John Bois: If I’d Gone To Nashville

MICHAEL MACDONALD

After The Dingoes disbanded in 1979, bassist John Bois remained in America, gained a master’s degree in Boston, taught high school biology in Maryland, produced singer-songwriter Cheryl Wheeler’s sophomore album Half A Book, wrote an excellent memoir Dingoes Lament, accepted a teaching post in Arcadia, Florida shortly after The Dingoes 2010 reunion album Tracks, released his first solo offering Tassie Wolf in 2016 and three years on follows through with If I’d Gone To Nashville, an eleven song opus that explores John’s love and understanding of Country Music idioms.

If I’d Gone To Nashville comes across as a rootsy shotgun marriage of Country Rock, Southern back porch Folk, rustic singer/songwriter and favours a broad, but uncluttered, sound where electric guitars mingle with fiddles, harmonicas, accordions and banjoes. Overall, it’s a lean soundscape that allows the warm grace in John’s unhurried vocals to take centre stage. Lyrically, the eleven originals chronicle a small town worldview where isolation, restlessness, vulnerability and second thoughts are often offset by dry humour.

No two songs sound alike -the opener, Heartbreak Hill, lets a jangly Byrds-like guitar frame the tune’s reflective lyrics whereas Movin’ On, a talking Country Blues channeled through Roger Miller, delivers a humorous road tale full of homespun wisdom. The cry-in-your-beer lament of the title track captures everything that’s right about the best of Country songwriting in that the subject matter can be taken both ways. Eclecticism leaks into the Tex-Mex rhythms that colour Over The River plus the driving Folk Rock of Standing On The Threshold and Comin’ Home, the latter a poignant ode to returning war veterans.

Un-clichéd romanticism filters into A Night With You and True Love, two songs that up the Country quotient and carry an attention to lyrical detail that would surely please Willie Nelson. John tears up roots on Johnny’s The Last One, originally the closing track to The Dingoes 1979 album Orphans Of The Storm, and retools the song into a charming slice of Celtic folk undercut with a gentle wash of tin whistles and pipes.

Pushing the boundaries on Matilda Walks The Mallee and Alabama Pearl deftly takes both songs into an almost Alt-Country framework. A paean borne out of homesickness, Matilda marries a 70s singer-songwriter feel with Aussie bush balladry and is reinforced by a soulfully eloquent vocal. An Appalachian string band sound, all hammered banjo and sawing fiddle, introduces the adventurous Alabama Pearl before John’s gnarly electric guitar drives the song deep into the heart of the honky tonk blues. However, the fuller sound doesn’t swamp the narrative sweep of the lyrics that owe more to Stephen Foster than Stephen Stills.

While it’s reasonable to pigeonhole If I’d Gone To Nashville as a variation of Americana, it owes nothing to contemporary Country music and avoids the bumpersticker sloganeering that leaks into a lot of mainstream Country songwriting. In a world of Auto-Tuned pseudocowpokes crooning about their farm machinery, it’s nice to have both If I’d Gone To Nashville and John Bois around as authentic alternatives.