Bryan and the Haggards describe themselves as “New York’s most decorated avant country instrumental Merle Haggard cover band,” and it seems safe to take them at their word. But in teaming up for their third full-length with the North Carolina based guitar master Eugene Chadbourne, they’ve temporarily sidestepped their non-vocal orientation to give their already highly unique focus a nice twist. Merles Just Want to Have Fun is a delightful meeting of a sui generis veteran with a younger generation of musicians unfazed by the supposed restrictions of genre, and if their stated influence is often idiosyncratically expressed, the love of their inspiration shines through loud and clear.
In music, many genres are basically incongruous, but unfortunately this knowledge hasn’t stopped certain folks from attempting various Frankenstein-like style grafts over the years. Sometimes these actions are well-intentioned stabs at jamming square pegs into round holes, but more frequently these endeavors are brazen displays of chutzpah that often strive for the zany or audacious, but ultimately do little but stroke the egos of the perpetrators and massage the pleasure centers of those too easily seduced by these feeble attempts at cheek.
Thankfully this situation is far from the norm, and when it does rise to prominence it’s fairly easy to ignore. That’s just what I did as a young lad back in the ‘80s when confronted with such questionable entities as a band playing thrash-polka and guy giving assorted punk rock songs the cocktail piano treatment.
But it’s also important to not confuse a common sense approach to genre hybridization with the overzealous needs of purism or good taste. That’s just what many did when John Zorn first unveiled his Downtown NYC supergroup Naked City. Grindcore, Henry Mancini, and Ornette Coleman all played by one hyperactive group with intense virtuosity and a collective jones for a slice-and-dice aesthetic lifted from Carl Stalling? On paper it seemed a recipe for disaster or at least disjointed aural rewards.
These days it’s easy to forget that when Naked City first hit the racks in 1990 many folks ridiculed it as a blatant attempt at provocation from a bunch of overeducated and creatively arrogant inhabitants of Gotham, the kind of specious and odious idea that could only spring from the underbelly of a large metropolitan area. Over twenty years hence and far from everyone has been converted, but to my ear Naked City’s music has aged quite well, and also serves as a reminder that intense genre tinkering should be judged on a case by case basis.
For the most part however, avant jazz and classic country and western fit that oil and water genre situation to a T. Part of what makes Bryan and the Haggards such a glorious exception is sincerity combined with copious talent, but the biggest reason behind their success is their particular focus upon the work of and the influences upon one of C&W’s most revered artists.
In most cases the true greats in a given genre also surpass it, and so it is with Merle Haggard. While the progression in C&W from the ‘60s to the present has mostly been one of pop perfectionism, Haggard never really fit that mold. Due to his gifts as a vocalist though, it was easy for him to prosper in that environment.
But along with his band The Strangers, Haggard’s prime work has more in common with the spark and heat of rock music than with the studio-based creations that have dominated the C&W charts over the last half century. Haggard’s honky-tonk derived art relied on a live ensemble sound for its success, and this is a unifying factor with the reliably wild flights it’s given via Bryan and the Haggards.
The group is lead by saxophonist Bryan Murray, who after being exposed to Haggard’s work by the band’s guitarist Jon Lundbom was so affected that he began transcribing some of the songs for the quintet to play. They’re rounded out by drummer Danny Fischer, saxophonist Jon Irabagon, and bassist Moppa Elliott, and prior to Bryan and the Haggard’s formation they already had extensive experience together as Jon Lundbom & Big Five Chord.
Under that moniker they inhabited the realms of serious jazz fusion, so while Bryan and the Haggards initially might seem like an eccentric lark, the concept is handled with a sure collective hand. Furthermore, Elliot and Irabagon are both members of Mostly Other People Do the Killing, an outfit whose focus encompasses jazz’s full stylistic gamut.
The music Bryan and the Haggards play is accompanied by a constant quality of adventurous fun, but it’s also matched with a seriousness of intent and a level of ability making it abundantly clear that it’s far from audaciousness for its own sake or for that matter the actions of a bunch of suspect fakers. Instead, like MOPDtK, I’m reminded of the boundary stretching of Zorn and his various collaborators, though I’ll note that the link is basically one of comparable methods and far less about sonic similarities in the finished product.
Murray first connected with Lundbom and Irabagon while attending DePaul University, and the twelve tracks included on Merles Just Want to Have Fun should soothe anyone’s lingering doubts over the positive benefits of the intersection between higher education and music (specifically jazz, which a few stubbornly persist in viewing as an art form best left untouched by academia.)
After two very strong instrumental releases for the Hot Cup label, Pretend it’s the End of the World and Still Alive and Kickin’ Down the Walls, their third album finds them on the Northern Spy imprint and making their vinyl debut in collaboration with one of the most valuable and distinctive guitarists to have emerged from the last 35 years, Eugene Chadbourne.
