Description
Lead On, Kindly Light & This World & One More is a 23-track double-album by the American singer and songwriter Bill Mallonee of Vigilantes of Love fame, self-released by Mallonee in February 2020.
What I’ve been up to:
2018 was an incredibly fruitful year for my work; I wrote nearly 100 new songs; All of these songs have “shown up” over the last 12 months, so it’s time give some of them a decent introduction, fanfare and birthday!The album: “Lead On, Kindly Light” & “This World & One More”
Call it “Spirit-Rock.” Americana rock & roll bleeding with that rugged “faith that gets ya’ through the night.” While not specifically hymnody the album is declarative, but NEVER preachy, NEVER sectarian, NEVER an exclusive club.” The Grace and The Love of God are there for everyone.The way I see it?
I believe these songs are suffused with the themes of what made all the down and out/hard-luck country albums that struggled with personal Light and the Darkness memorable. This is the human dilemma. This is common to all of us. We are all “living in the same skin.”“Lead On Kindly Light” & “This World & One More” are saturated with those deep and sonorous elements of all that makes the such hymns of yesteryear timeless and inspiring. And I hope it does so without departing one bit from the Americana-soul drenched genre I so dearly love.
– Bill Mallonee
At this point, it’s nearly impossible to speak of any one album from singer/songwriter Bill Mallonee in isolation. His website lists 86 separate titles available for digital download all created over the course of his 30+ year career, some dating back to his first decade as leader and creative force behind the band, Vigilantes of Love. Growing in the shadows of R.E.M. in Athens, GA, Mallonee’s band got early nods from critics for Killing Floor (’92), which benefitted from having R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and the late Mark Heard serving up production, earning VoL an invitation to perform at the Cornerstone Festival. But Mallonee was never an easy fit in the Christian-oriented music marketplace, although VoL’s Audible Sigh was released by True Tunes prior to its mainstream release on Compass Records, and the band shared a co-billed “Double Cure” tour with another band on the fringes of the Christian marketplace, Over the Rhine.
Nearly three decades later, Mallonee continues to wear his heart and mind on his sleeve, pouring his colorful inner life into songs that take seriously the vagaries of everyday life while weaving together narratives that seek an ultimate meaning and purpose for all we do to survive on this small rotating blue globe. On his latest double disc, Lead On, Kindly Light and This World & One More, Mallonee takes in the views from the high desert of New Mexico, as well as the larger world, filled with beauty and anxiety that invades even the most desolate locations in this ever-connected inter-webbed world.
As necessity continues to spawn invention, Mallonee has refined and adapted his approach over his long and well documented career as a singer/songwriter. Responding to the ever-changing music business world as he went, has meant going solo when it became too expensive for him to continue on as a band, and creating the experience of a full band in the studio even if he had to play all the instruments himself. On Lead On… / This World, we hear the culmination of years of experience balancing the artistic passion of his earliest days and the maturing pragmatism of an elder statesman. He sings about it directly in «Old Cow-Puncher». “This land is littered with heart-break & blues/ No one knows quite like you… This is what happens when you answer the call/ with a guitar & a suitcase full of cowboy songs/ It’ll take your whole life long.”
In «Rev. Casey», which celebrates a preacher with “insights into things like God & Man & Grace,” Mallonee sings that “There are three things that I know that are good for the soul/ One is Jesus & the other two are reverb & tremolo/ One makes you clean and one will make you whole.”
Back in those VoL days, Mallonee’s mix of influences – from the folk of Bob Dylan and Woody Gutherie to classic rock and the immediacy and energy of punk – produced edgier, alternative rock. His melodies often seemed to race to fit in all the syllables of a single phrase. More recently he has settled into more of a groove-based Americana sound, with obvious connections to all that has gone before. Here, alone with his own musical ideas in the high country, Mallonee is less rushed; more at ease and confident. Since 2011’s The Power & The Glory, his songwriting balances a folk singer’s commitment to storytelling and poetic language with a desire to create music that leaves a mark, a melody or guitar riff that hangs in your memory and brings you back again and again. Mallonee’s growth as a musician in the last decade has focused on improving his ability to create a full band sound while playing each instrument individually in the recording process, something that has come together with strong results on 2017’s The Rags of Absence and last year’s Forest Full of Wolves.
