To imagine the live scene of the United States, try not to think about this terrible year, rewind the tape before 2020. The nation is immense, but above all it is immense the desire to make music and the spaces to give people what they want are many, not only in Texas where you live music and concerts as you breathe, but around the States if one wants to try the adventure and the jump there are possibilities and if one is willing to do gavetta there is still word of mouth and now with the net the word of mouth has worldwide echo. So I discovered Luke Hendrickson, a bearded boy from Minnesota, who came out in 2020 with his real debut leaving me that pleasant feeling of having found an artist who deserves to be known and listened to carefully. His career is just beginning, but the gavetta was long, a metal band first (he is not the first country artist to have made this step), a cover band then that allowed him to get known, to grow and become aware of his undoubted abilities as a songwriter and live performer. In 2018 he decided to release his first EP, Comfort Food, 5 acoustic pieces that give him even more the opportunity to circulate his name opening concerts for many artists. His sound is now defined and mature, a country very outlaw but with original inserts probably dictated by the different influences that have enlivened his youth, Jethro Tull and Grateful Dead in addition to the true country of Johnny Paycheck and Haggard. The 11 pieces also contain a tribute to these influences, our in fact engages in a very successful cover of Jethro Tull, Locomotive Breath, beautiful rock and fun. In short, not a trivial record but a country of very personal character. It starts with a nice dusty western ride with honky tonk sprays, Black Hills Boogie shows us a nice tangle of guitars and pedal-steel and shows that Luke has a beautiful voice, powerful and convincing. The next title-track is also a beautiful and lively country outlaw ballad, with a very old flavor but not at all trivial. Wonderful the next and melancholy ballad Good with a Gun, slow introspective and inspired, a really intense piece where the voice still says the law, at ease both in the happy and eventful moments and when he has to tell exciting stories. Still a beautiful western-flavored piece in the music, Maggie in the Morning, while in the text there is an original variation on sex and women, One of those songs that we imagine the author is singing from a bar bar while we have a chat between friends over a drink. There’s room for country rock-flavored, fast and funny songs like Half The Shit I’m Thinkin About (Doesn’t Matter), with his lyrics telling us that we care too much about things that don’t matter, and South Dakota, where the guitar scratches and the pedal-pedalsteel takes us into an atmosphere that knows a lot about Nashville in the ’70s but also for another wonderful ballad of love, For all the Tea in China that tells us about the importance of companionship and simplicity in true love, nothing sought after but only real life and heartfelt words. A truly vintage flavor, a journey back in time when feelings and not just music were better. The album ends with the long If You Think I’m Crazy, almost a song inspired by the great and long suites of the past as Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd, not musically but in general feeling, that epic flavor of slow songs, intense that grow like a climax and that musically are almost perfect, those pieces that we imagine at the end of the concert, endless and exciting. Perhaps my favorite song of a record itself really amazing. A late discovery, released now a year ago but absolutely to do if you love the talent in songwriting and that ability to entertain, excite, cry and laugh all enclosed in 11 beautiful pieces of quality music.
Good listening,
Trex Willer by http://www.ticinonotizie.it
(you can find original italian article at this link : https://www.ticinonotizie.it/ascoltati-da-noi-per-voi-by-trex-roads-luke-hendrickson-one-night-at-the-crystal-lounge-2020/?fbclid=IwAR1em-fayjsBBD_dNGv8HgQDc0N2Buaqeg-8ZszX1gDTIwKZoH3gexuz0jU )
