Paul Christian’s That’s Everything, besides being a great rock record with power-pop hooks and a folky chaser, is just one of those albums purchased on a Friday night whim that becomes a pretty great (albeit vinyl!) secret treasure that we music collectors hold in a poker hand that will never win in Grammy game of kings, queens, the occasional ace, and four of any look-a-like cards.
But that’s all right.
Now, to get all sacred about rock music, the great Garth Hudson (of the Band fame!) once said, “You must, after the age of 33, continue to do a certain type of work, or else go into the shoe business. Forget music or it’ll turn into hatred, or reiteration, redundancy – and, in many cases, death.”
Any number of musical casualties certainly have sung this mantra. After all, as Pete Townshend once wrote, “I hope I die before I get old.” Neil Young sang, “I’d rather burn out than to fade away.” And of course (to get all sacred about history!), Patrick Henry, long ago, proclaimed: “Give me liberty or give me death.”
That’s all very sad and true, but sometimes rock ‘n’ roll holds onto an unrhymed melody, a bit of swagger, and a firestorm that scorches a keyboard like Jerry Lee Lewis, all of which allow a very few to (as William Blake once wrote) “persist in their folly” and “become wise.”
A bit of history: Paul Christian caught the rock fever when he was 13, played in local Chicago bar bands, got married, had kids, formed a band with his daughter on clarinet/sax and his son and his son on guitar. Then, after too many years, he felt the urge to make a few records. His one-man band American Dream was released in 2018 and threw a barbed dart into Midwestern American heartland mythology. Fans of Bruce Springsteen, Arlo Guthrie, early R.E.M., Bob Dylan, and (yikes!) the Beatles will enjoy the vibes in these classic-rock grooves.
And now to the second record, 2020’s That’s Everything. It’s still classic rock one-man band stuff — with, perhaps, a nod toward country and folk. The title tune rolls down a melodic highway with the same pulse as the Eagles’ “Take It Easy” or Brewer and Shipley’s “One Toke Over the Line.”
As my friend, Kilda Defnut, often says, “America is a crazy place to live, but it’s always a convenient excuse for taking a nice car ride in the countryside.”
Just a note: Paul Christian’s guitar work is sublime and his drumming is, to quote (the great) Levon Helm, the “loosey goosey” style like (the equally great) Richard Manuel played on “Rag Mama Rag.”
There’s more: “Just a Dream” is a barrelhouse tune that rumbles and tumbles with a vintage rock ‘n’ roll vinyl (and very incessant) groove – like, perhaps, Dylan’s “Tombstone Blues” on his Highway 61 Revisited album. Then, the percussive driven “Nobody’s Listening” stretches the enunciated pulse and, quite frankly, sounds like a really great R.E.M. unreleased song that just happens to add a really wonderful and melodic guitar solo!
“Memphis Tonight” just pumps country blood into pop/soul music, with the addition of Julie Chatman on vocals. And “It Comes from Us All” again mines the great Michael Stipe/R.E.M. Southern-rock fault line, pulsing with a clever guitar, urgent chorus, melodic percussion, and then exploding into tough helium. In total contrast, “Waiting for My Turn” is a banjo-fueled folky tune that is always “laughing in the sunshine” and echoes the sound of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, circa their Uncle Charlie and His Dog Teddy album.
The acoustically stummed “The Best Day of My Life” is simple, extremely sad – and then, thankfully, through the beauty of “two song birds,” a soft sort of redemption is found. It’s a nice tune.
Just a thought, but back in the mid-’70s, when prog rock (which I love!) graced our turntables with side-long epics (which I really loved!) like Yes’s double disc Tales from Topographic Oceans, there was a nagging (and ever-enticing) rumor of perfect pop/rock records that never received proper distribution but were well worth searching for in the used and cut-out racks. True story: I found Big Star’s first album in a dumpy store called in Records on the Nile, in St. Paul, Minn. Yeah, it had that lovely glossy cover that looked like a British import!
There were other bands like Crabby Appleton, the Wackers, and (my beloved) Good Rats. Well, That’s Everything, despite its recent release, would well have rested next to those poor-selling, impossible-to-find and now deemed classic albums found in discarded cut-out bins in Milwaukee’s Dirty Jack’s Record Racks.
But there is more great music: “Bicycle Messenger” is pop-punk with Elvis Costello’s “pump it up” beat. Then, (oh my!) “The Boy” get gossamer complex with yet another Michael Stipe-like vocal and patiently evokes an almost-mythical lyric that lurches into a sublime guitar solo (both electric and acoustic) which gets really into some wondrous Crazy Horse guitar tension that is, quite simply, a thing of heavy-woven beauty.
“Speak Now” plows into a much more melodic groove, with the breezy Rickenbacker guitar sound ala Roger McGuinn or Peter Buck. Then, “Worn Answers” wanders into the quick fire and funky backstreet vibe of Steve Miller (or, perhaps Lynyrd Skynyrd) that simply says, framed by yet another great line of demarcation guitar solo, we “want answers” — which is a decent rock ‘n’ roll thing to say.
Ditto for “Untamed”, which has a warm ’70s-style Southern country-rock band sound, with yet another vocal that explodes with urgency. The final song, “My Little One” is again, an acoustic and folky paradise that chimes with an aged and joyous glance at youth.
Bob Dylan, in his glorious ode to ’70s optimism, “Forever Young,” sang: “May God bless you and keep you always. May your wishes all come true . May you always do for other, and let others do for you.” That’s a nice thought. And he also sang, “May you build a ladder to the stars.” In its own idiosyncratic (and very talented) way, Paul Christian’s That’s Everything manages against all odds to stay “forever young” in a very rock ‘n’ roll way.
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