Lead On… feels familiar in that regard, like a continuation of his present creative journey. On the opening track, «The Candle’s Always Burning Down (From Both Ends)», the jangly guitars and folk pop harmony vocals take what could have been a lament and turn it into a joyful invitation: “There’s a party tonight with a fella I’m told/ He turns water to wine and hearts to gold.” There’s more great pop melodies at the heart of «Agua Es La Vida», while stalwart rockers like «Broken Arrow» and the blues-leaning «Albeit Of a Different Kind», (which features some excellent harmonica playing by Mallonee,) are more common. The longer songs clock in between 4 and a half and six minutes and leave lots of time for Mallonee to display his improved skills on electric guitar, often bouncing off the lines he’s played on lap steel. (And importantly, there’s lots of room for reverb and tremolo.)
Lead On Kindly Light is another solid effort from Mallonee, a noteworthy addition to his already impressive, and exhaustive catalog. If that was all he gave us here at the beginning of 2020, surely that would be more than enough. But, he takes it up a notch on the second disc, This World & One More, where the songs are richer, fuller, more groove oriented, the solos more expressive. The tone and flavor remains familiar, of course. The country-leaning «Baby, It’s A World Of Hurt (Seen Through a Veil of Tears)», is a celebration of intertwined guitars with a spunky bass line that goes against the very grain of the grieving lyric. There’s even a Beatlesque “yeah, yeah, yeah” added in for good measure. It may seem counter-intuitive to sing such a sad song in such a bright, up-tempo way, but that’s the song’s subversive genius. The hook turns this lament into a party anthem and acts like sugar to its medicine; we sing along, while refusing to pretend that life is any easier than we all know it to be.
«Shake Down» is another particularly bright spot on an album that sees life’s hurts for what they are: “Everything is broken… everyone I know carries a heavy heart.” But the music refuses to relent. There’s a snap and a crispness in the guitars, the harmony vocals, and the steady beat of the drum. The whole thing suggests hope and promise through a sound that is rich with possibility. If it’s a given that life is hard, we find comfort then in the “Love that is left you; the path that gets you home,” («A Borrowing of Bones»). We may have to “walk it lonely” from time to time, because “there are no guarantees,” but Mallonee has «Travelin’ Advices»: “Never be ashamed to get down on your knees/ Don’t let that brutish world steal your faith,” and “Through every losing streak you gotta learn to preach that sermon about Mercy to yourself.”
