Dixie Blur＜Colored Vinyl＞

After Jonathan Wilson released 2018s wonderful Rare Birds, he realized hed taken his third album of Topanga Canyon psychedelia-drenched singer/songwriter sound to its zenith, and needed a new direction. He found it inadvertently while appearing on NPRs eTown with Steve Earle. The elder songwriter advised him to travel to Nashville and take advantage of its top-notch studio aces. Wilson was more than intrigued. He headed East and enlisted Wilcos Pat Sansone as co-producer. The next call was to the iconic fiddler Mark OConnor. Growing up in North Carolina, Wilson recalled with excitement the fiddles place in country, mountain, and bluegrass music. OConnor hadnt been a session musician since the 90s, but Wilson pleaded and cajoled convincingly and he agreed to participate. He and Sansone hired an illustrious cast of sidemen: guitarist Kenny Vaughn, bassist Dennis Crouch, pedal steel player Russ Pahl, Jim Hoke on woodwinds and harmonica, drummer Jon Radford, and keyboardist Drew Erickson. They all holed up at Cowboy Jack Clements Sound Emporium Studio for six days and cut the album live from the studio floor; there are precious few overdubs. Dixie Blur sounds exactly like what it is: Wilsons take on Americana, country, bluegrass, and West Texas dancehall music. The set is as cosmic as it is country. Despite looking in the rearview at familial and cultural inspirations of yore, Wilson doesn’t leave the Topanga Canyon completely behind. Heaven Makin Love comes out of the gate sounding like an early Eddie Rabbitt track before OConnor, Vaughn, and Pahl surround Wilsons tender vocals with a wonderfully charged fusion of mariachi and Doug Sahms brand of Tex-Mex, complete with jangly Left Coast psychedelia in the bridge. So Alive weds rootsy Americana to bluegrass with acoustic flatpicking from Vaughn doing his best Doc Watson as OConnors fiddle swirls around him. 69 Corvette recalls Harvest-era Neil Young with its poetic lyrics offering a narrative of longing and homesickness and accompanied by crying pedal steel. The overdubbed backing chorus is forlorn and Baroque-sounding. OGirl is an outlier with its lilting woodwinds, rock & roll snares, and screaming electric leads amid swelling vocal choruses and keyboards. Meanwhile, the erstwhile early rock & roll on Enemies evokes Phil Spector and Jack Nitszche in a maximalist country song. El Camino Real is a stomping country-bluegrass jam with upright piano, wailing fiddle, and jangling guitars. The album closer is a re-recording of Korean Tea that Wilson originally cut with Muscadine in the 90s. This version offers a modern take on Wilsons Topanga Canyon sound. Dixie Blur is Wilsons most personal and direct collection of songs. They are wrought poetically from memory and inspired by the excellence of the sublime performances from his sidemen. ~ Thom Jurek