Honeysuckle Dog was a lost slice of country soul, an album buried by it’s label’s demise in 1973 and now released fully for the first time, stepping bewildered and blinking into the world of 2005. And it fits, kicking off its shoes and settling on a porch somewhere in Alt Country land.
Chris Smither, born and raised in New Orleans, cut his teeth on the Cambridge, Mass. folk scene where he was discovered by producer Michael Cuscuna, resulting in a set of albums of which this is the third, and within the twelve songs here, there are glimpses of two sides to the artist. On songs like the title track and Sunshine Lady, a plethora of musicians (from Dr. John to Cissy Houston) have helped to create slow but sunny country pop songs – imagine the Dukes of Hazzard narrowly evading capture by Boss Hogg’s minions and switching on their car radio – I’d like to think they’d be listening to Smither as they disappear behind the end credits.
The other side to Smither is a more intriguing, stripped down set of songs that highlight not only his delicate guitar playing but the blues-poetry of his voice and lyrics.
The album’s opener, ‘Sunshine Lady’ has slide guitar, barbershop-tight harmonies and jazz-tinged progressions featherbedding some free-spirited vocals and swooping and trilling flute.
‘Tribute to Mississippi John Hurt’ and ‘Rattlesnake Preacher’ are sweetly laidback bluegrass gems that showcase Smither’s hypnotic fretwork.
An unexpected highlight of the album is a cover of Randy Newman’s ‘Guilty’, an untypically (by Newman’s standards) story of self-destruction and regret, a slow tempo two minutes of staggering guitar and deadpan vocal delivery.
Smither’s own ‘Rosalie’ and Ron Davies’ classic ‘It Ain’t Easy’ are glorious bar room floor fillers and ‘Lonely Time’ has the jingle jangle bounce that indie bands like The Zutons aspire to, shot through with shades of Nilsson – a combination that makes more sense when heard through speakers than when written down!
The darker, more intimate side of Smither’s music comes to the fore in two tracks tucked away near the end of the album, and it is this road less traveled that shows his writing skills at his most mysterious and magical. ‘Homunculus’ could be a more bassier Nick Cave, complete with oblique, cloud-gazing lyrics and vocal and guitar as intertwined as sinew and muscle. ‘Braden River’ is a softly soaring hymn to life, wrapped inside the metaphor of dirty, churning, ever flowing currents.
As shiny and melodic as the next track ‘Steel Guitar’ is, it feels misplaced on the album as it takes a minute for the brain to disengage from the beauty of the preceding two songs.
The final track and the longest is ‘Jailhouse Blues’. The brutal majesty of the guitar and the dirty-holy vocals flowing beneath howling harmonica provide another tantalizing glimpse of a darker, richer side to Smither’s talents.
A lot of tracks from Honeysuckle Dog have been rerecorded over the past 30 years but here they all are in their original forms and despite the long wait to be released, the album has enough innocence and integrity to shine now as much as they ever might have done, and while this album progresses from afternoon sunshine to gathering dusk, it may well be the blue-black evening that holds listeners most in thrall.