So, on this journey through this life, we’re always looking for companions. Maybe it’s a «Place Off the Highway». Whether it’s a gathering of a family of the Saints or a friendly tavern where everyone knows your name, “Where everyone can be saved.” Or maybe it’s that one friend or lover who will always be there, waiting when you come «Crawling Back to You». Either way, we’ve got This World & One More, so Lead On, Kindly Light. Bill Mallonee and his “studio band” (which does include some lovely backing vocals by his wife and compatriot Muriah Rose,) gives us one more soundtrack that will carry us through to where we need to be. [Brian Quincy Newcomb, True Tunes, January 2020]
2CD tracklist:
Disc One – Lead On, Kindly Light
1.01 The Candle’s Always Burning Down (From Both Ends) – 6:01
1.02 You Old Cow-Puncher – 4:47
1.03 Broken Arrow – 6:12
1.04 Rev. Casey – 3:28
1.05 Fool’s Gold Requiem – 5:38
1.06 El Agua Es La Vida – 4:35
1.07 The Light Within – 4:44
1.08 I Still Hear Your Voice – 4:48
1.09 Boots, Badges & Shootin’ Irons – 5:44
1.10 Albeit Of A Different Kind – 5:33
1.11 Lead On, Kindly Light – 5:06
1.12 (It’s Gonna Be) A Long Ride Home – 3:57
Disc Two – This World & One More
2.01 I Can See Their Ranks Are Thinning – 5:08
2.02 A Borrowing Of Bones – 5:51
2.03 When The Walls Came Down – 4:58
2.04 Shake Down – 6:02
2.05 Place Off The Highway – 6:08
2.06 Always Crawling Back To You – 5:57
2.07 A World Of Hurt (Seen Through A Veil Of Tears) – 6:29
2.08 Travelin’ Advices – 4:21
2.09 Into The Night – 5:16
2.10 This World & One More – 5:30
2.11 Heart Full Of Weeds – 6:29
Note: Special Thanks to cover artist & designer, national treasure, folk-artist & musicologist Kreg Yingst. Available at bandcamp: https://billmalloneemusic.bandcamp.com/album/lead-on-kindly-light-this-world-one-more-the-new-23-song-double-cd
For starters, there’s a lot a material here. 23 new songs, in fact. I think it might well be my first “head-phone” album. The album has that kind of sonic adventuresome-ness about it. However you choose to hear it, I hope you’ll take the time to dig in and listen; and that the experience will bring you as much joy as the joy I had in making and recording these songs.
Like most of my songs, they tend to be full of autobiographical references, some cleverly disguised, some just the raw data of the journey; I tend to chase every new musical idea that I forge; Another 50 or so song ideas “showed up” during the year; Of course, I saved them all.
The writing, recording , mixing and mastering of these two albums started over a year ago. I’ve spent more time on these songs than any previous album. And Life got dark. (In many ways it hasn’t let up.) Frighteningly uncertain. The album became a path to madness on some days… and salvation on others. I kid you not.
Life, with it’s sometimes crushing demands and penchant for the unexpected, spoke loud and long during this year. But, ultimately it was such trials & tribulations that fueled this collection of songs. “Nothin’s ever wasted.”
I will say this: It’s been a joy for my wife, Muriah and I, to live out here in the high deserts of New Mexico for the last 10 years. To be able to spend almost every waking hour with one’s beloved is a grace. I am ever smitten. It was also fun to continue to explore the wonders of the electric guitar. You’ll find there are lots of “conversations” going between vocals, guitars, lap steels and acoustic instruments.
Lyrics and message are central in what I try to do; Even if they’re just sermons to myself, I must speak it; Not much in the way of agendas. Reality is a coin that must be turned over many times and scrutinized before one should make pronouncements; And even then? Let Compassion and Grace be the rules of that game.
I’m a believer in the inner spirit seeking some sort of disclosure and liberation; All of us (artist or not) journey to find the nomenclature to give birth to the better part of ourselves that lives just a scratch below our skin; and then nurture it in it’s first baby-steps.
When applied to songwriting? I always try to “let go and let the Song” dictate where it wants to go; Perhaps, I’m lazy in that regard. If a song doesn’t give itself up pretty fast I very rarely chase it down and try to impose “terms of peace” that on it that it won’t accept.
Not unlike the “concept records” of the ‘late 60’s /early 70’s, these two albums, were built around a certain immediacy and visceral organicity; Learn the arrangement and push “record” was the modus operandi; It’s very groove based, with an unkempt-ness bordering on incorrigible on many of the tracks. Instruments swagger in and out; Sonic “rules” get broken left and right; If it sounded good on the first pass, the track stayed; “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Lastly? The band stretches out on many outros in almost epic fashion; It’s become one of my favorite aspects of this collection; Reverbs enter, drench and fade away; over drives turn liquid; woolly guitar melodies emerge, fracture and mutate.
In the end? I am over-joyed with the outcome.
It was all big fun.Joy on the Journey,
Bill Mallonee
Fall/Winter 2019
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.