Arlo McKinley (AKA Timothy Dairl Carr) made his great new CD, This Mess We’re In, in Memphis and you sense the lights up the river even as he gives it to you straight about the state of the white working class in Ohiopioid. The sound of This Mess is Memphis’s. Perfect weaves of country/soul/gospel with an inner power. Organ-and-fiddle melting into one another with the beat behind it as Arlo rolls on, strong as death, sweet as love.
But Arlo couldn’t quite get his Memphis thing together when he played live at a small club in Brooklyn last month. He settled for a guitars-first rock-combo sound in the middle of his set. His own acoustic was often buried in the mix, the fiddle was missing and the organ barely there. He was nursing a buzz too, which seemed to undercut his edge. A mouthy fan in the audience may have gotten under his skin early. (He offered her his extra mic.) She surely creeped me out at one point. Arlo had righted himself after a couple less than sober performances, getting back into his “Bag of Pills”—a daring, scary-ass song that breaks down in the middle…
And life, I don’t want it
If it’s so easy to die
His fan didn’t seem to catch the song’s gravity. She’d cooled out on the come-backs as he came around to the song’s End (which is also its opener): “You want it, I can feel it/Got a bag of pills I’ve been dealing/So I can take you drinking…” That’s when she put her head on her man’s shoulder. A move that flashed me back to a Times Square theatre in the 70s where I saw Taxi Driver, and watched a honey-girl nestle up next to her date as Sport (Harvey Keitel) ran his pimp’s spiel on the tween (Jodie Foster).
Not that Arlo’s a player. He’s not slumming either. He knows from addiction and midwestern death trips. (I hope to hell his Brooklyn high was a one-off, not a sign of drug-stabbing times ahead.)
“Bag of Pills” (from the 2020 CD Die Midwestern) is something of a template when it comes to the sound of his sinning. It’s the song that moved John Prine to sign Arlo to Prine’s record label. I was down too once “Pills’” prepped me for easeful death with a lovely three note descant. That little piano hook sent me searching for its provenance. (There are lots of echoes in Arlo’s stuff—“Like a Rolling Stone” and “Thunder Road” are in the mixes of “Suicidal Saturday Night” and “City Lights.” “Wild Horses” is everywhere.) I tried out the Stones’ “No Expectations”—no luck. But, I owe Arlo, because I now hear how Nicky Hopkins channeled upper registers in Bill Evans’ “Peace Piece.” If you’re thinking I’m too far gone from Arlo’s Country, just remember your ears got to have freedom. (And maybe muse on the Byrds locking into Coltrane circa “Eight Miles High” right before they got stuck on Buck Owens.)
What the hey, Arlo would get more from Bill Evans than from his state’s other notorious creator of hillbilly elegies. I got no expectations, but I hope Arlo’s mind is right when it comes J.D. Vance. Maybe he won’t need to get fuct up if he puts his shoulder to the wheel for Tim Ryan!