts his gaze towards the Moncton club floor giving the evil eye to any audience member who dares to yell with their friends but always he returns his attention to this captivating singer. I spent more time watching Steve Earle watching the performance than I spent watching the stage. It was electric, it was pure passion.
It was hardly surprising that after the tour the two were married.
Allison Moorer has had a long career in that nebulous area where the lines blur between rock, country and folk.
She is, simply, a songwriter, and to me, with Steve Earle, it was a case of like attracts like.
The album I come back to again and again is “The Duel”, perhaps the album with the best examples of her ability to rise above genres and present classic song craft.
With a simple three-piece band playing guitar, bass, drums, and keyboards she sets the tone with opener “I Ain’t Giving Up On You”, dark chords and a classic mid-tempo beat frame a tale of self-examination: “I always toss it in when things get heavy, wash my hands and leave ‘em high and dry”.
The look in the mirror is stark and bare bones, “to tell the truth it’s hard being honest.” But then the bridge brings a little light because “you’re the best chance I got.”
The ringing guitar to close turns the whole tale around and feels like a moment of positivity in a dark life. The piano based “Baby Dreamer” is gentler without the rock n’ roll guitars of the previous track.
The lyrics are simple: “wake up baby dreamer, wipe the sleep from your eyes, look behind the curtain, such a beautiful sunrise”. A quiet picked guitar rises and falls without distracting from the melody.
Multi-tracked vocals give it a link to gospel. “Melancholy Polly” who “spills her guts on stage” is the next character we visit.
Someone who is “safe inside her music” and lives for the chance to be on stage in a seedy bar giving everything she has. It is a short riff-based rocker that is over too soon.
Track four, “Believe You Me” meanders through loud and soft verses and chorus parts. The bluesy melody highlights the list of struggling characters one after another, “a man jumps in the river to wash away his sin, in his religious fervor forgot he couldn’t swim, no one saved his skin.”
Moorer’s voice is a highlight here as it is on the next track, “One on the House,” where the weariness in her performance is palpable. A barroom patron has fallen on hard times and accosts a bartender, “wasted my fortune on having a ball, hit the bottle like a calf at a cow, what I’m gonna ask you takes a whole lotta gall, do me a favour and give me one on the house.”
The country lament touches all the right feelings with piano and guitar weaving a classic countrypolitan sound.
Side two starts with the album highlight “All Aboard,” an epic chugging rocker with beautiful backing vocals. It hides that dark dichotomy by loudly proclaiming “all aboard” but making it clear that not all are welcome.
“If you don’t love it you can leave”, that patriotic jingoistic slogan so often proclaimed is a touchstone line as we start to learn of those who are not invited aboard. Soon, it’s clear we don’t want to be one of those on the train. Subtle, but serious themes make this a classic in her catalogue.
The false ending and band workout are a musical highlight as well. Title track, “The Duel,” follows. It is a stark track with only piano and harmonica backing her fragile voice. “In this cemetery mist stands a newborn atheist” is a remarkable opening line. Reflections at a funeral, “I don’t know how many rounds are left in me ‘til I stay down” while “staring at my polished shoes in front of your wooden pews.”
The harmonica barely intrudes on her thoughts but adds another fragile touch.
“When Will You Ever Come Down” is an acoustic country pop classic with some Dylan touches in the production and arrangement. It breezes by with a rare guitar solo and then it’s over in two and a half minutes. “Louise is in the Blue Moon” is another highlight, an organ based gentle character study as we meet gamblers, sheriffs, musicians and other ne’er do wells.
Louise watches all from above without judgement as the organ swells and the drums insist that all these misfits are worth knowing. “Once Upon a Time She Said” has Moorer playing acoustic guitar solo on the first verses to put all the spotlight on her voice, “just getting by is getting old, locked up inside this pigeonhole.”
A story of strength and self-confidence, an artist who knows ‘it’s unpopular to be unpopular” as the drums and electric guitars come crashing in, she will not go quietly into that pigeonhole. The album closes with “Sing Me to Sleep” a country waltz with just acoustic guitars and brushes easing us to the end of the journey.
The demands of motherhood have made the output less regular but no less compelling in the last two decades, Moorer is a singular artist well worth exploring.
