...For Those Who Don't Yet Know.
by Tommy Womack
If you missed the Dan Baird & Homemade Sin record when it came out last year, don’t feel bad. Millions missed it along with you.
The record is a snarling beast, every bit the equal of that great slab of guitar storm that was the Georgia Satellites’ self-titled debut, way back yonder in 1986.
That’s when Dan’s signature horny-young-lad anthem, “Keep Your Hands to Yourself," was on top of the charts, and he was bashing his trusty old Esquire through a 100-watt Marshall head running through a 4x12 cabinet onstage at the Reading festival, playing for 300,000 mud-covered European jocks who stopped raining piss-filled plastic cups onto the stage long enough to appreciate them.
It was great while it lasted. He chatted with Bob Dylan on a ferry; sat sweating with a towel wrapped around his privates in a posh hotel sauna, chewing the fat with a likewise clad Neil Young. Life is great when you have a hit record. And what a record; it’s quite possibly the last-ever hit single that was truly both rock, and roll.
Dan Baird is rock and roll. The same way Keith Richards is. It pours off of him. He is, with Keith, and Malcolm Young, one of the best rhythm guitarists in rock history, with a howling redneck yelp to match. Since the Satellites, he’s done two superb solo records and a succession of great ones with the Yayhoos, his band with Eric “Roscoe” Ambel, Terry Anderson & Keith Christopher.
But...Dan Baird & Warner Hodges of Jason & the Scorchers, in the same band? That’s not even a band: that’s porn. What Dan is to chunky rhythm and Chuck Berry lead, Warner is to crunchy rhythm and chew-your-face-off lead. I’ve written about Warner extensively for years and still don’t know if I’ve fully nailed what this intense and magnetic man conveys. Buy my book Cheese Chronicles sometime and read as I celebrate him at length. He’s simply one of the greatest rock guitarists – and showmen – of all time.
Keith Christopher is on bass, because Dan wouldn’t have it any other way; and it’s a longtime mate from the original Georgia Satellites, Mauro Magellan, on the drums, anchoring the beat as fully as he ever did in times of yore. (Mauro is one of the few drummers who can be realistically compared to John Bonham when it comes to sheer oomph.)
The songs are litanies of survival, tales of men abandoned, or who have abandoned others. Dan’s trademark high-yeller cigarette holler punches holes in the air on “Crooked Smile” and “Runnin’ Outta Time." “Two For Tuesday” triumphantly captures a rambler who’s had enough of that woman, tosses his cell phone in the trash at the Texaco and hits the road, knowing a fifty-year-old can stick his middle finger just as far up in the air as any young buck, and then some. “Just Can’t Wait” swaggers with a great stuttering guitar pulse. Warner gets in some damn straight vocal turns on “I Can Do Without You." And if you don’t like “Champagne Sparkle," you just don’t like guitar rock. That one goes to a wonderful place somewhere between Foghat and Badfinger.
But is it really as good as that first Georgia Satellites album, or Lost & Found by the Scorchers? Well...actually, yes, it is!
Now, it won’t make you 19 again, sucking face at the Sigma Nu house. It’s not going to work miracles; it’s just great rock and roll. That’s all it ever has been; and if you’re too young to remember those old glory days anyhow, all the better. Let this platter be you’re first time buzz.
In the interest of disclosure, sure, I helped write a few of the songs. But if I hadn’t had anything to do with this record, I’d maybe wax even more superlative than I already have. These guys aren’t just collaborators of mine, they’re heroes. I rattled the walls of an apartment in Kentucky 25 years ago listening to these guys night after night. I still pinch myself that I know them.
We’re getting ready to write songs for their second record. And that makes me happy because in today’s economic climate you’ve just got to be glad there’s going to BE a second record. In the meantime, you need to buy that first one, Dan Baird & Homemade Sin, right now. You’re a click or two away from owning it. It’s Bottlerockets great, Skynyrd great, the best Bad Company record ever made. Carpe the diem. You’ll dig it. I promise.
-Tommy
When we invited him onto the Music Fog Showcase at SXSW in Austin last year, he was on the heels of a successful tour with Joan Osborne and had recently released an EP called Backstage at Bonnaroo. We also knew that he was about to record a new project with Charlie Sexton producing. Regardless, it was his voice that earned him a spot on the same stage that day as Ray Bonneville, Chuck Mead, Jason Eady, and Ben Kweller.
