DAVE'S DIARY - 25 NOVEMBER 2010 - BILL JACKSON CD REVIEW
CD
REVIEW - 2010
BILL JACKSON
THE NASHVILLE SESSIONS (SOUNDVAULT)
FROM THE HIGH COUNTRY TO NASHVILLE
Bill Jackson threw a boomerang of sorts when he recorded his latest CD live in Jack Irwin's Silverton home studio in Nashville.
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The
Albury born-Sale raised singer-songwriter cut a quintet of narratives
about Australia. Now Jackson and his Dobro playing collaborator Pete Fidler are home on the road again showcasing them. Fittingly, the disc kicks off with CSS Shenandoah - saga of a Confederate warship that docked at Williamstown on January 25, 1865, to repair damage suffered while capturing Union-whaling ships. |
While here
the Shenandoah recruited 42 local crew including Rye refugee Billy Kenyon
who signed up to help capture another 25 Yankee whaling ships.
Jackson vividly recounts Kenyon's journey with Captain James Waddell to
fight for General Robert E Lee.
It segues into Along For The Ride - one of four co-writes by Jackson
and brother Ross - and folklore fuelled Honeymoon Gully.
Jackson injects reality into the story of two young lovers who eloped
into Nariel Valley-Corryong bush in the fifties and were eventually found
in a remote area mythologised as Honeymoon Gully.
Might have been a safer era and locale for young lovers than the bushfire
and flood zone of recent history.
The Jackson brothers didn't have to look for inspiration for their paternal
paean Hard And Free.
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They
drew from deathbed humour of Depression reared patriarch William James
Jackson - a pioneer of the beer and wines of the Victorian-NSW border
High Country. Jackson ends with the Ross Jackson-Fidler penned waltz This Heartache, road tested by Fidler in his bluegrass combo Bluestone Junction. So what makes this worthy of reviewing? Well Jackson and Fidler took the trouble to flesh it out on February 24 with Nashville pickers - double bassist Dan Seymour, percussionist Joe Giotta and Sergio Webb on acoustic guitar and gut string banjo. |
Yes, that's
winter in America - four decades after Doug Ashdown made his historic
journey long before the post Urban gold rushes.
Jackson enriches the disc's organic feel with his CD insert and back cover
design by Warrnambool raised Lonesome Rex picker Colin Suggett, now eking
out a living in the south east Gippsland coastal dairy belt.
CLICK HERE for a previous
Jackson CD Review on October 9, 2006.