Carwreck Conversations

Description

Carwreck Conversations is the solo debut album by the American singer and songwriter Ralston Bowles, independently released on Soft Butter Records in 2004. The album was recorded and mixed by David Vaught with Marvin Etzioni of Lone Justice fame producing.

Ralston Bowles (a.k.a. Ralston) and his album, Carwreck Conversations, came to my attention after hearing the track, «Everybody But You», on the April/May Paste magazine compilation. «Everybody But You» is a blues-upped, countrified folk song. It rocks along while discovering someone who acts truly graciously (“Everybody wants something from me but you… Tell me please what did you find/ That made you want to treat me so kind”). These lyrics are laid over a great guitar jam-acoustic and electric.

Based on this track, then, I was surprised at how the album begins. Ralston uses Mark Heard’s «What Kind of Friend» with haunting precision. It is Ralston’s voice, an understated keyboard adding atmosphere, and a bass kick/brushes on snare. The song acts like an musical overture – calming the crowd, hushing the conversations, bringing all attention on the dimly lit stage. The music is about to begin. The song acts like a thematic overture – friendship, love, death, and the ability/inability to overcome our own selfish wills. Introspection is about to begin.

From here, Ralston slips right into the electric guitar, slips right into a Country-influenced Rock (with folk being not far behind). The second track, «You Already Knew That», is one of the carwreck conversations of the title. A song of an accident, a song of a relationship, it saunters but is fully accented by the electric guitar, adding dimension to the scene like flashing lights, firefighters using the jaws-of-life, and police officers setting out flares to mark the scene.

Ralston’s ability to write short stories in his songs places him next to James McMurtry. Both McMurtry and Ralston share that Country-influenced sound while it could easily be stripped away to leave you with a folk singer. These songs of Ralston are like short stories, not just because “they tell a little story.” A great short story leaves you wanting more, leaves you wondering from where the characters came and where they’re headed. You want another 5 stanzas, keep the groove going, tell me more about Mary Jean.

In «James Dean», Mary Jean is an Alzheimer’s patient, just waiting for her death. She wants to come quickly, to come like James Dean’s death that happened in an instant in a carwreck. (We’re back to our album title). “I’m not talking about no highway crash, not talking mercy death/ Just let me meet my Maker fast/ Let His name be my last breath.” The song drifts off – it’s an outstanding blues vamp – and I want more. The song drifts off – and I want to know what happened to Mary Jean.

Spiritual themes abound on this album. Invoking Mark Heard’s name brings about certain expectations (is Ralston a Christian singer/songwriter?). That’s an unfortunate question, because I think it is liable to distract you from seeing the outstanding spiritual questions and themes of grace on this album. As Christians have gotten more and more used to having contemporary Christian music, rock singers that have Jesus tattooed on their arms, I think we’ve also gotten more and more narrow in how we approach musicians. It’s like, “Well, he sings a Mark Heard song. That must make him a Christian.”

Singing someone’s song never makes someone a Christian. You are a Christian through believing in Jesus Christ alone. Besides, look at all of the singers who use Gospel tunes and spirituals, but Lord knows, they’re not Christians. Even Neal Diamond and Barbara Streisand did Christmas albums.

When you listen to Ralston’s Carwreck Conversations, put aside the question of his faith for a moment. Listen to these songs as they explore grace – a theme evidenced in many places (obvious place: the song called «Grace», less obvious place: the song «What About Me» which talks about first romances and true love). When you set aside the question of the singer’s faith, you see what is coming through the music. After all, that’s what he’s put out there for us to hear, mark, and inwardly digest.

Ralston gives us a lot to digest, and it tastes extremely good. Oh, I mean, some of it is bittersweet – themes of loneliness, lost love, lost respect – but who doesn’t like to grab a handful of bittersweet chocolate chips? Yet, bittersweet is an excellent way to explain God’s grace. We rejected God (bitter); He gives us the gift of His love (sweet). That offering of the gift of love comes through in many of Ralston’s short stories.

What makes Marvin Etzioni’s production most outstanding is how he used all of the instruments as ways to accent, punctuate, articulate, and stimulate these short stories to life. The embellishments, the grace notes, the entrances, the exits, they’re all there for a reason – to bring Ralston’s songs to three-dimensional life through sound. [Ben Squires, The Phantom Tollbooth, 10/31/2004]

Carwreck Conversations, Ralston Bowles’ debut, is a mature, thoughtful portrait of age, youth, and the place “where dreams and truth collide.” Along the way he aims more questions inward than at the outside world, without ever falling prey to easy rationalizations or self-pity. In the record’s stark opener, the late Mark Heard’s «What Kind of Friend», backed simply by a stark drumbeat, he asks, “What kind of friend am I?” It may not seem like much on the surface, but Ralston (who drops his surname) proceeds to show why this may be the toughest question of all. In his quest for “grace” (the title of one of the album’s best songs), there are obstacles: angry words, wants, needs, regrets, and plenty of gray areas, all of which are handled with humility, dignity, and a somewhat spiritual bent (think T-Bone Burnett). There’s also a subtlety and insight at work here that’s missing in the material of most singer/songwriters these days. Bowles steers clear of the big statements and grand gestures. Instead, he deals with the quiet complexities of the everyday. Even a song like «James Dean», which juxtaposes the icon’s live fast, die young legend and the final years of an Alzheimer’s patient (which in lesser hands could easily turn to melodramatic schlock), is handled masterfully. And while Carwreck Conversations may deal with some weighty issues, it never gets caught up in philosophical sludge. Musically, producer Marvin Etzioni brings both the warmth and understated edge inherent in Bowles’ music to the fore. His spare, sympathetic production suits the material perfectly, from the jagged electric guitar lines of «You Already Knew That» and the mandolin-driven folk-rock of «Grace» to the organ and pedal steel moodiness of «Fragile» and the lovely fingerpicked acoustic guitar and keyboard of the tender «What About Me». He brings space, tension, and even sweetness to the music, which become part of the songs, and not just window dressing. This is folk-rock in the best sense of the word. Complex yet simple, much of Carwreck Conversations can be summed up in the extended metaphor of the record’s closer, «Draper«»: “And I am but a draper in a room of wool/ Looking for a pattern feeling like a fool/ Trying to take this fabric, stretch it to the seams/ Trying to find what’s woven/ Underneath these tailored dreams.” [Brett Hartenbach, AMG]

> iTunes (https://music.apple.com/gb/album/carwreck-conversations/1435974477)

CD tracklist:

01. What Kind Of Friend
02. You Already Knew That
03. What About Me
04. Everybody But You
05. James Dean
06. Being Young
07. Fragile
08. Grace
09. One More Holiday
10. Draper

Note: Re-issued by Wildflower Records in 2007.

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