If avoiding thrash-polka and keyboard-tinkling punk rock interpreters was a smart move back in the ‘80s, then cozying up to the insanely prolific Chadbourne was an even brighter thing to do. Equally influenced by the avant-garde, blues, rock, folk, bluegrass, C&W, jazz and more, he was a certifiable breadbasket of assumedly irreconcilable influences made flesh, and a taste of his work could send a listener scrambling to assorted record shops in search of all they and their wallets could handle.
An early associate of Zorn and guitarist Henry Kaiser, Chadbourne’s first recordings revealed him in full-on avant-improvisational mode, but it wasn’t long before he formed Shockabilly with drummer David Licht and bassist Mark Kramer, the latter notable for his participation in Bongwater, as the impresario behind the Shimmy Disc label, and also as an in-demand producer (amongst many others, he’s credited on the early work of Low and the complete studio output of Galaxie 500.)
Shockabilly certainly helped to increase Chadbourne’s profile, but it was after the group’s ’85 breakup that the guitarist really began acquiring a devoted following for his rapidly appearing solo LPs and collabs, the most famous being a fruitful hookup with Camper Van Beethoven, though he’s also hit wax in tandem with Violent Femmes, Sun City Girls, Elliott Sharp, Dutch free-drummer extraordinaire Han Bennink, Evan Johns and the late original Mothers of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black (“the Indian of the group.”) He even telephoned-in a brief guest spot on the first They Might Be Giants album.
Along the way Chadbourne penned many well-loved topical/protest numbers (his anti-Drug War “Choppin’ Down Weeds” probably being my fave) as he blended them with prodigious skill as a player (his runs of lightning-fast licks are justifiably lauded and once heard instantly recognizable) and a ceaseless desire to tackle a wide array of cover choices (an impulse that first appeared as a defining aspect of Shockabilly) while giving many u-ground music fans their first taste of free improvisation.
All this and an aptitude for writing (prior to music his aim was journalism); in addition to scores of insightful and often humorous entries to the AllMusic website (often covering unknown blues and bluegrass figures), he was likely the only person in the late-‘80s that could navigate the deep chasm between the subscribership of the magazines Forced Exposure and Maximum RocknRoll, with Chadbourne contributing to both.
In terms of Eugene’s back catalog, the two releases that spring immediately to mind in relation to Merles Just Want to Have Fun are the ’86 album Country Protest and the ’87 2LP of wild raw-fidelity live recordings from a pre-Shockabilly outfit called the Chadbournes (featuring Licht, Kramer, cellist Tom Cora, and Zorn) titled LSD C&W. This is mainly due to Country Protest’s inclusion of Haggard’s “Fightin’ Side of Me” (on the same disc as covers of Buffy St. Marie’s “Universal Soldier” and Phil Ochs’ “When I’m Gone”) and LSD C&W’s closing with a dilly of an imbibing song, Merle’s “No Reason to Quit.”
But I need no fact checking to state that LSD C&W is the only record in recorded history to include versions of songs by Johnny Cash, Duke Ellington, The Rolling Stones, Faron Young, Love, Willie Nelson, Jimi Hendrix, Carl Perkins, Albert Ayler, and B.B. King. That anarchic spirit informs Merles Just Want to Have Fun and introduces new elements to the Bryan and the Haggards discography. And not just vocals but medleys, a long-familiar Chadbourne motif; LSD C&W includes three (The Beatles, Roger Miller, and Burl Ives) and Country Protest holds the laid-back grab bag “Medley in C.”
With this said, at many points on this new disc I was reminded of the moments on Camper Van Chadbourne that utilized the services of saxophonists David Stilley and Bruce Ackley (he of San Francisco’s ROVA Saxophone Quartet.) This is obviously due to the horns of Murray and Irabagon, but like Camper Van Chadbourne (and much of Country Protest as well) this collab is also distinguished by its full-bodied production values. Elsewhere, much of the guitarist’s oeuvre is accurately assessed as lo-fi in nature.
If it’s sounding like Chadbourne’s side of the equation is dominating the proceedings, that’s not really the case, even with Bryan and the Haggard’s largely instrumental strategy getting cast aside for Eugene’s serviceable yet endearing (though over the years frequently divisive) vocals. And the LP kicks right into gear with one of Merle’s biggest hits, the pro-establishment “Okie from Muskogee” sequel “Fightin’ Side of Me.”
