TALES FROM THE CRYPT

If there s one quality which links Robert Johnson and Hank Williams to Tricky and the entire extended Wu Tang Clan, it s this: The Fear a quaking case of the existential heebie-jeebies; a naked terror of God, Woman and The Divil.

Johnny Dowd knows all about this. The 50-year-old singer may presently run a haulage company in New York, but he s retained a lot of the baggage accumulated during his formative years in Oklahoma: a mordant religious guilt seeps from the pores of his music. In an age of celebrity iconography and therapy-as-confession, the homicidal hymns on his albums Wrong Side Of Memphis and Pictures From Life s Other Side stick out like Luke The Drifter at a Microsoft convention.
Where I grew up, there was a church on every corner, Dowd explains. You think you re out of it, but it s always there. I see kids growing up now and they don t know nothing from the Bible, from church, and I think that s reflected in music because there s no deeper context. That s what makes those Robert Johnson songs so deep, cos he s tapping into something: it s not just this guy that met the devil it s everybody. Whereas now people don t want a resonance, it s like, Let s keep everything right on the surface .
But there s gotta be musicians left willing to take chances, say something ugly, make a mistake and fuck up, he continues. I think rap music has more in common with Townes Van Zandt than Shania Twain or Clint Black.
Definitely, if Dowd were a rap artist instead of a country-noir storyteller, his records would carry a parental guidance sticker, such is the body count sustained within the grooves.
People criticise all this horrible rap music , he testifies. Well, one, it reflects reality, and two, it s always been there in music.
I mean, if you go back, like you say, to old English murder ballads, or in early Irish music, the girl gets pregnant so the first thing I do is throw her in the river! The first impulse was to freakin murder somebody!
Dowd s songs are populated by people with some serious problems, like Lonnie Wolf the guy who ended up paralyzed after trying to shoot himself or the tortured sociopath in No Woman s Flesh But Hers . Elsewhere, in And God Created Woman , Dowd has processed co-vocalist Kim Sherwood-Caso s performances to make them sound like they ve been piped in via an Ouija board.
His own phrasing meanwhile, suggests a cowpoke William Burroughs. Has he heard records like Dead City Radio and The Priest They Called Him ?
I haven t. I ve read stuff, but I could imagine that. He has that in the writing, he s saying these outrageous things but it s in kind of a flat language or something. He s like a Mark Twain on smack. You won t see many Americans comin up like that anymore, that are able to hold onto some kind of individual vision. I dunno, I think I m reaching the age where I m getting to be a grouchy old I see the young people and they re not being wild and crazy and obnoxious and it s like, Jesus, I m in a bar playing, and I m the drunkest, stoopidest person here. That ain t right, man!
Pictures From Life s Other Side is out now on Independent Records.