Certain songwriters have a way of getting a song locked firmly in your thoughts and feelings as if they were singing straight into your soul, or better yet, sitting across a barstool whispering tall tales and long buried heartbreak.
“The Wind” from Zachary Lucky, officially released today on Wroxton Recordings, deepens Lucky’s growing reputation as a laureate poet of the rootless and restless, the lonesome and forsaken.
In a voice weathered like a bucolic weathervane and honest like a neighbour’s forecast, Lucky’s plaintive songs of love lost, love found and the long winding road, prove to be straight talk from a wandering man about the cost and the toll that life will take.
Stripped down instrumentally, simple and direct in lyric, Lucky’s voice, haunted by the ghosts of George Jones and Guy Clark, resonates throughout the album. Much of the emotional weight and meaning in these tracks stems from Zachary’s unwavering commitment to telling his stories unfettered by sentimental embellishment. Both disarming and moving, each song digs deep into the heart of the matter.
Listening to these songs, one is reminded of the mythical imagery of a lone rider, as described in Don Henley’s ‘Desperado’ – “Your prison is walking through this world all alone” – or perhaps the even more compelling vision in Fred Eaglesmith’s ‘Summerlea’ – “But he only gets into town twice a month, and he gets out as fast as he can, and he don’t have a phone so she can’t call him up, and she never knows where he is.”
The fact that Eaglesmith’s “Water in the Fuel,”’ covered by Zachary Lucky on “The Wind” is a testament to the lasting influence he’s had on a younger generation of Canadian cowboy poets and songwriters, all which spring from a vital and long-lasting tradition.
From its opening instrumental version of the title track, the album meanders, like a slow running river, through nine further tunes about what it means to be a solitary travelling man. Surely inspired by Zachary’s relentless touring schedule from his early musician days in Saskatchewan, to his more intense Ontario residency. “Good at Getting Gone,” the opening ballad, sets the tone for what follows. But in the early released song “Ramblin’ Kind,” Lucky sums up the mood, “I’ve been chasing your trail so long / Since I was just a kid / I’ve been running in circles / I’ve been spinning my tires / Always been more of the ramblin’ kind.”
Getting gone and wandering around are more than themes that circulate throughout the lyrics or in the characters who inhabit these songs, it’s the lost chances, the regrets and the recognition that something more might have been. In the final song, the lyric version of “The Wind,” Zachary Lucky brings us closer to what the true meaning of redemption might mean at this point in his musical journey and where he’s being led.
“I can hear that lonesome prairie blow / It sounds like it’s calling my name / Its many miles and many days that I have been away… / It sings, my son, where have you gone / Why did you go astray? / It’s not that I have ever wanted to / I swear, I wanted to stay / That wind blew heavy, and that wind blew cold / That wind it blew me away.”
Photo Credit: Aaron Wynia
Douglas McLean fell in love with music at a very early age and has worked as a musician and songwriter since his early teens. He has a deep love for the written word and has spent his life in pursuit of language as a means to convey what Van Morrison once called “the inarticulate speech of the heart”. He lives deep in the Almaguin Highlands with his wife and their dog. Douglas is active in local radio, recording, producing and writing, in and around Huntsville, Ontario.
His website is:
http://www.douglasmcleanmusic.com
