{"id":159,"date":"2012-04-02T15:09:56","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T15:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=159"},"modified":"2012-12-04T18:38:45","modified_gmt":"2012-12-04T18:38:45","slug":"another-dose-of-slippery-for-pegging-americana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=159","title":{"rendered":"Another dose of too-slippery-to-peg Americana"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Fb-Button\"\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>
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I’m rootin’ around again today but hey, it’s spring right?<\/p>\n

Actually\u00a0Mr. Bill and Ms. Kitty, proprietors of Caf\u00e9 Carpe in Fort Atkinson, gone done it again. They have a knack for digging up genuine borderline geniuses for their small corner of the roots music universe, with the creaky stage chair.<\/p>\n

Saturday night it was Malcolm Holcombe. Seeing as he’s North Carolina-born, he might\u2019ve evoked something of a historical namesake, one of those\u00a0original \u201chigh, lonesome sound\u201d wailers, Roscoe Holcomb.<\/p>\n

And this Holcombe\u2019s got more than a pipeful\u00a0of hillbilly when he talks. But he\u2019s sharp as a Bowie knife, and\u00a0he plays\u00a0more like a mix of Son House and Mississippi John Hurt. He says he listened to the WLS in Chicago as a youth, so he probably got a goodly exposure to the blues.\"\"<\/p>\n

https:\/\/a4.ec-images.myspacecdn.com\/images02\/136\/269dac2a73c04095a7456487941710c2\/l.jpg<\/a><\/p>\n

There are YouTube performances to be\u00a0found, but none I’ve seen do him justice. In the flesh, Holcombe possesses\u00a0an almost uncanny blend of brute intensity and backwoods charm.\u00a0 A long shank of hair swaying across from his forehead and the mutton chops give him a hint of Luke the Drifter, a Hank Williams alter ego. But he\u2019s a bona fide troubadour. \u00a0And when he shakes his head like a dog with something tasty\u00a0in its jaws, you flash on\u00a0the demons he admits to grappling with and overcome. He\u2019ll drawl through a few sentences, set laconic pauses. Then his whole body explodes, with a kicker, or a punch line. You realize it’s a punch line when he chuckles and your shock at the outburst fades as you comprehend what he just said. He slyly claims to be \u201cjust an average passive-aggressive, vanilla.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there’s nothing vanilla about this guy, when you hear him bashing and slashing at his acoustic guitar, but with all the manual dexterity of, say, a master of exquisite hardwood chopping.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m talking about an eccentric, steely finger-style guitar technique that perfectly mirrors his slingshot\/buckshot\u00a0vocal dynamics. Part of that style includes a way of\u00a0leaning on a chord change that hoists his rumbling\u00a0baritone into a lyrical curve.<\/p>\n

And the poetry of Holcomb\u2019s lyrics tends to sneak up on you: \u201cSilence is a loan, but nobody owes a dime. We ain’t supposed to last forever, and there’s a lot we ain’t supposed to know. Me, I don’t know nothin\u2019, but my baby loves a slow love song.\u201d I like how the romantic throw-away leavens the philosophizing.<\/p>\n

Or : \u201dI grew up hungry\u2026 I left her for the sea\u2026 Going to a place made for giving. Your children don’t belong.” That last line seems peculiar, until you realize he’s talking, with terse eloquence, about dying.<\/p>\n

You want blues wit? \u201cThose high-heeled women make a fool out of you; they follow you around, and make your socks roll up and down.\u201d<\/p>\n

I bet 98% of you never heard of this guy, but the now-proverbial 99% oughta hear him. Hell, the other 1% needs to. But imagining this guy sidling up to a one per-center is like a cottonmouth spiraling round\u00a0an elephant’s leg. He might toy with the notion, but knows he probably won’t draw blood, though you do think of fangs, sometimes, in his\u00a0beat-manic moments.<\/p>\n

But if Holcomb\u00a0feels like he’ll lose his hat at any moment, the deep inhale of his music feels like a lifetime fully lived, hard and tender.<\/p>\n

His latest album is \u201cTo Drink the Rain.\u201d He has a very respectable website at:http:\/\/www.malcolmholcombe.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m rootin’ around again today but hey, it’s spring right? Actually\u00a0Mr. Bill and Ms. Kitty, proprietors of Caf\u00e9 Carpe in Fort Atkinson, gone done it again. They have a knack for digging up genuine borderline geniuses for their small corner … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-2z","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions\/161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}