The song is sung with a hint of facetiousness, which is appropriate given Chadbourne’s open status as a lifetime left-winger. This will surely put off many Haggard hard-liners, though I can’t imagine any of them hanging around to the end of the tune’s second-half full-tilt avant jazz freak-out (if they even make it to the mid-way point.)
On one hand this all works as a way of quickly weeding out those aforementioned purists, but it also stands as an acknowledgement that they are interpreting and paying tribute to the full artistry of the album’s subject. To cherry-pick and ignore that Haggard gave voice to a popular consensus of discontent with the ‘60s left would actually be a disservice to the guy.
It’s also true that a great song can overcome the obstacles of a divergent ideology (apparently Chadbourne thinks so, since he dodged the Vietnam draft, leaving for Canada and not returning until Jimmy Carter gave full amnesty in the late-‘70s), but again they smartly don’t elect to play it straight, with that free jazz blitz beginning directly after Eugene shouts the line “If you don’t love it leave it.”
The next cut “Old Man from the Mountain” keeps thing rolling very nicely, and it can be effectively described as raucous cow-punk with much of the focus pointed directly onto Lundbom and Chadbourne’s burning strings and the deliciously oddball vocals of the good Doctor. Murray and Irabagon do get room to shine though, and the rhythm section is a machine of trim, emphatic momentum.
Or in another word swing, which Merles Just Want to Have Fun does like crazy. “Mama Tried” gives voice to this element with a smooth solid minute of gloriously inviting horn wiggling before Eugene enters with the lyrics, and when he does it’s with a more restrained mode of delivery. Overall, the tune’s a terrific showcase of this aggregation’s inside/outside instrumental prowess, though the appearance of Irabagon’s penny whistle and Murray’s nose whistle does keep things suitably off-kilter.
“I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am” finds Chadbourne switching to banjo, and along with the bass as an anchor he sticks close to the original (even in his singing) as the rest of the group skitter abstractly around him, though the horns offer just a hint of melodiousness in their explorations that manages to serve as an adhesive to the opposing extremes.
The first of the record’s two medleys comes next, with the subject not Haggard but one of his key influences, Bob Wills, and it provides an extended segment that just might convert a few doubters to the value of this project, though there are certainly speed bumps in the road. For instance, the horns don’t hesitate to head straight into outbound skronk territory (though they just as quickly return to suavely executed straight playing), and then there’s Elliott scatting syllables along to his arco bass solo, a recurring element in Bryan and the Haggard’s arsenal that took a little getting used to, I’ll admit.
But here, in a medley of cuts from the King of Country Swing, it goes down like a charm, as does Chad’s humorous asides and vocal mannerisms. And across the whole, Fischer is a beast of sturdy precision behind the kit. “Listening to the Wind” scales things back considerably, beginning gently and slowly gaining power with some fine blowing in its later portion, though it also remains one of the disc’s more straight-ahead numbers.
Next is “Stay Here and Drink,” a brief rocker that finds everyone in top form, impressing with how this meeting of shared interest and compatible aesthetics gels as a heat-producing unit. Plus, it all ends with a flurry of signature corn-humor hiccups from Eugene. And “If We Make It Through December” is spacious, loose and searching as Chadbourne holds down the center.
“Working Man Medley” tightens things up and cooks up a storm as it pushes the later section of the LP into an interesting political direction; where “Fightin’ Side of Me” and “Okie from Muskogee” are symbolic of their moment of writing, the lyrics here are still quite relevant to issues of income inequality, though Haggard’s personal disdain for government welfare is reflective of a different era (but on second thought, perhaps not.)
Following this is the group’s thorny roughing-up of “Okie from Muskogee,” and it’s the one spot on Merle’s Just Want to Have Fun that seems to fully engage with a mixture of lampoonery and subversion. But to my ear this makes sense, since I’ve always bought the notion that the song was in large part a broadly-drawn goof that only turned serious after thin-skinned lefties began attacking it as reactionary. Not everyone will appreciate the incessant horn drone and the contextual irony, though I never get the impression that they don’t like the tune. And it also features a killer dobro solo from Eugene.
After this general lack of seriousness the disc then heads directly in the opposite direction, with everyone laying out save Lundbom and Chadbourne for an exquisite dual-banjo inspection of “The Way I Am,” and this gives way to the closer “That’s the News,” penny whistle and nose whistle stepping front and center as they offer a reading of Haggard’s anti-war cut that while mildly unconventional is in no way irreverent or tongue-in-cheek.
In summation, Merles Just Want to Have Fun is an unusually successful collaboration that manages to extend the admirable concept of Bryan and the Haggards through a dialogue with an expert fellow traveler. The massive personality of Chadbourne shines throughout, but there’s also little loss of the group’s individual stamp, and the mingling of disparate forms has scarcely provided this much pure enjoyment.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
