Currently resident in New Zealand, Tom Rodwell is a Brit with a complicated history as a session musician (Lonnie Holley, Don McGlashan & various avant-Jazz projects) and as a support artist for Otis Taylor, Leon Russell, Tedeschi/Trucks and many others.
As a songwriter he has an utterly strange way of putting disconnected lines together to make the stories in his songs and claims that “All the clues to a song are contained in the first bars of a primitive rhythm guitar part. It’s my job to inhabit that space and gradually tease the rest out”.
It creates an intense and dense sound and I could hear influences ranging from Jack Bruce, David Byrne and Pete Brown all through the album.
The opening track, ‘Don’t Be A Fugitive All Your Life’ has a slow plodding rhythm and it brought to mind a chain gang or a cotton picking Blues. It takes a few listens to get into the image of a leader instructing his charges to straighten up and get their lives right, and it works, at least in part, because the little extraneous noises bring the image into three dimensions.
Elsewhere, he is supported by a couple from the New Zealand school of free jazz – Chris O’Connor & Jeff Henderson – both superb musicians but with a unique take on percussion that takes ‘Touch Me Like A Teddybear’ well away from the North Mississippi Blues it promises to be, Rodwell’s guitar playing a very different tune to his lyrics. The whole thing should be an ungodly mess, but it holds together brilliantly.
Every track has its own charms and the album draws you in to listen time and again, incredulous at what you heard and trying to unpick it, to unravel the way it is knitted together.
It was all recorded on tape, using original analog machines that give the sound an added warmth and that just adds to the mixture.
