Ramsay Midwood
Shootout at the OK Chinese Restaurant (Vanguard)Too often these days, “Americana” means tepid singer-songwriters and middle-of-the-road alt.country material. This Midwood fella, a recent River City transplant, hews a lot closer to what the term ought to mean. He cites as his touchstones Mississippi John Hurt, Dock Boggs, Woody Guthrie, and Bob Dylan, and that’s what comes through loud and clear on Shootout. That is, if you filtered those old-timers through Tom Waits or even Nick Cave and maybe Steve Earle minus his latter-day preachiness. Tunes like “Mohawk River” and “Waynesboro” have a swampy languidness to them that recalls the days in the South before air conditioning was commonplace and it was an effort to get anything done. Midwood possesses a mush-mouth delivery that evokes his mentors and wraps around the bluesy arrangements of his songs perfectly. “Grass’ll Grow,” for example, strings together Midwestern articles of faith in stream-of-consciousness verse; it’s no surprise Midwood played Tom Joad and Floyd Knowles both in a stage production of The Grapes of Wrath. It’s not easy to take bits and pieces of American roots music from the pre-WWII days and drag it into the 21st century; tougher still to make it sound original and relevant today. Shootout at the OK Chinese Restaurant is music to play on the back porch as the sun goes down and the dead Chevy truck rusts its way back to the elements.
This article appears in November 1 • 2002.