There are a number of ways to tackle a covers album. The easiest is arguably to top-load it with songs and/or artists sufficient to attract the applicable demographic of fans. On Don’t Let It Die, Vol. 1, Deslondes have assuredly not done this. Indeed, this album houses a dozen deep cuts that would credit the deepest of crate diggers. None of these songs are on the tip of tongues of John Q. Listeners out there, let alone those of grizzled old completists like me. Indeed, if you know this New Orleans band and their quirky take on a country-funk jamband ethos, Don’t Let It Die could easily pass as all their own work. Which is no bad thing.
Even for those songs by artists familiar, the Deslondes have also included a bevy from their own peer group, friends and co-conspirators, collaborators and tour mates, which is an admirable show of strength to those thus featured. So, alongside your Johnny Cash, Shelby Lynne and Swamp Dogg, we get Nick Woods, Pat Reedy and The Kernel. The current members of the band–Dan Cutler, Sam Doores, Riley Downing, Howe Pearson and John James Tourville–are all songwriters, so know their way around reviewing and renewing arrangements, which adds to the overall polish the quintet provide across this set.
First up is the venerable Swamp Dogg’s post apocalyptic parable, “The World Beyond,” in his hands a quasi-gospel slow burner. The Deslondes strip it right back to a back porch ballad at Grandpa’s knee. Cutler, Doores, Downing and Pearson can all sing. Here Pearson takes the lead, but it is the harmonies that stick hardest, joined by that of Sabine McCalla, rich and warming, in contrast to the stark and sober arrangement. All change, then, however, as Dowling then gargles his gravely timbre through “The Ballad of Boot Hill,” a 1965 hit for Johnny Cash, back when his stock was lower and he was encroaching near-parody status. This lightweight song becomes entirely credible, even with the Jordanires-type bvs. Cash always sounded as if he had cream in his coffee; Dowling sounds as if his contains kerosene.
Drunken Prayer and Morgan Geer are virtually coterminous, and this well-traveled troubadour is represented by “Cordelia,” from his 2019 album Cordelia Elsewhere. The Deslondes sweeten and sensitize the song, and render it a little in the style of Little Feat. Downing adds a snippet of searing guitar, but instrumental pride of place goes here to the horn section guesting, James Beaumont, Oliver Tuttle and Nathan Holman. Another contemporary is Joe Garner, aka The Kernal, and his “Try Again” drops a semi-tone, in keeping with Cutler’s range. The result actually lifts the song from the slight feel of sickly sentiment that runs through the original. As with all the songs, the production, predominantly from Tourville, is deft, allowing the nuance of all the respective parts: keyboards, guitars, bass and drums, to stand out. Oddly, in the new key, hints of the Faces’ “Ooh La La” seep into the chorus, but I’m not complaining.
‘Moving’ is a little catchy number, based on a bass line and mantra like repetion. Written by the Brit, Leonie Evans, and released as recently as 2020, I was unfamiliar with the artist, let alone her original, but thin as it is, it knocks the somewhat experimental original into the long grass. Dowling is back on vocal patrol for a clipped “I’m Gone,” becoming a southern soul anthem in the band’s hands. This, the newest song in the set, might seem hard to better, given the smoky palate of Kiki Cavazos in her own version, but the change of sex works to give an entirely different cast on it.
If all the songs thus far occupy a similar mood and tempo, this is because this is the cruise control that suits the band best. So it is a surprise, and a pleasant one, as they step down hard on the brake, for a transformative take on Clifton Chenier’s “I’m Coming Home.” Running for a full minute before vocals even appear, it is sumptuous, and evocative of a Beale Street funeral, or, at least, once the marching band have devolved responsibilities to the chapel organist. And not an accordion in sight!
Another buddy of the band is Nick Woods. His “Family” gets a full 1950s coat of faded varnish, which is the first song also to feature the pedal steel of Tourville. Yes, it is a little hokey, but, darn it, it’s done that well as to need that essence of kitsch. This leads into a real find, a song that was apparently the only single record by an Edgar Blanchard, for Chess records in 1957 or thereabouts, then remaining unreleased for over twenty years. ‘Lawdy Mama’. One of those near doggerel ditties like ‘Surfin’ Bird’, the Deslondes find it some dignity, if not too much, uncovering the incipient charm therein. Here, it sounds like an early Allen Toussaint, and the horns are back, parping with glee over the piano, virtually one note throughout, and the crooned melody. Very Moondog Matinee.
Tourville uncases his fiddle for Pat Reedy’s “Long Drives and Lonesome Mornings.” Reedy is a contemporary of Kiki Cavazos, featured earlier in the running order, and is world-famous in probably only New Orleans, hence the love this band display for him. A straightforwardly blunt 4/4 ballad, catnip for spillers of beers and tears, it is a cracking honkytonk rendition, which speeds up the hoarse lament of the original. The closer, the title track, is then totally unexpected, reviving one of the hits of Norman “Hurricane” Smith, erstwhile Beatles studio engineer, later singer of a handful of hits himself. Given the morose and maudlin treatment, and by removing most of the razzmatazz of the 1971 UK #2 Novello award winning hit, astonishingly it works. How and why chosen, Lord knows, but an inspired choice to name all the album after.
Yes, I have missed one out, and deliberately, leaving it now to last, like the juicy bit of bacon you want most to savor. This is Shelby Lynne’s “Where I’m From.” It’s a pretty faithful rendition, to be fair, but it is certainly one of the highlights. The string bass is superb, as is the additional brass, a step away from Preservation Hall in the ambience given. Lustrous and wonderful, it is marvelous, and begging for inclusion in our end of year best.
The Deslondes have done a very good job here, in both the research into the choices and the due process in delivering such a tightly hewn set of songs. Volume One, you say. Please don’t tarry.
Don’t Let it Die, Volume One track listing:
1. The World Beyond (Swamp Dogg cover)
2. The Ballad of Boot Hill (Johnny Cash cover)
3. Cordelia (Drunken Prayer cover)
4. Try Again (The Kernel cover)
5. Moving (Leonie Evans cover)
6. I’m Gone (Kiki Cavazos cover)
7. I’m Coming Home (Clifton Chenier cover)
8. Family (Nick Woods cover)
9. Lawdy Mama (Edgar Blanchard cover)
10. Long Drives and Lonesome Mornings (Pat Reedy cover)
11. Where I’m From (Shelby Lynne cover)
12. Don’t Let It Die (Hurricane Smith cover)
Don’t Let It Die, Vol. 1 is available on Bandcamp.
