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Jesse & Noah Talk About Southern Usonia |
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In an alternate reality Jesse & Noah’s (Bellamy) album
Southern Usonia would be
topping the charts in America or at least some of the songs would be,
because the lyrics are great, but we have come to expect that of this
duo, and there are some great guitar solos that make your ears perk up.
It just so happens that the album title plays to that alternate reality.
Jesse explains, “It could refer to the American South in an alternate
reality.” To
which Noah adds, “Usonia is an archaic term for the United States that
was favored by Frank Lloyd Wright and some other great thinkers of his
day. Everyone in Americana
was making “identity” albums. It plays with that idea by coming from a
place that doesn’t exist. It’s an imaginary identity album!” The ten
track album opens with “This Town Was Built On Heartbreak Songs,” which
pays homage to Nashville where both Jesse and Noah live. The
companion music video has cameo appearances in the audience
by some storied musicians, singers and songwriters. Noah
explains, “We wanted people with some history behind them. We put the
concept out there and ended up with a group of legends with a deep
history in Nashville (such as), Tanya Tucker, Deborah Allen, T. G.
Sheppard, Ronnie McDowell, and (of course) the Bellamy Brothers (David
Bellamy is the father of Jesse and Noah and Howard is their uncle).” Jesse
says, “We knew that we wanted to do a video, but ultimately we didn’t
know what form it would take. Our friends at the publicity firm Webster
& Associates were kind enough to help us coordinate with some of the
country legends on their roster. To work with cinematographer Joshua
Black Wilkins had been on our to do list for a long time as well, so
this was a perfect opportunity to collaborate with him.
Nashville Palace was chosen as the location for sentimental reasons,
because we used to go there with our grandmother when we'd visit
Nashville while growing up.” The
song talks about just what the title suggests the type of music that
served as Music City’s foundation, songs about heartbreak. The lyrics
talk about the personalities that defined other cities such as Los
Angeles, Memphis and New York.
Noah talks about what inspired the song, “A few years ago Nashville
started really changing a lot. I wanted to create a portrait of the
version of it that I knew. One of the free TV stations was showing a
bunch of old noir films. They generally take place in New York, L. A.,
or San Francisco and they have these great voice-over narrations with a
certain style and rhythm. That’s where the spirit of the song comes
from.”
Jesse continues talking about the song, “L.A. and New York have other
facets of the entertainment industry to divide up the energy, but
Nashville has always been more specifically a “song town.”
A really fun song on Southern Usonia is the second song, “Austin Keeps
Me Weird.”
Noah says, “Austin’s motto is “keep Austin weird.” I liked the idea that
if you didn’t quite fit in with the rest of Texas, you could go to
Austin. It’s fun to get the mandolin out for this one when we play it
live.”
“A House Called Hungry Bend,” is stunning in its beauty and spectacular,
because of the instrumentals. More than any other song on the album or
in recent memory from this duo this song rocks out. Noah is spectacular
on the guitar, including a scintillating solo and he also plays the
mandolin. This may also be the best vocal performance by Jesse in the
decade or so that Riveting Riffs Magazine has been associated with Jesse
& Noah. “I
carried the idea around for years.
I use to make frequent visits to Cedar Key in the Big Bend area
of Florida and in some of the art galleries I started to notice multiple
paintings of the same house. At some point I found out the name of the
house was Hungry Bend and I was eventually directed to the actual house.
I remember thinking I wanted to make the song equivalent of those
paintings so that was when it first started. I tried to write it several
times over the years but nothing really stuck. When we were working on
material for this record we just started jamming on what would become
the chord changes and some of the lyrics I had been working on, off and
on, for years seemed to fit and then I finished it from there,” says
Jesse. Noah
adds, “It’s a very Florida song with a sixties Folk-Rock feel to it. I
played a Fender Jazzmaster on it because I thought it was a less obvious
choice. There are lots of noises and harmonics you can get out of that
guitar, because the strings are stretched behind the bridge. I tried to
take advantage of that.” The
meandering “Pushing Off To Oblivion,” features understated vocals by
Jesse and the instrumentals are nostalgic, reminding one of classic Rock
songs from yesteryear. While the vocals create a more reflective mood
they are juxtaposed to guitar work by Noah that injects an energetic
vibe into the song, including a fabulous solo. Noah
says, “This song was mainly written by Jesse as country song with a
David Bowie / Marc Bolan twist to it. Bowie’s original lead guitarist
was a guy named Mick Ronson. I tried to capture a little of his style in
the guitar solo. I used a Uni-Vibe effect pedal, which gives things an
unmistakably seventies sound.”
Explaining the mood of the song, Jesse says, “I was thinking of
Tennyson's portrayal of Ulysses, old and restless at home and longing to
return to the journey.
Originally I thought the song might be part of a bigger concept I could
develop like a musical or a suite or something and some of the lyrics I
worked on for that became "Pushing My Will," another track on the
album.” For
those music fans looking for a true blue Country music album you are not
going to find it with Southern
Usonia, because this collection of very good songs features a little
bit of everything from Rock, to Americana and Country. Few of the songs
can be pigeonholed as belonging to one distinct genre and that is a good
thing. Noah says the diversity of the album is one of the things he
really likes. “We
didn't really know where this one (Southern
Usonia) was going when we started, but we just followed it and the
album became exactly what it needed to be,” says Jesse.
Noah plays nine different instruments on the record and Jesse plays
rhythm guitar. Jesse is the lead singer, with Noah providing background
vocals. As for the other musicians who appear on the album, the drummer
and percussionist is Herschel VanDyke, Sambo Moncivaiz plays bass for
the song “Man Without A Country,” and Jim Heep plays pedal steel guitar
on the opening song, “This Song Was Built On Heartbreak Songs.”
“Herschel’s been our drummer for the past three years or so. We
initially worked out most of these songs in jam sessions with him. He’s
become a big part of our sound. We’d been playing with a lot of
different bassists over those three years and I ended up playing most of
the bass on the album, but I knew that track (“Man Without A Country”)
needed something different. Sambo is working with us on the next record
on the technical side, but he will probably end up playing on a few
tracks as well. Jim Heep is in our dad’s band (The Bellamy Brothers). We
knew “This Town Was Built On Heartbreak Songs,” was going to need steel,
and it had to be the right kind of steel. He is great at getting that
classic country sound,” says Noah.
“Unrealized,” is a beautiful song that one can easily imagine being
arranged for an orchestral setting with strings playing a prominent
role. This is a beautiful song. There is no other way to describe it.
“Unrealized,” has great crossover potential. “For a
while Jesse had this idea for song with a Brazilian jazz samba flavor.
Until we found Herschel, we never had a drummer who could play it
correctly. Nashville drummers don’t play sambas or bossa novas that
often. After we cut the track, Jesse wrote several different versions of
the lyrics. It probably took longer to write the lyrics than any song
we’ve ever done. It’s tricky, because Brazilian music is meant to be in
Portuguese and the sounds of the words are really more important than
the literal content. I came up with some of lyrics after the guitar
solo, with some inspiration from a line in Terry Gilliam’s film
Brazil. It ended up filling
in an empty space and completing the song,” says Noah. Jesse
provides further insights concerning the song “Unrealized,” “I wrote
several sets of lyrics and at one point I even thought it might be an
instrumental. As Noah said, with this track it felt particularly
important to go with what the groove suggested the lyrics should be.” Southern Usonia by Jesse & Noah is a fabulous album and this collection of songs offers the listener many different flavors, but always sounding cohesive. If you enjoy superb instrumentals, very good vocals and excellent songwriting then it would serve you well to purchase a copy of this outstanding album.
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