Georgia, home of great music and great musicians.
Channing Wilson comes from a state famous for southern rock and peaches, but gentlemen for some time should also be recognized as the state where one of the greatest country singer-songwriters was born, the real one, for people who suffer, work and carry on.
The mystery in these years, in which Wilson wrote for other artists songs that have had an incredible success (Luke Combs, Jason Eady, Travis Tritt…), has always been because never an artist of this caliber was not one of the most known in the United States.
Wilson has been in the music business of Nashville for more than 10 years, has shared the stage with legendary artists such as Billy Joe Shaver, Steve Earle, Chris Knight. Has learned from one of the greatest songwriters ever passed on our Earth: Guy Clark.
He learned, he gained experience and today he finally debuts with this Dead Man and gives us a manifesto, a Lonely Planet guide on country, one that descends from the great ones, that of Johnny Cash, Billy Joe Shaver, Waylon Jennings and Guy Clark.
To guide him on this journey through the hard life, the cheap bars and the smuggled whiskey, there is one of the magicians of the console: Dave Cobb, a kind of Midas King of the production.
What Dave takes between his hands and ears is rarely negligible. If Cobb decides to produce you, to invest his work in you: trust you’re special, even if the world doesn’t know it yet.
10 pieces of disarming sincerity. You won’t find love songs on the radio, but if you want to find out what makes country music so special, you have to listen to it and enjoy its poems.
Channing doesn’t come from a family of musicians, he wasn’t initiated into art as a child, he just learned how to work hard and always believe in it. But after knowing the music of the great Clark at 25, he had decided he would become a musician. He would do that for a living. Never was a decision wiser and luckier for music.
Just start the first song, Drink That Song, to understand that Wilson has the stigmata of the great songwriter, guitar just mentioned, dust on the boards of a saloon and a voice made to tell great stories. It’s what they called outlaw country, it takes soul like old Waylon’s songs and the final solo is a jewel.
Beer for Breakfast is melancholy, it is loneliness, the country that tells stories of losers and the desire to forget. Places that tear apart the soul and hold the stomach. Wilson’s voice was born for songs like this and Cobb’s production leaves her free to take you and move you.
The dust and the western taste, Blues Comin’ On is a guitar that whips the air, is a powerful and incisive voice that gives a crazy performance, is a song that could come from a great bluesman: the blues meets the country and comes out a piece damn sincere and well written and strong character.
When young men decided to take country and twist it with rock and blues influences, they were called Outlaws: so Channing Wilson is fully entitled one of them.
Wonderful ballad Sunday Morning Blues, a veiled dedication to the music and the feeling that the great Kris Kristofferson has given to the world. If you love country music you know that sometimes you have to travel in sad, depressing stories, but in which you can identify and as a catharsis with the author overcome these lonely and sad moments. Well, that’s the song.
Ol’ Dog comes to shake the environment, the guitar embroiders riffs from the exciting groove, but the harmonica does not leave the scene and the almost angry voice sings us about how much the frustration of not being able to achieve what you think you deserve. Here the country oscillates between the blues and rock as in the golden years, the music is electric and live will surely unleash the audience and fans of the great Creed Fisher will soon discover it on some dates where Channing will be the opener.
Dead Man Walking is music without frills, rhythmic and soul country blues, a western wind blows and not even the text takes prisoners. We talk about anxiety and wounds in the soul that can not be medicated, are not easy topics or about which to dance, but we would not want to be in another place if not listening to a great sad and hard song.
There is room for love of course, but in Crazy Over You love is crazyness, sweetness yes, but unconventional.
Did you want to dance? Here’s the wonderful Gettin’ Outta My Mind, an old-fashioned honky tonk that would make Billy Joe Shaver proud. Same groove, same irony and then the band gives us some delicious solos and an over the top performance.
A record that as I told you could become a guide to start the not accustomed to country music: melancholy, sad, angry and ironic. A music that takes the soul and shakes it now with a glass of whiskey, now with the dust of a lonely ride in the desert, between loves that go and the desire to have more.
The question of why Channing Wilson is not considered one of the greatest songwriters of this era does not yet have an answer, but certainly this record increases the reasons why it should be without any doubt. If you wanna country, you’ve got it.
Good listening,
Claudio Trezzani by http://www.ticinonotizie.it
(you can find original italian article at this link: https://www.ticinonotizie.it/channing-wilson-dead-man-2023-by-trex-roads/)
